I found a way to get around tariffs that will raise the price of audio equipment.
I found a way to get around tariffs that will raise the price of audio equipment. What is your solution?
Yes I am serious and this will work. Much talk has been created about sitting down and enjoying the music... finally. Even more discussions about the ever ending quest for better gear vs just enjoying the gear you now own.
So that's what I will do. I am not buying new gear. I will enjoy the music now.
It's a good thing you stayed away from the statins. All my life I've had higher than normal LDL levels but everything else was fine. The doctor I had then said not to worry as it was most likely due to genetics and that my other levels compensated for it or they'd be off as well.
Fast forward to my present doctor and she said I was pre-diabetic and put me on some statins that lowered my levels by over 40 points in one month. The downside was some awful constipation so I stopped cold turkey with the statins and nothing bad came of it. I told my doctor about it and she was fine with it.
It appears that Big Pharma loves its product and their pill pushers are still doing the lord's work doling out the meds. By the way, I went Vegan years ago and like you, never felt better, dropped 30 pounds and felt like a spring chicken. After a few years I stumbled and had a cheeseburger and it's been rough going ever since. I just may take it up again.
All commodities importing into china, need pay the 3 types tariffs:
I. Customs Duty
II. Value-added tax
III. Consumption tax
This just for value added Tax... (There are plenty more.)
All goods imported into China are subject to the nation’s value-added tax (VAT) of either 13 percent or 17 percent. The 13 percent tax is available for certain goods that fall mainly within the categories of agricultural and utility items, while the 17 percent tax applies to other goods subject to the VAT tax.
on Chinese electric cars, yes. they went hand-in-hand with subsidies for the production of EVs, semiconductors, and other technologies designed to stimulate U.S. growth (which Biden's successor denounced).
That 13-17% VAT sounds about right, but compared to the 17-27% EU VAT which has been around since, forever, sounds tame. Doesn't it all depend on the country and its market? Some industries are highly valued and imports would devastate that market so they, like we, protect certain industries in our respective markets. It's done all the time.
As for what Biden did, yes, he did impose a 100% tariff on Chinese government subsidized EVs to stop undercutting our EVs made here. Countries do it all the time but one must look at the underlying reasons for doing so. China made 30 million EVs but could only sell 22 million in country so their government tried to sell out of country, undercutting real world prices for them. You know, dumping. What Biden did was retaliatory.
Biden's tariffs were largely symbolic since they were imposed as he was leaving office. That, and Rump simply banned Chinese EVs once he came into office.
I hear, there are plans to significantly lower the value of US dollar. What else do they have in mind to potentially complicate our audiophile life, I wonder?
cholesterol is you least problem with alcohol tobacco.it has a direct link to head and neck cancer
@mark200mph, cardiovascular disease kills more people in the USA than cancer, so be sure and tell that to the next patient you are trying to shock out of v-fib.
@nonoise, without seeing your actual lab work I cannot make an informed comment. The other level the doc may have been referring to was probably your HDL, but at a certain level of LDL I am not sure the HDL can actually compensate for it. Maybe I have been indoctrinated due to my second career as a RN after my previous career went south on me, but my understanding is that elevated LDL has a direct link to coronary artery disease and CAD has a direct link to myocardial infarction and MI often ends up as cardiac arrest, and when that happens if you are not in the right place and around the right people it usually has a poor outcome (and even then survival is not a done deal). I didn’t intend that as a lecture and I wish you a long healthy life so I sincerely hope that everything you are doing health wise works for you, but a low dose of Crestor is working okay for me with minimal side effects, so I am not changing that until it doesn’t work.
@nonoise Rump simply banned Chinese EVs once he came into office.
Not true. Again it was Biden.
"In the final days of his presidency, Joe Biden has announced a rule to prohibit the sale and import of connected vehicle hardware and software systems, as well as completed connected vehicles, from China and Russia."
Additional 'Protective' tariffs will prevent Chinese EV's from entering the market. Because if we don't we will see the end of our auto industry. Are you aware...BYD is making electric cars for as low as $12k? I bet consumers would run as fast as they can to buy these cheap cars and would give a crap about the destruction of our industry.
Thanks for the heads up and info. I'd like to think I have some good years left and have been contemplating a better life and in order to do so, go back to that diet I mentioned that served me so well. The problem is I have a sweet tooth and still eat like a kid....which shows and it's starting to bug me. I've always rebounded from what little backsliding I've done but at 71, the results aren't coming like they used to.
Gee, I wonder why Rump didn't rescind Biden's orders on that and yes, I'm aware of the low price of BYD's EVs.They're built cheaply and heavily subsidized the Chinese government (like I already said).
By the way, the ruleswere finalized by Rump when he came into office.
The problem is I have a sweet tooth and still eat like a kid....
I hear you, @nonoise, me too and the same for an awful lot of us. I am only a few years younger than you, and it wasn’t always like this for me, but now controlling my food cravings are way harder than controlling my cravings for alcohol and illicit use of drugs ever was. A low dose of a statin got my cholesterol in the way good range, so for me, considering my lack of will power and discipline in my old age, a pill seems to be the answer. I have known people that have told me they maintained a relatively healthy life style (diet and exercise) but still could not keep their LDL within safe parameters, so if what they told me about their lifesryle was true, I’d think they are a victim of the genes that they inherited and a pill may extend their life.
Back after my Mom died in ’92 my Dad pretty much gave up on any semblance of healthy eating, and I used to lecture him from 2000 miles away on the telephone as I was young and into health food and weight lifting and felt real good back then . . . but he took a daily statin and a blood pressure pill and he made it to 90.
It’s a personal choice and I am not going to lecture anyone for whichever way they choose . . . if you can do it without a pharmacolgical intervention, I say more power to you and keep up the good work . . . but if not, not all pills are bad all of the time; they are part of the reason average lifespan has been increasing.
Ya gotta be a li’l careful with these docs.... Some years ago, there was this doc...i can’t remember the full premise on why she said the following, but, she said something along the lines of/in a business like fashion ,"yeah, we’ll take your gall bladder out, pretty quick, easy peasy" something like that... It didn’t hit me for a second, but then, my internal rage built up a li’l (so i had to put up a fake smile on the outside) and the inner monologue started..."millions of years of evolution to get a fine tuned gall bladder, it certainly ain’t a vestigial organ..and here she is, 4 years of pre-med, 4 years of med school and she knows everything about the sophistication of this thing apparently". I dropped her in a hurry and the gallblader’s still here, alive and kickin.. the current doc’s a good dude, a bit more evolved in consciousness.
Oh, did i forget...i had a tooth guy say all my wisdom tooth needed to be taken out for no good reason...outta nowhere, in a business-like manner. Again, my internal rage started to build up a lot and i had to put up the fake smile in a hurry...I said "Why? What’s wrong with me keeping all my wisdom teeth??? we’ll see if anything happens"...30+ years later, all my wisdom teeth are still there and the toothline looks just fine. None of the things he warned me about ever happened.
All my life I’ve had higher than normal LDL levels but everything else was fine. The doctor I had then said not to worry as it was most likely due to genetics and that my other levels compensated for it or they’d be off as well.
Fast forward to my present doctor and she said I was pre-diabetic and put me on some statins that lowered my levels by over 40 points in one month. The downside was some awful constipation so I stopped cold turkey with the statins and nothing bad came of it. I told my doctor about it and she was fine with it.
It appears that Big Pharma loves its product and their pill pushers are still doing the lord’s work doling out the meds. By the way, I went Vegan years ago and like you, never felt better, dropped 30 pounds and felt like a spring chicken. After a few years I stumbled and had a cheeseburger and it’s been rough going ever since. I just may take it up again.
Not all of us are super-humans, like yourself, @deep_333 . Some of us are unable to simply think away impacted wisdom teeth and blocked bile ducts and we occasionally need medical intervention.
@nonoise I'm aware of the low price of BYD's EVs.They're built cheaply
No they are not.
Our labs have torn down every nut and bolt and found them to be amazingly well built.Very high ratings. At this price point the testers were shocked at how well built they are. Just yesterday they announced a 5 minute battery charge time. Even Tesla is warching BYD very closly.
Our auto industry needs to catch up. We're lagging 10 years behind.
Not in the car reviews I’ve been reading. What they do have is lots of tech that we don’t get here and that the ride and handling aren’t up to our standards. The more expensive ones meant for foreign markets are built to higher standards for the more discerning cliental.
BYD has some great cars in their line up but also some cheap stuff. There are some channels on YouTube that specialize in EVs just made in China and thats’ where I get my info along with some online reports.
As for Tesla, they’ve been lagging for too long and need to play catch up.
Who are the fat cats you are referring to @deep_333? I can tell you it isn't the high end manufacturers or retailers. There's a mistaken notion that the industry works on big margins.
@deep_333 "BOYCOTT ALL HIFI PRODUCTS AND MAKE THESE FAT CATS SLIM DOWN."
I am curious, @deep_333, with your superior intellect and apparent ability to self heal, why do you even bother going to all these doctors that you write about?
It's pretty sure covid killed more people in the world in the past 4 years than any disease.what I'm saying is simple,just like you watch your cholesterol you should minimize tobacco and alcohol.its that simple.im not sure that over 70 years that the damage to vessels has already happened.this does not mean we should stop the starting but have had many patients develop leg pain as a side effect FYI so they may have to switch thier cholesterol meds.im off my meds currently that should get the party going.
With just a few exceptions over the years, I've bought high quality used gear for a fraction of what equivalent gear would cost new. Bought the digital portion of the system over the past few years, and if I decide to upgrade it will be at non-tariffed prices. The upside of reaching a good plateau with gear is the enjoyment of music has taken over. While I am still checking local ads from time to time for yet one more holy grail piece, I'm not disappointed when there's nothing of interest. My real issue is the need to downsize in anticipation of a move, and with a rapidly stagnating economy things will likely move more slowly and at softer prices than the previous few years. Perhaps the tariffs will stimulate the owner to owner sales and help me clean out.....
Buy American. We have many great companies in the USA, like Shunyata, etc. or whatever your pockets can afford. Everyone can afford more music no matter your source and that is what this hobby is truly about.
Buy American. We have many great companies in the USA, like Shunyata, etc. or whatever your pockets can afford. Everyone can afford more music no matter your source and that is what this hobby is truly about.
When external parasites, bacteria, etc infect you, you need a chemical (antibiotic,for example) to kill it. Unfortunately, you can’t pick it up otc in this ’land of the free’ and need the 4 years premed + 4 years med school gal to write you a prescription.
For many other things...you see, there is an enormous intelligence that resides inside the human casing you came with @immatthewj. In fsct, you could even refer to it as a drop of the very source of creation itself..it created your casing, it can fix a few things too, doncha think?. But, its potential is unrealized and lays in dormancy for entire lifetimes...There are tools of the interiority to wake it up slowly, however. Thanks to two very violent dogmatic religions that have been in action for a while, it has become harder to access these tools anymore. The ones who had access to it/ability to transmit it either got quartered or burnt on a stake.
.But, as far as the avg guy who refers to himself as an American goes... general apathy/ignorance, not interested in anything besides bbqs and ball games, xenophobia/mistrust of anything that doesn’t look like ya, ( i.e,.,doesn’t share that last 0.01 mm thickness of skin pigmentation perhaps)...or a inability to recognize a thing of great value just because it appears to hail from another culture anymore, etc could be additional impediments to access of such tools for the interiority.
I am curious, @deep_333 , with your superior intellect and apparent ability to self heal, why do you even bother going to all these doctors that you write about?
So what are you saying, @deep_333, you went to see your PCP to get a script for some antibiotics or antivirals for some affliction that was beyond your super-human self-healing abilities and she took one look at you and wanted to perform a lap-choly? I wonder why it is that I do not find this tale of yours to be credible. And you are selling the education of your MD a bit short; I am sure she did at least a few years in a residency program.
@thefile, where will the manufacturing take place of the resistors and capacitors and diodes and other components for these American products that we should buy?
As already pointed out, everything made in America has an average of 40% foreign content in it. That can go from 0 to around 80%. Sure, there are some things made just in America, but audio sure isn't one of them.
So much for rose colored glasses (I thought with the Age of Enlightenment they were no longer a thing).
You are correct most parts will come from over seas but if nothing else it can hopefully put some Americans to work and you will only be paying part of the tariff and not the whole thing
You know most antibiotics are made in China. It scares me if they get mad and cut that supply chain off. Maybe we don't have a choice and should think about making America a major manufacturing nation like we used to be.we may go through some growing pains but a simple infection won't kill you cuz we have the supply chain.until then enjoy what you have and the music
Let’s think about this for a moment. One of the pro Trump arguments is to bring manufacturing back to America. Just like back in the 40s, 50s or 60s. Lots of people working factory jobs, lots of people with paychecks….. right? Well nowadays these new factories have robotics and automation. Why? Because the businesses who own these companies have to be competitive when selling cars or widgets, therefore they cut back on employees and benefits. Right? So even if America could build 10,000 factories overnight, your neighbors and cousins would not get the new jobs, robots would. Therefore the idea of going back in time… is pointless.
OK, I am sorry. I wanted to avoid commenting. But I have to.
I worked for decades in high tech manufacturing on mainland China, Japan, Europe and Mexico. Do you folks actually know how terrible and low paying those jobs are? I have been to contract manufactures that employ hundreds of thousands of workers hunched over tiny workstations, putting together phones, and TVs. I have been in dozens of wafer fabs all over the world. After an hour in a bunny suit, sweating like a pig... I had no desire to stay in one... or on a testing facility.
If the point is to give folks the experience that will make them want to go back to school and get a higher level job... then that may work.
However, my experience is that it does not work. I spent a year of high school in town in Pennsylvania where all the folks worked for Westinghouse. They were paid OK. The work was horrible and repetitive. Overall alcoholism was rampant, wife beating, a standard practice. The kids would drink in high school, get a girl pregnant, quit high school, have the kid... and get drunk and beat their wives... repeat. Yeah, the great old days.
Yup. Manufacturing is not coming back, save for the CHIPS program, which Rump is trying his damndest to scrap. Why would he do that? It had bipartisan support (overwhelmingly Dems) that would provide 135,800 jobs that don’t require a college degree and pay close to 6 figures for the lowest level jobs. He also killed off 42,400 new green energy jobs. These jobs mostly targeted poverty stricken red areas and for the life of me they still voted for the other guy. It’s a cruel joke.
America has become an information industry and the oligarchs who now run it aren’t looking to the past. They could give a rat’s pitohui as they see us as a bunch of NPCs in this game of theirs. Why give us manufacturing that they would have to maintain and jobs so we can pay more in taxes when they can just take our Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid? The administrative costs of running those programs are around 1% and they’d take 17-27% off the top to do the same thing, giving us less in return. There’s well over $3 Trillion combined in those programs. Why work for it when they can just take it. For them it’s a no brainer.
Now I don't want to buy anything high tech made anywhere. It's your fault. In fact, I don't want to buy anything at all. Let's keep our professional "secrets" to ourselves and colleagues.
Oh I thought of a way to make this more palatable. The folks working at these subcontractors and fabs (at least in mainland China) often have come from absolute subsistence existence... I have been in the marginal areas where new plants have opened and no one weighs more than 100 pounds... folks wasting away, just skin and bones, that now have hope. Over time as these plants are established the wages slowly rise and they become more prosperous. They can eat well and buy clothing. This has been the wave starting on the very West of China and slowly sweeping East.
However, my experience is that it does not work. I spent a year of high school in town in Pennsylvania where all the folks worked for Westinghouse. They were paid OK. The work was horrible and repetitive. Overall alcoholism was rampant, wife beating, a standard practice. The kids would drink in high school, get a girl pregnant, quit high school, have the kid... and get drunk and beat their wives... repeat. Yeah, the great old days.
Early in the morning, factory whistle blows
Man rises from bed and puts on his clothes
Man takes his lunch, walks out in the morning light
It's the work (the work), the working (the working), just the working life (just the working life)
Through the mansions of fear, through the mansions of pain
I see my daddy walking through them factory gates in the rain
Factory takes his hearing, factory gives him life
The work (the work), the working (the working), just the working life (just the working life)
End of the day, factory whistle cries
Men walk through these gates with death in their eyes
And you just better believe, boy
Somebody's gonna get hurt tonight
Bruce Springsteen/Factory from Darkness On The Edge Of Town/Columbia Records 1978
@ghdprentice+1 I worked in a Ford manufacturing plant for a short while and had friends and acquaintances working in industrial settings back in the day. Miserable jobs, guys had to let off steam somehow, drugs, alcohol, partying in general was the means to do that. And I know from first hand experience how miserable that job was, repetitive tasks take a major toll, I lasted about two months in a job that paid me at least twice, three times what I could make doing other unskilled labor. When people make the claim these workers paid too much, that really gets to me. If these guys have it so good why aren't you doing their job. Perhaps its you that's making too much, ever think about that/
As to the tariffs, the real reason behind them is self serving as others have stated. If the goal is to truly bring back manufacturing to the US, this is either totally misguided or a lie. Demographics alone means we don't have the supply of labor to bring back industry on a large scale, how about relocation of labor, and cost of rebuilding infrastructure, paying union scale or something close to that, medical insurance costs of labor, sure there many more costs missing here. And people complain about inflation, you ain't seen nothing! This whole thing is a shell game, they got your eyes on one thing when in reality it something else altogether.
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