I've told this little anecdote before, so bear with me.
My dad was born in 1918. He used to say that sometime in his lifetime, companies (in general) switched from charging what was considered a fair markup for their product and services, to charging whatever they could get. I would sure like to know more about that particular paradigm shift in American corporate thinking.
There's a movie called The Hudsucker Proxy, a spoof on American industry in the 1950's, which has a scene where a whole department of bean counters are calculating what a hula hoop should cost. After much number crunching by a sea of people on calculators, they came up with .79 each for a 20 cent profit. When it was brought to the head bean counter, he looked at the number, shook his head no, and they added a 1 in front of the decimal, making it $1.79. Shaking his head in approval, the project moved forward.
I suspect there's an element of truth to what my dad said. Bean counters are ruining the world!!! or at least the Savages...
