Wore out a 8-track... got wound up in the player...so ticked off I through it out the window of my 73 Pontiac at highway speed. Definitely had to replace that one! :)

Cassette. I'm not that old. I'm twice twenty.

joss, who invented the 8 track tape?
think infinity

8 track or cassette?

AWESOME! you set the Friday night stage! OA never disappoints. did you see how hard I had to work this afternoon during happy hour in the gulch with a PBS quoter?! If I liked the notion of payroll, I should be on one

I miss that album - damn good. Had it on tape before I became middle aged.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh0iihjAN...

I like inventive

Mimi, respectfully-
one must critically examine the statistics. $1200 a year has to be adjusted for inflation. Gold was $19/oz. Now it is $1500/oz.
If 90% of the nation was at poverty(relative term) or below, how did we have one of the longest life expectancies in the world. How possibly could the engine of growth happen? If 90% were barely making it-who did the companies sell to?
PBS as a reference on THIS site is a propaganda source. -it has no value when speaking about economics (louis rukeyser is dead).
finally, as much as I love Twain-his piece co-authored was a satirical piece. He was a writer not an economist. Shall we discuss Dickens and how he manipulated populace understanding of economics?

I've heard worse. ;)

Efficiency, not a pane.

Haha! I wish... but cigars aren't 'legal tender' last I checked.

Plus I'm inventive. I do a thorough job in half the time. :)

Doesn't that just make your day? It's a lot of work to be thorough, but you can't succeed without it. Well worth the effort. Good for you! (Did you ask her to please pay you with Holland cigars?)

I was window cleaning today. A lady walked past, saw me, stopped & said " I've been watching you work. You do a really thorough job cleaning the frames as well as the glass. My window cleaner only does the glass. How much do you charge?" I gained a new customer today because I do a better job... The other guy lost a customer.

Okay, I doubt ethics comes into this particular situation but the same principle applies. Do a sh** job, don't expect to keep customers. I strive to be the best, which is why I have customers. :)

That presupposes the idea that government in itself is ethical. Which, as anyone can see, is not the case. The government is in no place to regulate others, when they cannot regulate themselves.

Please don't take this as critical of anything you're saying about the Sherman Anti-Trust Act as I'm still forming an opinion on it myself.

Whenever I see this language "X percent of the country's wealth is concentrated in Y percent of the population" as justification for some government action against the Y%, it makes me cringe.

What are the levels that are fair and when do we have a problem, and why?

I HATE those things. They're so smug. I don't care. I had kids, I didn't need to inform everyone else. Besides, I was driving faster than they were, thereby keeping them effectively away from me and mine! ;-p

It was Mark Twain that coined the phrase Gilded Age.He was addressing in his fiction the social injustices of the time. It isn’t that Wiki states the opposite of what I said, so much as look at the era from another view. The depression of 1890 led to the Pullman Strike. Railroad workers suffered gross reduction in pay. Farmers did well for themselves after the Civil War, but, beginning in 1895 paid more out than they took in till till about 1906, According to this article (hold your nose if you must) by PBS, eleven million of the twelve million in our country were surviving on less than $1200 a year, during the Gilded Age. I did say 90% of the people were living in poverty, so I can now make that claim with a little muscle.http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carnegie/gildedage.html

I love the early Industrialists, but I like to look at history objectively without slant.

this is kinda cool. You can map it against other countries and move it down below by year. select US and move the graph. At the very same time Roosevelt was complaining per capita income took a giant leap-this based on live expectancy as well. If income per capita and live expectancy raise at such rates-OVERALL the population tremendously benefited. I am not suggesting that crony stuff was not going on. I am just saying that anti-trust laws did nothing to increase overall wealth and life expectancy
http://www.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMo...,,,,

this section was in the wikipedia search under "gilded age," stating the opposite of your comments:
"Both the number of unskilled and skilled workers increased, as their wage rates grew.[5] Engineering colleges were established to feed the enormous demand for expertise. Railroads invented modern management, with clear chains of command, statistical reporting, and complex bureaucratic systems.[6] They systematized the roles of middle managers and set up explicit career tracks. They hired young men ages 18–21 and promoted them internally until a man reached the status of locomotive engineer, conductor or station agent at age 40 or so. Career tracks were invented for skilled blue-collar jobs and for white-collar managers, starting in railroads and expanding into finance, manufacturing and trade. Together with rapid growth of small business, a new middle class was rapidly growing, especially in northern cities.[7]"

"In the forty years 1890 to 1930, the population of the United States doubled, the value of farm property increased three and a half times, pig iron production four and a half times, exports five times, coal production five times, and freight traffic five and a half times, but commercial bank deposits increased over seventeen and a half times. "-von Mises Org
https://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/RAE6_... (on anti-trust policies)
finally, Thomas Woods on robber barons of the late 19th century-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbIIPtLEV...
The US rose to the wealthiest nation in the world in a little under 160 years without anti-trust laws, monopoly regulations. It went from a poor agrarian society to the king of the Industrial Revolution.
The more regulation, the more the "middle class" shrinks. I have already stated that the price of goods diminished over 90% in the decade PRECEDING Sherman anti-trust Act.
phrases such as "the gilded age" are manipulative phrases used to gain emotional sympathy and detract from facts.

Okay...I read somewhere around here that President Theodore Roosevelt was evil because of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890.
That’s not my take at all. The early twenty century saw a few giants arise out of the new economy, but there was no middle-class to speak of. Roosevelt was dealing with a country of starving, impoverished people. Ninety percent of the country's wealth was concentrated in less than three percent of the population. It was like a bad episode of Gulch Gone Wrong. It’s why the era is referred to as the Gilded Age. What appeared to be a boom era paved with streets of gold was in reality cheaply painted --it was gilded. The point of the original anti-trust laws was to increase competition. They were meant to deal with corrupt monopolistic practices that destroyed competition and inflated market prices. In the modern-age it gets a bit tricky. We could probably do with some serious pruning of laws on the books.

Greetings ccandd96,
I also like the "Capitalist Inside " bumper sticker. It sure beats "Baby on board" crud. I always feel like that is an admonition to drive careful around them, or a boast that they can procreate. Big deal...
Now, as to any philosophy will work... I think some philosophies are doomed to failure even if all support it. Could you elaborate?
Respectfully,
O.A.

cc,
I like the idea of a capitalist inside bumper sticker. :)
"because nobody checks their premises"- do you mean philosophical arguments or place of business here? lol
I am not sure that moral capitalism is a useful term. Capitalism IS a moral system. If a company mistreats employees, in a pure capitalist society, employees will leave. Quality goes down, fewer goods or services will be purchased. Companies that do well in a free market, retain employees, attract higher quality ones, produce better and more products, increase demand for their superior product.
The CEO and founder of Whole Foods wrote a book about "conscious capitalism." which I find absurd. It implies capitalists are either unawake or without conscience, I can't decide which. Words have meaning. It is important to embrace the word capitalism and spark the debate. saying to others you are a moral capitalist is a tautology at best, already ceding to the other side's argument at worst.