tegs07

Fans of Fox News must be Psychotic!

first and last and always - sisters of mercy

Absolutely. It’s always great when the next generation get into music that you love. My kids are really into reggae and have started introducing me to new artists. Here’s something a little different that my teenage son has been playing recently:

The price of vintage instruments has diverged hugely from the earning power of your average person. Logically it should correct but the economic system appears to have also diverted from all logic over the last few decades. Instead of big recessions we have seen epic borrowing at unprecedented levels in peacetime. Whilst most of us are getting poorer for every £1 we owe someone else has that £1 plus interest. There is a lot of money sloshing around still looking for assets and investments. Central banks and governments are just itching to rinse and repeat so I would not bet on prices going down. They might if a recession is allowed to let rip, but until then I will look at a vintage Fender bass priced at £10K plus and think that’s crazy in the same way I look at a 500K+ average home in a leafy suburb and think that’s crazy but they still appear to attract buyers.

Howl - BRMC

It would be easier if FB Marketplace place just renamed itself FB Scams, Lies and Tosspots.

My favourite bass. It never asked for anything but was never as extroverted or flamboyant as my Clownfish. Now that could really party and win over a crowd. Nilo share the drugs.

Just my tupence worth. Pretty much every large company is in a race to the bottom in terms of customer service. Whether they appear on these pages is probably more due to people falling foul of whatever workflow or process they use to extract cash and provide the most basic service they can get away with.

If you are working off massive generalisation then the UK is just about XFactor tosh and insipid Beatles rehash bands.

Take a trip to places like Seattle, Nashville, Portland or Brooklyn. You might revise your opinion.

The USA is such a huge and diverse place that there is a market for a very diverse range of music. Pretty much every new artist that grabs my attention is from the USA and this is across a wide spectrum of genres. I found on every visit I make to the USA that my preconceptions are proven wrong. I would totally disagree with the macho/conformist argument. Mainstream fodder is invariably rubbish whatever continent you live in.

vinted and depop happened

Seems appropriate:

Nope, just another hurdle that companies like Thomann have to overcome. Brexit is frequently mentioned but is just one factor at play.

But I would hazard guess that the majority of the goods it sells originate in the Far East and ship via Suez are the Red Sea. Supply chains are so vulnerable to disruption now. Covid and more recently geopolitical factors are causing chaos with these businesses models.

I have found that the quality of goods and services has steadily declined in proportion to their price. Time for a rethink.

Who knows. Maybe globalisation is reversing and people will need to get used to buying fewer (and in many cases better quality) things? Edit: How Harley Benton continues with such rock bottom prices is a mystery. I guess no licensing deals, little in the way of bricks and mortar for sale and distribution and some very slick workflows to allow volume sales at low margins. Even so.

There are some exceptions but GDP and salaries are increasing in many East Asian countries. Simultaneously there are some demographic issues (eg China) where the workforce is aging. Labour is getting more expensive, particularly skilled labour.

grinderman - grinderman

If a company’s profit increases yes otherwise no. If profits decrease as costs increase then they have to charge more or lose staff. You can’t just say that workers value increases because the price of things their company sells increases. We are seeing prices increase (but this is finite) at the same time as the cost of production is increasing (materials, energy, rents, labour). Companies can do this for some time, but if profits fall and costs continue to rise then ultimately people lose their jobs. Of course workers have value but that value is dependent upon productivity and profitability and not on the price of the product sold. That’s not backwards thinking. Profit is the gap between what something costs to produce and what you can sell it for. Whether this is food, a table or a gig at the dog and duck.

I must have missed something. You just said as the cost of things rise so does the value of your labour? Sadly not. Your labour is a cost rather than a value. If you come up with a process that makes yourself more efficient so you can produce more or cheaper then yes your value increases but until then it’s a fixed cost leading to no increase in value.

Who said it was fair? Workers will obviously push for pay increases as they are getting poorer but if their employers are not selling more then they either need to raise their prices or sack workers. We have seen the rise in prices and are starting to see the rise in workers being laid off.