MORAL CAPITALISM

Less than a year after completing this book, Mike Wagner passed away at his home in Stockton, California, where he had been professor of economics at the University of the Pacific since 1962.

Growing up on the Connecticut shoreline following World War I and during the Great Depression, he early on learned economics the hard way working in his family’s grocery store. Formal economics education began at the University of North Carolina and was almost immediately put to the test as an Army administrator of supplies at Supreme Headquarters for the Allied invasion of Europe in World War II. Trained for that job at Harvard Business School, he subsequently studied economics at the University of Texas where he received a PhD in economics and anthropology.

From faculty positions at Drake University, the University of Kansas City, and the University of the Pacific he also taught in programs for corporate executives, labor unions, government agencies, trade associations, and after retirement to Elderhostel audiences. He and his sociologist wife, Pat Wagner, who also taught at the University of the Pacific, were great admirers of William Shakespeare’s dramas which brought them yearly to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. A polished, rounded, open-minded scholar, Mike Wagner lived as he taught: upbeat, optimistic, a believer that things could always be made better if only we use our heads and hearts.

From the Foreword to Moral Capitalism by William C. Frederick,
Professor Emeritus, Katz Graduate School of Business, U. of Pittsburgh.