Actually, you are giving me too much credit by accusing me of equivocation here. Worse -- I will have to acknowledge actual incompetence. I discover I have (as you implied later) been using "equitable" incorrectly, believing it meant something like "equalish; tending toward equality." Since it doesn't mean that, my restatement was at best incorrect and at worst nonsense. Though seated at the moment, I stand corrected.

Between your objection and galen's I am also forced to admit my original statement doesn't do the best job of conveying my intent. I was writing a memoir -- not a form that lends itself to philosophical rigor -- but it still seems an amendment is in order. You may still disagree, but at least we will better understand what we are disagreeing about. Here is my revision:

"Well, quite obviously, from a certain perspective – it isn’t. If you have some vague general notion that equality is a good thing, and you believe that people ought to get an approximately the same reward for an equivalent amount of productive effort, then a capitalist enterprise, in which a large number of people toil for a modest reward while the owner of the enterprise collects a far bigger reward, is morally indefensible. Period. This really isn’t rocket science, and any young person that approaches the world with the set of moral precepts he or she was taught in elementary school will probably come to this conclusion with very little help. Morality is a slippery concept though."

For the record, even in my original text I stated a conditional: "If you have some vague general notion that equality is a good thing, and you believe that people ought to get an approximately the same reward for an equivalent amount of productive effort..." Neither, you, galen, nor I appear to meet those conditions at present -- ergo we are not bound by this standard.

Note also that I said: "...then a capitalist enterprise, in which a large number of people toil for a modest reward while the owner of the enterprise collects a far bigger reward, is morally indefensible." Do you have stomach-scratching capitalist enterprises where you live? I, myself, have never seen one...

I agree with your last two paragraphs, except that, historically, the authorities have always expected to be a good deal less poor.