"Cost $80, sell for $90", LOL! Try "a keystone". Markups at each level from manufacturer, to distributor, to retailer are like 100% at each hop. End consumer gets *nailed*. Internet was supposed to kill some of that via "disintermediation"... ain't seen it yet. But offshoring has certainly *nailed* the little person from the salary direction as well.
Yeah. 
Find a company making a 50% profit (100% markup) and they could sell stock like nobody's business. Just ain't happening.
Went shopping for some new furniture with the wife.. Markup has got to be 200%. Ridiculous some of the prices 
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This seems to be a common misunderstanding of capitalism which most liberals suffer from. If some retailer is taking too much of a markup...don't buy from that retailer! If customers walk away, that retailer has two choices; a) lower prices... or.. b) go out of business. Nobody has their arm twisted as they enter a retail establishment !
An exploitative business is certainly guilty of greed, but if you're looking for a place to vent your anger..look to your fellow consumers ! If they were not so gullible or stupid (take your choice) but to buy from an overpriced pigsty..that pigsty would no longer be in business.
Capitalism is the fairest, most levelling type of economy... until the people elect communists to over tax and destroy the system.
Yes, a true 50% net would be a find, LOL! Not sure how many do or ever have without some research.
I'm not a liberal, at least not in the way you use the word, I want personal freedom to much to be aligned with today's liberal. But you seem to suffer from the belief that folks can just up and not buy food and the like. That they can realistically, by choice, disengage from the economy and the Federal gov't.
Well... let's see... last time someone tried that... Oh yeah... it was called the "Civil War"... and they lost, LOL!
All kidding aside, the practical reality is the owners of resources and capital have the rust of us by the proverbial short ones, simple as that. Everything on the planet is now "owned", and thus you have to buy from *someone*, be it a retailer or not. On the day you are born, if you are lie most of us, you have nada, zero. So you must get the commodities required for survival from somewhere. And for the most part, those are already claimed.
Capitalism left ubridled leads to oligopolies and the like. History shows that. You do remember such wonderful things as child labor, right?
Ah well, if you can't see that, don't know how I can get you to see past your programming and just look at what is.
Liberal or conservative, yeah it matters a little, but Rich v. Poor is the real dividing line.
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First off, let's get this straight..you said " But you seem to suffer from the belief that folks can just up and not buy food and the like' I made no suggestion such as that, Scoot was talking about furniture, not necessities (e.g. food, shelter. clothing).
With furniture, one can usually wait but in the rare instance they can't..they can shop around, or buy 2nd hand.
You're talking poor vs rich..today in the US there are very few truly "poor" people..compared to Haiti, Somalia or N Korea.
I am not "rich" but I'm not "hurting" either. I don't envy those who are rich, because the millionaires I know, all worked long and hard to get it. My neighbor is perhaps worth 150 million, he 80 and is in the office of his trucking co at 3AM every morning. Her started out with one beat up truck, hauling cans of milk from the local farms (left school at 15).
Sure, some like the Kennedys or John Kerry had it given to them..but I still don't envy them..they have their OWN problems.
If the tax was a flat 10% and no loopholes or "goodies" for socialist politicians to hand out, we could function much better as a nation.
Sounds like you would like to be in business.. Today it is hard for the average guy to go into business..startup permits, incorporating costs and taxes, rules and regulations, minimumwages, Obamacare, EPAs own ridiculous requirements, lawyer fees etc, etc.. Big govt causes all these stumbling blocks..big govt ..not your friend !
Sure I am very conservative but i can easily see the need for a few NECESSARY laws to govern such things as monopolies, child labor and the environment, some of our most conservative leaders have backed all those things. Nixon launched the EPA to provide reasonable protection for our environment...but not so some pip-squeak egg-head could "crucify" ligitimate businesses !
These days the corporations have to fight the gestapo-like EPA in court at very turn. The taxpayer is paying for both sides of thiese games..one side in direct taxes the other side in raised costs for goods and services.
Big government is NOBODY'S FRIEND..nobody but socialist politicians...
OK, if lost the track on "furniture" v. "neccessities". Sorry about that. But it's all relevant if we are talking about economic life in general.
Well, no see, you've seen the opposite of what I've seen. You talk of someone starting with one truck and getting somewhere. There are minions and minions who work just as hard or harder, who I've seen end up nowhere. Caught on the treadmill as it were. And even the folks you are talking about, statistically, are an anomoly, right? What percentage of startups fail? I may recall this wrongly, but last I know it was something like 95% fail in the first 5 years?
The game is not set up to free the many, it's geared to ensure the top stays on the top. Can that not be seen? Is it even a question? That would be Wall Street, Fed, and truly wealthy types right? And yes, some may be Kennedys or [fill in the blank old money name here]. And, having known one or two of those types, they live very differently from the rest of us. Even folks most would call reasonably rich. (Spent some time growing up in an area where there were many... there's an obelisk to Rose Kennedy in the garden at building I worked in... a public gov't building no less.)
Anyway, to clarify my stance. Like you I'm for smallest practical gov't. By today's use of the word, I guess I'm a conservative, but not anything like what I'd call a current "Limbaugh Conservative", LOL! I'm big on the idea of individual freedom and as much independence as possible. That's what I want my gov't to ensure.
But at the same time I realize that unlimited freedom can lead to unlimited power for the "winners" or those groups sufficiently organized. Note my stance is "Individual Freedom". Accent on "Individual"... well to have that you need protection from the bigger bear or the pack of wolves, to make a nature analogy, no?
Yes, big gov't. USSR type socialist gov't just changes who the winners get to be, but the rest are still subjects. Both forms cause a "master" - "Subordinate" relationship to form. The Boss, just happens to be from different groups.
Now I'm not sure why the environment thing is stuck in your craw. (But that is sounding Limbaugh... "Enviro-Nazi" is his term, no?)
In the end, unless carefully controlled... "Big Anything" is no one's friend, except the insiders.
At the moment that would be defined by who controls the resources... whether it be Big Business, who wants us to be slaves to their bottom line... Or Big Lefty... who wants us to be slaves to their gov't edicts.
See how it's all the same, and it's still all about resource control?
Strikes me that perhaps your perspective is that of someone in a Small or Medium Business?
Mine is that of one who's asking, "Where is Individual Freedom at a high quality of life to be found if you weren't born to it, and are trapped in a system designed to exploit you?"
The list of Fort. 500's on my resume would probably give you pause... yet at the same time I see the work being offshored and putting wage pressure on U.S. citizens to compete against world labor prices... sometimes held down by gov'ts such as China. And our leadership going at it full steam... the bottom line and all, right?
So again, it's not about Left or Right. It's about Up and Down. (I think even R. Reagan said that in one speach?). It's about control of resources and who has to do the grunt work... about how to ensure that labor never can exert significant price pressure on wealth, ultimately.
That's why 4% unemployment (or whatever the current magic number is) is so important. It leaves just enough slack to insure the house edge against the many. Combined with the game the Fed plays... it's geared at maintaining status quo.
But heck that idea is even built into our legal thinking as "Stare Decisis".
From the beginning the American form of gov't was a republic. Essentially designed to give the wealthy (land and slave owners at that time) preferred access to the machinery of law.
Recollect that many of the Founding Fathers were worried about "Tyranny of the Masses", seriously, and took steps to guard against it. So one of the things that is built in... one of the things "checked and balanced" against... is "true" democracy.
Which BTW, is not necessarily an attack. Just an observation. Trying to establish the truth, independent of partisan spin from the various economic interests that try to spin these kind of discussions.
We need to be able to establish what something *is*, and what "good" is and what "fair" is, before we can even begin to arrive at solutions. Otherwise, what we have is just a bunch of bickering and jockeying for the $$$ from each respective corner.
Essentially we've not progressed from law of the jungle, we've just codified it and toned down the level of conflict some.
P.S. Regarding third world countries and poverty., Can't really comment. It's unclear to me how much of that really is the result of first world polices vrs. how much is the 3rd world inhabitants themselves. Clearly both factors play a part.
