Tariffs and sky high audio prices.

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

Chinese will get us a free head replacement in no time. With Chinese heads. Then we will see things as they should be seen. And they know that no one is going to repay those debts, not a problem, they use money as a weapon and as a tool to absorb everything there is to absorb. So no, they are not enemies, they are a competing civilization. Imperial China is forever.

When you have entire cities where a new house costs ten years pay you are looking at an economy based upon Swiss Bank Accounts .

Back to gold for a moment.  I'm not sure that it is good from the standpoint of backing currency....or from the standpoint of owning mines. 


Getting it out of the ground and turning it into 99% pure bricks has an operating/production cost in the  $600 per oz range...now add the cost of buying the mining property, royalties and fees to the countries you operate in, reclaiming the land....and you are between $900-1000 per oz total cost.


So, if gold were not a commodity but a product that sold in the 2x cost range ...it would likely be in the $1700-2000 per oz.  For the last 10 years it has pretty much been in the $1300 range with a high of $1900 and a low of $900.

rodman99999 writes:

The only reason we have an economy; the US Dollar is currently the world’s standard currency. Too bad, it’s backed by nothing but trust that we can repay the debts, incurred by the government and owed by every American citizen, whether they’re aware it’s owed or not. China has been hoarding gold for decades(if not centuries) and it’s currency/economy is backed by gold. The US Dollar is backed by imagination("fiat money"). Just wait, ’til the rest of the world catches on, the Juan takes center stage in the world economy and renders your, "money" worthless. Keep your eyes open/coming soon, to a neighborhood near YOU(unfortunately/hope I’m wrong)!

A lot of which is correct and shows he's paying attention. Of course its not the "only" reason we have an economy. Go back far enough, to the beginning, it was tariffs that made British and other imported goods more expensive, that in turn made domestic goods more profitable and led to decades of the strongest economic growth the US has ever had. With zero inflation too, I might add. (The cost of a bushel of corn was the same from the 1600's for 300 years! What came 300 years later? The Fed was created in 1913.)

Lamestream media does such a good job delivering fake news that most people see gold as an anachronism and know pretty much nothing about how money works. Even though its hard to see the national interest in pretty much any of the many military actions we've been engaged in without knowing.

One anchor of the USD is the agreement Kissinger worked out with the Saudi's to require payment for oil with USD. This created global demand to suck up the excess supply we created with our deficit spending. All that money creation without the oil payment demand and the US would have seen massive inflation. Instead it was the whole world that got the inflation. When you hear someone say the US exports inflation this is what they're talking about. 

Saddam Hussein started selling his oil for Euros. Can't have that. No more Saddam. We were told one reason. Anyone who understands monetary theory knows the real reason. Now you do too.

The world, and the US, was just fine with Muhammar Qaddafi. Even when he started building nukes, Reagan sends him a message, what's one cruise missile between friends? But then he wanted to launch a gold coin currency for the Arab world. Way too close to home, he got it even worse than Saddam. In the end, so to speak. 

Both these guys by the way held many tons of gold. Gold that somehow disappeared. In spite of their territory being under US military lock-down.

Yeah. Right.

So who are the Bad Guys now? China and Russia. The two countries on the planet adding most consistently to their official gold stores. The two countries working most diligently and cooperatively to move the world towards trade settlement in currencies other than the dollar. China even has the nerve to start conducting actual physical gold bullion settlement in Yuan. 

As far as audio gear goes, it seems to me we will do just fine. We already have some if not most of the world's best high end audio manufacturers. If tariffs drive up the cost of cheap imports it seems to me we can look forward to even more great gear being made where it should be, right here in America.