DownUnder
Vamoosed (for a while)
I agree with much of what Phil wrote - about our money going overseas by buying imports. It's not a wise way to go, but it seems to be the global way things are now done by business.
Here in Australia, it's now almost impossible to find goods made in the country. A few small industries make some clothes, mostly top quality and consequently mad-expensive. Even name brands are now made in the cheapest places - Vietnam-Bangladesh-Pakistan for clothes, India for shoes, just about everywhere else for food products. Today for Sunday lunch we had friends in. The menu was minestrone for an entree (beans and the tomato soup base from from Italy, tofu from Taiwan), smoked salmon (Norway), black bread from Germany, steamed corn from Thailand, and a luscious baked dessert made in France and bought frozen at our local posh deli. All washed down with a prosecco from Italy and a dry white wine from France. Fresh stuff for salad and fruit and cheese on a dessert platter were Aussie-made.
The air/sea mileage for all this imported food was surely high. All that fuel spent on food. Yet my favorite cheese is usually the same price or at times even cheaper in Surabaya than I can buy it in my home town. How stupid is this? And who is the stupid one - I sometimes think, it's me for buying it at inflated local prices.
The sad thing about all this is, while we try to source all our food locally, when we do buy, almost all the Australian goods cost at least 50% more than the imports. This too is crazy. But it's how it has been here since we went global in the 1980s. Many industries that existed then are no longer around. It seems we no longer make anything locally if Australian business can import it more cheaply, usually from third world countries where labor costs are ultra low. Our glorious leaders tell us this is the way to go and we only have a 4.1% unemployment level, but most of us believe this figure is kept artificially low, like our mythical cost of living data which Canberra insists is just over 2% a year, but those of us who shop know that food products alone hav gone up by up to 50% in the past 18 months. And the cost of living list fails to include mortgage payments and rent. So who is fooling who, or who is trying to fool who - and why are the latter who so stupid as to believe this nonsense?
When I'm in Asia, I find Aussie products sold there (not a great number of those, but a fair few) are often as cheap as or at times (during sales) cheaper than I can buy them here. My favorite brand of cheese is 50 cents to $1 lower in price there. Grapes from Victoria ditto. And I find US products like grapes and other fresh food like apples and pairs, all air-freighted to Indonesia but selling there for less than the same local products being sold to us in supermarkets in Australia. This makes no sense to me, but it's how business in Australia operates.We could be supplying many more Asian markets with fresh food products flown in literally overnight, but instead the Indonesians (also the Malaysians) buy mostly from the USA, much farther away so with higher transport costs. This is crazy-mad but it's how things are.
More and more Americans and Australians are leaving their home countries to live elsewhere. Even we are thinking of pulling up stumps and moving to Malaysia where my partner was born, in the next couple of years, before I'm too old to cope with the complexities and complications of selling, disposing of possessions, packing up what we want to keep, and moving on. Even then our main concern now is, would you believe it, what about our cats if we leave Australia. First world problems indeed...
Okay, back to my original topic. As you wrote, there is a difference between hoarding (= mindless buying and stacking up unused goods) and careful investing (= your guitars) and using what you acquire. About cameras, well, i don't know. I held for a long time to the notion that buying quality photo gear would mean good returns when I sold. Yet with only a few exceptions - as an example, I sold my Hasselblads a few years ago when prices for film gear were still good (they no longer are in AUS) and made a little money. Otherwise for the most part I've lost in resals, and happy were the few sales when I broke even or made a little profit.
I hope this isn't/won't be the case with your guitars, tho' from what you write, you seem to know your gear ultra well and you are a clever buyer.
Fortunately for us, for now, we here are not big on Walmart or even Amazon. O,ur import duties and sales tax structure, the high cost of shipping from overseas and the ridiculously low Aussie dollar (worth all of $0.61 US cents today) keep us from throwing away too much of our money into the Pacific.
Okay, that's my rant for today. There are no easy solutions to our problems which have been so long in the making. And I doubt I will have much more to say in future about inflation, globalised sales, hoarding et al. But as always I'll read your comments with interest.
Here in Australia, it's now almost impossible to find goods made in the country. A few small industries make some clothes, mostly top quality and consequently mad-expensive. Even name brands are now made in the cheapest places - Vietnam-Bangladesh-Pakistan for clothes, India for shoes, just about everywhere else for food products. Today for Sunday lunch we had friends in. The menu was minestrone for an entree (beans and the tomato soup base from from Italy, tofu from Taiwan), smoked salmon (Norway), black bread from Germany, steamed corn from Thailand, and a luscious baked dessert made in France and bought frozen at our local posh deli. All washed down with a prosecco from Italy and a dry white wine from France. Fresh stuff for salad and fruit and cheese on a dessert platter were Aussie-made.
The air/sea mileage for all this imported food was surely high. All that fuel spent on food. Yet my favorite cheese is usually the same price or at times even cheaper in Surabaya than I can buy it in my home town. How stupid is this? And who is the stupid one - I sometimes think, it's me for buying it at inflated local prices.
The sad thing about all this is, while we try to source all our food locally, when we do buy, almost all the Australian goods cost at least 50% more than the imports. This too is crazy. But it's how it has been here since we went global in the 1980s. Many industries that existed then are no longer around. It seems we no longer make anything locally if Australian business can import it more cheaply, usually from third world countries where labor costs are ultra low. Our glorious leaders tell us this is the way to go and we only have a 4.1% unemployment level, but most of us believe this figure is kept artificially low, like our mythical cost of living data which Canberra insists is just over 2% a year, but those of us who shop know that food products alone hav gone up by up to 50% in the past 18 months. And the cost of living list fails to include mortgage payments and rent. So who is fooling who, or who is trying to fool who - and why are the latter who so stupid as to believe this nonsense?
When I'm in Asia, I find Aussie products sold there (not a great number of those, but a fair few) are often as cheap as or at times (during sales) cheaper than I can buy them here. My favorite brand of cheese is 50 cents to $1 lower in price there. Grapes from Victoria ditto. And I find US products like grapes and other fresh food like apples and pairs, all air-freighted to Indonesia but selling there for less than the same local products being sold to us in supermarkets in Australia. This makes no sense to me, but it's how business in Australia operates.We could be supplying many more Asian markets with fresh food products flown in literally overnight, but instead the Indonesians (also the Malaysians) buy mostly from the USA, much farther away so with higher transport costs. This is crazy-mad but it's how things are.
More and more Americans and Australians are leaving their home countries to live elsewhere. Even we are thinking of pulling up stumps and moving to Malaysia where my partner was born, in the next couple of years, before I'm too old to cope with the complexities and complications of selling, disposing of possessions, packing up what we want to keep, and moving on. Even then our main concern now is, would you believe it, what about our cats if we leave Australia. First world problems indeed...
Okay, back to my original topic. As you wrote, there is a difference between hoarding (= mindless buying and stacking up unused goods) and careful investing (= your guitars) and using what you acquire. About cameras, well, i don't know. I held for a long time to the notion that buying quality photo gear would mean good returns when I sold. Yet with only a few exceptions - as an example, I sold my Hasselblads a few years ago when prices for film gear were still good (they no longer are in AUS) and made a little money. Otherwise for the most part I've lost in resals, and happy were the few sales when I broke even or made a little profit.
I hope this isn't/won't be the case with your guitars, tho' from what you write, you seem to know your gear ultra well and you are a clever buyer.
Fortunately for us, for now, we here are not big on Walmart or even Amazon. O,ur import duties and sales tax structure, the high cost of shipping from overseas and the ridiculously low Aussie dollar (worth all of $0.61 US cents today) keep us from throwing away too much of our money into the Pacific.
Okay, that's my rant for today. There are no easy solutions to our problems which have been so long in the making. And I doubt I will have much more to say in future about inflation, globalised sales, hoarding et al. But as always I'll read your comments with interest.
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