100% USA here.
Tariffs and sky high audio prices.
With the Chinese tariffs taking hold on 100% of the imports and maybe even on Mexico forthcoming, the audio industry is going to see another big jump in their sky high prices. Anyone making purchases ASAP to get lower prices from existing inventory before post tariff products enter the marketplace?
Showing 32 responses by oregonpapa
I'm basically against tariffs because they are in reality a VAT tax on the U.S. consumer. But, when it comes to China, I'm all for pressuring them with tariffs. China is our economic enemy, soon to become our military enemy. They steal our technology. If a U.S. Corporation wants to manufacture in China, China insists on a 51% control of the business. This allows them to steal the patents. The manipulation of their currency is detrimental to us also. So is their dumping of products on our shores at less than cost with the intent of driving U.S. competition out of business. Will these tariffs on Chinese goods hurt in the short term? Yes ... but its the long term that counts. We can talk about China stealing our military secrets later ... Frank |
nonoise ... One thing we can agree on is the fact that you and I, and others on this site, enjoy one of the greatest hobbies in existence, and that is the recreation of music to the highest degree possible in our own homes. If you lived within driving distance, I'd love to have you over for a listening session. Frank |
rodman99999 ... You are exactly right in every respect. There is a reason that the money issue isn't taught in our government schools. It has been said that if Americans were to ever wake up to what has been done to their money, there would be a revolution by morning. Look at the effects ... In 1965, at the age of 25, I bought a brand new home in Huntington Beach, California. I paid the grand sum of $24,750 for it. My payments were $147.00 per month, and that included taxes and insurance. That same home today would top $600,000 easily. The question is ... did the value of the home increase, or did the value of money decrease? I suspect by your above post that you know the answer. :-) And by the way, in addition to that new home, I had two cars, one of which was new. It was a 1965 Plymouth Belvedere hardtop coupe with the 383 engine. I bought it right off of the showroom floor for $3,500. I had two kids, and my wife stayed home with the kids as a full-time Mom. It wasn't necessary for her to work. What did I do for a living that afforded all of this? I had a bottled water route and worked on a 100% commission basis. One of the last of the hard physical jobs. They still guard Fort Knox, but not to guard the gold. They guard it to keep the secret that there is no gold left in Fort Knox. Here's a good book for those interested to read: https://www.ebay.com/itm/The-Creature-from-Jekyll-Island-A-Second-Look-at-the-Federal-Reserve/192932931805?epid=111597646&hash=item2cebb2e8dd:m:mDRwSYEPazkKkqKmNBMs1cQ Frank PS: Even though I'm a good cook, I no longer have dinner parties. But, if anyone is interested, give me a heads up for a listening session. If anyone is going to the Long Beach show this coming weekend, give me a heads up. We'll be there on Saturday and we can tip a beer together. |
^^^ ghasley & nonoise ... Here's an essay that spells it out pretty succinctly: http://www.usagold.com/gildedopinion/Greenspan.html Frank PS: nonoise .... You would be more than welcome at my place. The system is sounding incredible at this point. The multitude of tweaks have had a cumulative effect and has brought the system far beyond what I ever knew was possible in a "modest" system. PSPS: ghasley ... the diamond issue is truly unbelievable. We are in agreement there for sure. |
Working as an independent contractor for the last 40 years of my working life, I paid into Social Security 15% of my gross taxable income. I started paying in at the age of 14 and stopped paying into Social Security two years ago at the age of 78 when health problems forced my retirement. I haven't figured it out, but I may still be on the losing end of the proverbial stick. One thing for sure ... I wish I were still working. I never worked a job that I didn't like. I had parents that instilled a good work ethic into their kids. After reading through these posts, it is very apparent that we have a set of very knowledgable, intelligent and well-written members on board here. I love learning experiences, and it is very much appreciated by me. Frank |
I love this thread. I hope we can inject enough audio in it to keep it solvent. ;-) ghasley ... Thank you for your well thought out post. Some real food for thought there. You've made a good point about Social Security not being a "right," and instead, an "entitlement." One thing that was missed was any comment about those who pay in over decades and pass on prior to retirement age and get nothing, nor do their heirs. While I agree that many receive more than they paid in due to longevity, those who pass on early make up some of the difference. As of this date, there is no money in the Social Security trust fund. It has been "borrowed" to pay for other government expenses. Money taken (by force) from today's workers, are not put into the trust fund but are used to pay current recipients. Bernie Madoff comes to mind here. Do you consider Social Security a retirement benefit, or is it a tax? Is it a solvent government program as promised long ago by the FDR administration, or is it a Ponzi scheme of enormous proportions? Have you ever checked out the private system being used in Chile? Here are some links: https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/chiles-social-security-lesson-us https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2018/02/02/the-overwhelming-case-for-chiles-private-social-security-system/ Take care ... Frank |
^^^ Yes! Shoot the messenger. That way, you will never have to see the message. nonoise ... What are the lies of which you speak? I didn’t hear any lies coming from the person in the video. Also, the corruption you alluded to is exactly what we need to get rid of. It is in both parties, the media and academia as well. Do some research on California’s UC system for starters. You’ll be shocked. From there, move on to the Los Angeles Unified School District for more shocking details. Frank |
^^^ Hey! You callin’ me a homo sapien? I don’t swing that way. *lol* Let’s not delete this thread. On audio equipment made in China ... Yes, the prices will increase. Tariffs are basically a VAT tax on the end consumer. Let’s hope for an even-steven trade policy where citizens of both countries benefit. I’m sure the citizens of China would like to be driving Chevrolets and Ford’s made with American steel. Frank |
nonoise sez ... @millercarbon,
I suspect, nonoise, that when it comes to economic theory, you are a fellow traveler of Robert Reich. *lol* Here, have a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_LkMWP2Q2A PS: Millercarbon ... that was a good five-cent cigar. I know, because I got sick on a few as a kid. They were called Roi-Tan cigars at the time. Here’s a Roi-Tan commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0C3Q0XfCYs Frank |
Ozzy ... There’s just something about you that pisses them off. *lol* (jk) gasley ... The problem with communicating as we do over the Internet is that we cannot see facial expressions, hand gestures or body language. As a result, sometimes our comments are taken in a negative way, when we were intending to be friendly, or at least passive. There was nothing in nonoise’s post that I took as offensive. Nor did I intend to offend. nonoise ... There are no "half-truths" in the fact that Tibetans have been ground into the ground by China. There are no half-truths about the fact that China has locked up between one and two million Muslims in internment camps. There are no half-truths that thousands of Chinese citizens were ground to death under tank tracks and shot to death in Tiananmen Square for the "crime" of peaceful protesting. Same with stealing our patents, hacking our computer systems, manipulating their currency and dumping their products. inna ... Yes, it is obvious why prices are going up. When money is "printed" into existence and distributed throughout society, it dilutes the worth of money already in the system. This causes more money to chase fewer goods and prices to go up. The politicians blame the consumer, as the Gerald Ford administration did. I wonder if any of you guys remember Gerald Ford’s "WIN" buttons. "WIN" stood for "Whip Inflation Now." The thrust was to get consumers to stop consuming so much. *lol* Those among us who were more astute kept saying ... "consume less, hell ... stop printing money!" But then, what do I know. I don’t even have an AA degree like nonoise does. Heck, I barely made it out of high school. My Mom considered it to be a miracle. :-) Frank PS: Even Adam Smith promoted a "safety net" for those less fortunate amongst us. PPS: I second gasley’s suggestion ... READ. |
Well, the topic at hand is our tariff policies with China. It has, however, morphed into a conversation about the general overall corruption in our government. Corruption exists on both sides of the aisle. Is there anyone here who would disagree with that? In reading the posts here, I think we are all pretty much on the same page. How we see the solution is the problem. I take more of a liberal stance ... in the Jeffersonian sense, that is. It has been said: ... "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely." With that in mind, why would any liberty devotee want to increase the power of the central government and take power away from the states in order to do so? Frank PS: ghasley ... Once again, I appreciate your well thought out posts. Excellent, thank you. |
The Great Depression was caused by misdirected monetary policies of the Federal Reserve. The "Roaring 20s" were roaring for a reason. The economy was overheated by the Fed's policies. Then they tightened up the money supply too far and the economy crashed. FDR exacerbated the problem, extending what would have been a normal business cycle downturn with all of his convoluted make-work programs, excessive spending, and the confiscation of gold coin and bullion in 1933. FDR is credited by the left as "getting us out of the great depression." It's become common knowledge despite its falsehood. Nothing could be further than the truth. There were more unemployed at the start of FDR's third term than there was at the beginning of his first term. The unemployment rate actually hit 25%. The Smoot/Hawley act deepened the depression even further. As stated, what was a normal business cycle turndown, was turned into a major depression of long-standing and major suffering because of government meddling in the private sector where it didn't belong. Like all wars, including economic ones, the government always comes out more powerful and overreaching than before the war began. millercarbon ... Man, you are dead-nutz on with your comments on the money issue. If only the majority of Americans understood the information you posted above, things could really be amazing. When I was a kid, I remember magazine ads and Sears catalogs that had all prices posted. That was when prices were extremely stable. You won't see that today unless what you are buying is in the here and now. This is all audio related as far as prices are concerned. There is a reason that high-end amplifiers are selling for twice the price of my first house, and cables are selling for more than I paid for that brand new 1965 Plymouth hardtop with the 383 ci engine. Oh, and I don't think I mentioned the brand new VW Bug I bought in 1972 for $1,800. That represented less than two month's pay at the time. Frank |
Just for educational purposes, we should focus on ghasley's comment about tariffs and how they caused the great depression of the 1930's. Here's a link to the Smoot/Hawley act: https://fee.org/articles/the-smoot-hawley-tariff-and-the-great-depression/ Again, ghasley ... excellent stuff. Frank |
millercarbon ... Here’s a little personal info: My mother worked for the Federal Reserve Bank in downtown L.A. for over 30 years. She was the first woman to make it into management. Sometimes on Friday, I would take the bus or streetcar to the bank and she and I would go to lunch. I was only nine years old, or thereabouts. And yes, it was perfectly safe for a child to travel alone at the time. I did it all the time. My Mom got paid on Fridays so she always had her pay envelope with cash in it. One time, we were sitting at the lunch table and she pulled out a twenty dollar bill. She pointed out the writing on the top and said, Frank, do you see what it says on the top? It says "Silver Certificate." She went on to say that she could take that twenty dollar bill into any Federal Reserve bank and demand twenty dollars in silver in exchange for the twenty dollar bill and the teller had to give it to her. She told me that, that was what made the country great. She said, that if that ever changed, the country would be in trouble. Of course, I didn’t understand what she meant at the time, but I sure do now. The national debt is over 22 trillion now. Hey, we can even fund wars with counterfeit money and pay the piper down the road ... or at least our grandchildren and great-grandchildren can. This debt represents labor not yet expended and production not yet produced. I actually took a tour of the inside of the Federal Reserve bank with my Mom and an escort. We went down into the vault, which as I remember, was several stories underground, and saw money stacked from the floor to the ceiling. One of the workers handed me a brown-wrapped package to hold, then told me that I was holding a million dollars. Wow! A thrill for a nine-year-old kid. Then, they showed me the blast furnace where they burned the old money. Geeze, they were shoveling cash into the furnace! Now, they just tax it away. By the way, another thing people should ponder is the fact that when our money is borrowed into existence, they never loan the interest. Maybe as a point of interest, you could comment on that little tidbit. :-) Frank |
Ghasley sez... "Yeah, things seemed so simple in 1956 but it wasn’t all that great if you happened to be non-white." Yes, the world in 1956 was quite different from today in many respects, including race issues. Banks and Realtors redlined neighborhoods. Black folks couldn’t get credit. Minorities worked mostly menial jobs, usually at hard labor. From that standpoint, this country really sucked. The civil rights movement in the South started the turn-around there. The Watts riots in Los Angeles finally woke people up here in California. As for me, I have never understood racism. For some reason, it just doesn’t compute in my brain. I imagine it would be hard for young people today to get their heads around the fact that we actually had a president that locked up over 100,000 Americans in internment camps based solely on their race. Frank |
Back in the day, we kids in grammar school were given copybooks in which to practice our handwriting. (Yes, we learned to write in cursive back then). Each lesson in the copybook had a heading that had to be copied over and over until the handwriting was perfect. The headings were truisms, and the idea was to not only practice our handwriting but in addition, to burn the truisms into our subconscious minds in order to develop us into good citizens. Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem about copybook headings to illustrate just exactly how societies crumble and fall. I’d like to share it with you guys:
As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race, I Make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place. Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all. We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn: But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision, and Breadth of Mind, So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind. We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace, Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market-Place. But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome. With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch, They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch. They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings. So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things. When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace. They swore if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease. But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe, And the Gods of the Copybook Heading said: "Stick to the Devil you know." On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life (Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife) Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death." In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all, By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul; But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don’t work you die." Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew, And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four -- And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more. As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man -- There are only four things certain since Social Progress began -- That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire, And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire -- And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins, When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins, As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn, The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return! --- Rudyard Kipling - 1919 |
^^^ Oh, oh ... I don't know what that means. As stated in an earlier post, that stuff doesn't compute with me. Can we keep this thread alive by concentrating on inflation, the money issue and how they relate to the audio hobby? Sheesh! I'm looking forward to the Long Beach show this coming weekend. Should be tons of new equipment there with outrageously inflated prices. Anyone else going? Frank |
^^^ Well, I have to hand it to the Jewish people. They certainly have made a monumental contribution to the music of all stripes. Classical, composition, conducting, playing ... and a huge contribution to my favorite music, jazz. If I were Jewish, I’d be mighty proud of that heritage. I know my many Jewish friends certainly are. Here’s a list of famous Jewish composers: *lol* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronological_list_of_Italian_classical_composers Z More Jewish composers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_composers More Jewish composers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_composers_of_African_descent Music comes from the human soul and is a gift from The Spirit. It knows of no ethnic boundaries. Frank |
In order to build wind turbines and blades, it takes steel. Steel production needs coal. Same for electric cars ... made of steel, or aluminum. Make them out of plastic, you say? That takes oil. Solar panels use minerals. Minerals need to be mined from the earth. Mining machinery uses petroleum products and tears up the earth. Can any neo-environmentalist state how green energy can be produced by strictly using only green energy? Frank |
Inna sez ... "Black people made an enormous contribution as well." Little known facts: Duke Ellington composed over 2000 pieces of music, including several symphonies. Freddie Green played rhythm guitar for the Count Basie orchestra for over 50 years and was the driving force behind the orchestra. Charlie Parker never played the same idea twice. Bud Powell was a genius. Dinah Washington sang "Blue Gardenia" better than anyone on the planet before or since. Billie Holliday was a tortured, but beautiful soul. Need I say more. Frank PS: Sorry about getting off topic, but this something I'm really passionate about. |
On free trade and markets, here's a classic essay that should be read if you haven't done so before. I found it in video form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYO3tOqDISE |
david_pully
If you like Laurindo Almeida, here's an excellent sounding CD. It is a DCC reissue, out of print and therefore the price, and sounds every bit as good as the LP, which has excellent demo sound in its own right: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Sammy-Davis-Jr-Sings-And-Laurindo-Almeida-Plays-CD-1991-Jazz-Swing-RARE/223203556006?hash=item33f7f7faa6:g:eRQAAOSwFIRb0cmv Frank |
millercarbon ... Just wanted to say how much I enjoy your posts. We are on the same page, my friend. By the way, I’ve been following Candace Owens since she first came on the scene. She has her own Youtube podcast show now. If you weren’t aware of it, check it out. She’s bound and determined to "wake" the Black Community and doing a great job of it too. The race pimps must be getting a bit concerned at this point. Here's a good podcast Candace did with Dennis Prager: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E48bMTel7rg Nonoise ... Thanks for your CNN and MSNBC updates. Much appreciated. Frank |
Tammy, No. Please don’t take this educational thread off. This is entertainment at its best. :-) millercarbon ... And speaking of Dennis Prager, he’s a died in the wool audiophile and loves classical music. Years ago, I had the opportunity of setting up a demo audiophile system in Dennis Prager’s home. He’s a super nice guy, and as you know, he has a stunning mind. Before we left, he gifted me with several genuine Cuban "Cohiba" cigars. I don’t smoke tobacco anymore, but at the time, those were the best cigars I had ever smoked. They were contraband seized by Customs and gifted to Dennis Prager by a congressman. No tariff on the cigars and Dennis is an audiophile. So there ... back on topic. :-) Frank |