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I do not want to start WWIII but, It seems the imports are putting "American" names on their product to sell. Isn't there popular Asian names to put on handmade guitars? "Eastman Strings"? Ibanez sounds latin? I know we are a world of brands but a name use to mean something. If China makes a quality kick butt guitar and they name it Wang Jung would we buy it? On the other hand...why is Gibson sourcing out Epiphone to Korea? Wages? What a mess:)...

Teacher Tactics/Choking on Stage
I studied with a popular teacher for three years. In the first year of our relationship if I didn't apply myself to his specific direction he would tell me I sucked...it is what it is? I think we all need a teacher to tell it like it is. Maybe we shouldn't be holding the thing if we aren't going to
follow their direction. Would you spend $100 hr weeks at a time and not buy in to your teachers brutal truth? Getting booed on stage will send home or to the pawn shop!

Clif - Which came first the Chicken or the Egg? I say - Music came first then the lydian flat 5 #11. Cal Collins, Wes Montgomery and Tal Farlow played the sounds....I'm with you brother!



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Gregg Ellis wrote:

I do not want to start WWIII but, It seems the imports are putting
"American" names on their product to sell. Isn't there popular Asian
names to put on handmade guitars? "Eastman Strings"? Ibanez sounds
latin? I know we are a world of brands but a name use to mean
something. If China makes a quality kick butt guitar and they name it
Wang Jung would we buy it? On the other hand...why is Gibson sourcing
out Epiphone to Korea? Wages? What a mess:)...

I think it's all a matter of targeted marketing. :-)

On the other hand...why is Gibson sourcing

out Epiphone to Korea? Wages?

Yes, of course. What else? It's all about maximizing profits for those big companies, especially with their low end product lines. So, what does Gibson do? They turn around and charge *outrageous* money for their "custom shop" or "historic" lines made in the US--none of which are worth the cash.

Jeff

In a message dated 9/24/2005 11:58:18 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
jcshirke@... writes:

On the other hand...why is Gibson sourcing

out Epiphone to Korea? Wages?

Yes, of course. What else? It's all about maximizing profits for
those big companies, especially with their low end product lines. So,
what does Gibson do? They turn around and charge *outrageous* money
for their "custom shop" or "historic" lines made in the US--none of
which are worth the cash.

and greggsguitar:


JeffI do not want to start WWIII but, It seems the imports are putting
"American" names on their product to sell. Isn't there popular Asian names to put
on handmade guitars? "Eastman Strings"? Ibanez sounds latin? I know we are a
world of brands but a name use to mean something. If China makes a quality
kick butt guitar and they name it Wang Jung would we buy it? On the other
hand...why is Gibson sourcing out Epiphone to Korea? Wages? What a mess:)...








Well, yeah, all that---and also because we don't want to pay "outrageous"
money for ANYthing we buy in this country. Just about everything these days
seems to come from Korea or China.

If we insist on buying only stuff made in America (by workers who need
"high" wages, benefits, 401Ks -- and who have to pay outrageously high taxes on
those wages) then we have to pay the price to cover all that.

The whole thing, IMHO, is customer-driven. I think one of the reasons so
many operations have moved overseas is because we as customers refuse to pay
that kind of money, and also because of onerous US regulations which increase
the cost of producing something.

Also, IMHO, there's nothing wrong with a business maximizing its profits.
The shareholders or those who have invested their dough in a company are
entitled to a return on their investment.

Two companies that sell all US-made stuff at reasonable prices are Crate and
Taylor. Now, Crate's reliability and sound are subjective, but I own a
couple of Taylors and they're great with respect to both sound and craftsmanship.

Rick
Cape Cod

whaler@... wrote:

Well, yeah, all that---and also because we don't want to pay "outrageous" money for ANYthing we buy in this country. Just about everything these days seems to come from Korea or China.
If we insist on buying only stuff made in America (by workers who need "high" wages, benefits, 401Ks -- and who have to pay outrageously high taxes on those wages) then we have to pay the price to cover all that.
The whole thing, IMHO, is customer-driven. I think one of the reasons so many operations have moved overseas is because we as customers refuse to pay that kind of money, and also because of onerous US regulations which increase the cost of producing something.

Yup.. I agree with your assessment on this 100%. Personally I don't have a problem with buying products from South Korea, Japan or Taiwan. They are all fledgling democracies with free market economies. Plus my mother is from Taiwan, and even though she's lived in the US since 1964 (long before I was born!), she still has family there.
I also don't really care what names they come up with for their instruments, as long as it isn't something too weird. Alot of ideas in Chinese don't really translate very well into English, for instance a literal translation of "computer" is "electric brain". So maybe picking something that is market-friendly isn't such a bad idea :-)
I will not however buy products from mainland China, due to the Communism and flagrant human rights violations. I don't want my money to be funding sweat-shops.
Outsourcing isn't an issue that faces only us. One of my uncles owns a business in Taiwan that maufacturers restaurant quality freezers. He has had to move the entire manufacturing plant to South East Asia, because the cost of labor/living in Taiwan has gotten so high, that he can't afford to pay the prevailing wage for assembly line workers in Taiwan and make a decent profit, so the plant had to be moved to somewhere that the operating costs were lower. He has since enlarged his corporate office in Taiwan and hired more professional workers to improve the engineering & marketing of his products.
The way it's supposed to work is that as labor jobs go away, they are replaced with higher wage technical jobs and people are always making an effort to improve their job skills. Doesn't always work that way, but nothing ever always works as it should.
Companies moving their operations to cut costs, improve profit margins, be more competitve, happens domestically quite a bit as well. The company that I work for recently shut down 60% of it's facility in Orange County, CA. and is significantly expanding it's facility here in Cowtown.
They laid off 400 people out there, but due to the differences in the cost of doing business, they're going to be hiring 600 people here.
Sorry for the extended diatribe, but you just happened to bring up a subject that is what I do for my day job.

--
-- Toby Rider
-- Fort Worth, Texas

Will be around 4th or 5th. The Chinese realize that If they want to sell more products here in the USA then they call them American names. The traditional days are over and the upcoming capitalist are taking this route to globalize the world.

American big business realize this as well and they do the same thing over in china.

As far as outsourcing, it is cheaper to do this. This tactic is nothing new it, it is an old technique.

You are not going to start WW III, we are all on the doorsteps of a global economy where were not competing against Americans for jobs, but every individual that is qualified for the same job no matter their worldly position.

Joe


Joseph Ramirez

HI YJJG,

Hi folks, just a few comments on the overseas manufacturing issues.
The global economy is very complex and is constantly expanding at
very high rate. One of the reasons of our high gasoline costs is
due to the increase of consumption of crude oil from the far east,
mainly china. I've purchased many items from epiphone which are
made in korea and maybe china. I've also purchased amps from fender
which are made in china. The epiphones are very well made for the
money , of course; they require a professional set up. The amps
were very poorly made and required a professional tech to
repair "shotty" craftsmanship. Why did I purchase such items? I
don't think (new) gibson is worth the money for thier quality,
anymore.

However, I do contend that if the USA doesn't produce or manufactuer
the majority of its products that eventually there will be a price
to paid in terms of good jobs that provide a wage of which people
can support a family. The most important reason for jobs moving
overseas is the cost of health care , of which employers bare the
brunt of the costs. Why do companies offer such "benefits"? During
World War 2, the US govt. mandated a price "cap" for wages, so in
order for companies to compete for viable workers they introduced
benefits and pensions. Of course, health care and insurance has
changed drastically since the 1940's and the economy is demostrating
the effects of such costs by offering more "new" jobs which are
part time with out benefits.

However, the response from the last reply on this thread was
inaccurate to state the US has higher taxes than other countries.
If you compare the US's taxes to other countries you will find that
the majority of countries have higher tax rates for business and
individuals. A good example of this is the beringer corp. from
germany now has the majority of its products made in china and
overseas countries. So, it isn't just US companies involved in such
efforts to retain as much profit as possible.

The only way to combat such problems on a individual basis is for
the workforce to become higher skill labor. Any job that cannot be
automated is a starting point. The greatest advanatge to being a
musician is: the job cannot be outsourced, it cannot be "automated",
and it is a high skill job with the implication of "not everybody
can play or teach music professionally". Also, a great selling
point about professional music is, the majority of folks working in
the business are their own "bosses". Sure , there are many
corporations that work with and employ musicians, but usually a
musician has their own input and control of their product (for
better or worse).

However, my opinion about manufactuering in the US should
be "protected". I think folks should be able to work a 40 hour work
week, make a fair wage, and have accesss to proficent health care.
I don't think it's fair to have the majority of folks work mutliple
part time jobs of which the person is being "double taxed" (local
and state taxes at least) and not have access to "affordable" health
care. Unfortuneately, it will take a "depression", not recession,
for the US and other mkts. to understand this economic
reality. "History does repeat itself, and those who don't
understand are doomed to repeat it" -- Henry Kiaser , guitarist


Sincerely,

Donnie Loeffler -- guitarist

for more info on american workforce concerns:

www.jobswithjustice.com



--- In jazz_guitar@..., Toby Rider <high-tech-
hillbilly@b...> wrote:

whaler@a... wrote:

Well, yeah, all that---and also because we don't want to

pay "outrageous"

money for ANYthing we buy in this country. Just about

everything these days

seems to come from Korea or China.

If we insist on buying only stuff made in America (by workers

who need

"high" wages, benefits, 401Ks -- and who have to pay

outrageously high taxes on

those wages) then we have to pay the price to cover all that.

The whole thing, IMHO, is customer-driven. I think one of the

reasons so

many operations have moved overseas is because we as customers

refuse to pay

that kind of money, and also because of onerous US regulations

which increase

the cost of producing something.

Yup.. I agree with your assessment on this 100%. Personally

I don't

have a problem with buying products from South Korea, Japan or

Taiwan.

They are all fledgling democracies with free market economies.

Plus my

mother is from Taiwan, and even though she's lived in the US since

1964

(long before I was born!), she still has family there.
I also don't really care what names they come up with for

their

instruments, as long as it isn't something too weird. Alot of

ideas in

Chinese don't really translate very well into English, for

instance a

literal translation of "computer" is "electric brain". So maybe

picking

something that is market-friendly isn't such a bad idea :-)
I will not however buy products from mainland China, due to

the

Communism and flagrant human rights violations. I don't want my

money to

be funding sweat-shops.
Outsourcing isn't an issue that faces only us. One of my

uncles owns a

business in Taiwan that maufacturers restaurant quality freezers.

He has

had to move the entire manufacturing plant to South East Asia,

because

the cost of labor/living in Taiwan has gotten so high, that he

can't

afford to pay the prevailing wage for assembly line workers in

Taiwan

and make a decent profit, so the plant had to be moved to

somewhere that

the operating costs were lower. He has since enlarged his

corporate

office in Taiwan and hired more professional workers to improve

the

engineering & marketing of his products.
The way it's supposed to work is that as labor jobs go away,

they are

replaced with higher wage technical jobs and people are always

making an

effort to improve their job skills. Doesn't always work that way,

but

nothing ever always works as it should.
Companies moving their operations to cut costs, improve

profit margins,

be more competitve, happens domestically quite a bit as well. The
company that I work for recently shut down 60% of it's facility in
Orange County, CA. and is significantly expanding it's facility

here in

Cowtown.
They laid off 400 people out there, but due to the

differences in the

cost of doing business, they're going to be hiring 600 people here.
Sorry for the extended diatribe, but you just happened to

bring up a

subject that is what I do for my day job.

--
-- Toby Rider
-- Fort Worth, Texas

The thoughts on manufacturing and supporting the Chinese are very
interesting, but it's probably hard to write 500 words or less and
make much sense.

I have two chinese guitars called Epiphone and Jay Turser, a couple
of Korean ones, called Wasburn and De Armond and a Japanese one
named 'Ibanez' and a plain ole Gibson.

American manufacturing has a number of obstacles in the way of
competing.

It's true that US workers want living wages and benefits, but before
1980, CEO's made an average of 25 to 30 times the lowest company-paid
wage.

Now it's a thousand times and up. And their salaries are not tied to
performance, but to the whim of their boards, which consist of other
CEO's.

Outsourcing doesn't just save on wc and health insurance, which is
usually paid for by both the corporation and the employee, but the
wage base is virtually non-existent in countries that don't have the
overhead of policing their citizens or if they are a police state,
paying or protecting them, nor do they have any overhead for control
of the emissions that wreak havoc on the entire biome.


Corporations don't pay taxes anymore, so the tax base on the wage
earner has to be much higher to compensate the government for their
shortfalls due corporate welfare.

Therefore they need higher wages, but it is possible to shift blame
to the worker if one ignores the effect of corporate welfare.

Here's a fact you may not like, but you can't dispute it.

If you received a tax cut after 2000, it was paid to you in Chinese
money your government did not have and had to borrow from our
ideological enemy at a high interest rate *at the cost of its sovency!
*

All the subsequent tax rebates came from the same place - your
Chinese banker/global adversary who aspires to be your master.

Under this admin, the government has borrowed trillions to pay tax
cuts for people who were not only already extremely wealthy, but
benefitted from shelters that only left them marginally exposed to
taxation to begin with.

Interesting story, in 1978 and 79, while working fulltime as a
musician, and before he was president, I paid more taxes than Ronald
Reagan.

So did you if you paid any, he paid zip.

that was BEFORE he got into office.

Afterwards, there was the biggest shift of wealth to the already
wealthy that our nation had ever experienced, so the Reagan crowd
paid even less, assuming they were paying anything to begin with.

He left the US with the highest defecit in the nation's history, and
a savings and loan ripoff that wasn't even detected yet, but he
achieved his goal: at that time, 10% of the people had 90% of the
money.

And Iran had our weapons technology.

The government had to borrow trillions from the Chinese to pay the
recent Bush tax cuts, and of course they'll be paying them for a very
long time to come.

If you got it a truck brought it and if it did, it needed fuel, it
needed to be made, and all the other obvious contributions from
getting raw materials out of the earth and whipping them into
products.

The Chinese communists are intimately involved in each step of the
way.

It might be a feelgood moment to buy a Heritage instead of an
oriental knockoff, but you'll interact with literally thousands of
products and services made and performed by the Chinese home boys'
and organ donors' shopping network before you get it home and open
your chinese garage door with a Chinese lock and step onto your
living room through a Chinese front door onto a Chinese olefin carpet
and put the case down near the coffee table made of Chinese oak in
view of your television set with Chinese guts.

I'm not saying something shouldn't be done, I think it should, but
where in hell do you start cleaning the mess up?

We could, I think compete in some kind of ideal fair trade global
market where there were trade sanctions against ALL human rights
violators and polluters imposed by ALL countries, but we need a lot
more global organization and accord than we've ever had.

If third world countries and foreign nuclear powers were made to
clean up their acts or face heavy sanctions or boycotts, they'd have
a lot of the cost of operations we have to bear, and prices would
even out a bit more. More still if there were a ceo salary cap - I
mean if you can call any settlement of a medical negligence lawsuit
over $250k 'frivolous', I expect you'd have a basis for determining
what a human's really worth.

Right now, we have something akin to a global home boys' shopping
network and an ever increasing army of unemployed americans.

I don't like paying chinese for guitars, but I like their flooding
our steel market with their scrap, intellectual property theft and
our shift of vital defense manufacturing to a hostile nuclear power
even less.

It's hard to find any factory-made item that isn't at least part
Chinese any more.

Fair trade isn't even close to isolationism, it's just sanity.

But for anything to happen, government would have to be about
something other than corporate profit, and this one hasn't been for
some time, regrettably.

Clif Kuplen

jazzclif wrote:

But for anything to happen, government would have to be about something other than corporate profit, and this one hasn't been for some time, regrettably.
Clif Kuplen

I knew it was just a matter-of-time before the whole anti-corporation/leftist point-of-view on this thread got expressed.
As a Libertarian, I don't buy your arguments, and of course this forum isn't the appropriate place to get into a debate over free markets, regulation or global economics. However I respect your right to hold these opinions :-)

--- In jazz_guitar@..., "jazzclif" <jurupari@a...> wrote:

Here's a fact you may not like, but you can't dispute it.

If you received a tax cut after 2000, it was paid to you in

Chinese

money your government did not have and had to borrow from our
ideological enemy at a high interest rate *at the cost of its

sovency!

And guess where they got that money from? Just about all products
are labeled now where they are made.

What's even worse than what you mention above is the fact that the
U.S. consumer borrows the money from Visa or mastercard the money he
doesn't have to purchase a product he doesn't need (which is
probably too big and not energy efficient)...

If you really track down the real problems, it's usually not as
simple as us versus them...

There's plenty of blame to go around!

;)

Anyway, way off topic... Sorry.

Ken

--- In jazz_guitar@..., Toby Rider <high-tech-
hillbilly@b...> wrote:

jazzclif wrote:

But for anything to happen, government would have to be about
something other than corporate profit, and this one hasn't been

for

some time, regrettably.

Clif Kuplen

I knew it was just a matter-of-time before the whole
anti-corporation/leftist point-of-view on this thread got expressed.
As a Libertarian,

If you are a libertarian you ARE a leftist.

If you're proud of your philosopy, why lie about it?

The old joke is the only difference between you and a communist is
you can't spell dialectic materialism.

That's not all joke, either.

It's a free country so long as you don't advocate violent overthrowl
of the government so think what you want, hang with Tom Cruise if you
like these crazy quilt autogenerated cultist ideologies but don't
think you're being honest if you say you're not a leftist.

You are. You have to earn the label conservative by practicing it.
Fiscal responsibility and pay as you go would be a good start.

I can demonstrate your left leanings to you or anybody any time just
using your 'state will wither away' imitation Marxist philosophy and
your libertarian comrades' positions vis a vis current events.

Any high school political science student could do the same.

Meanwhile, the force is probably not going to be with you. Here's a
libertarian riddle to help explain why:

If you came back from Katrina and found a 500 lb dead hog in your
living room and you could get Captain Marvel, Superman, two
libertarians or Steven Hawking to help you remove it, who would you
choose?

Go with Hawking. There's no such thing as Captain Marvel, Superman
or two libertarians who can pull in the same direction.

Ciao, and tell Neil Boorst I said it's a tax on financial
transactions, not wealth, and he's a conniving moron. :o)

We're both lucky tv isn't interactive or he'd be limping around with
an inverted foot suppository and I'd have a peg leg.

Never thought I'd find myself longing for Nixon, but if I had a
choice...by comparison, he was so honest.

Incidentally, I brought up the trade and banking interconnection with
china because someone posted he din't want to trade with a human
rights violator. I had hoped to assuage some guilt by reminding him
he can't extricate himself from our entanglement with china.

I've never understood if libertarians, any of them since they never
agree on anything had anything like a moral compass, or is that one
blowing in the wind too? Seems like it.

Clif

Hi Gang,

Wow all of this economic talk...I for one am not an expert in those lofty areas, but I do know something interesting...Alan Greenspan was a professional jazz sax player! He gave it up when he realized that he was pretty good but not great, BTW, he was also the guy in the band in charge of the finances!

DR

Anyone who is also tired of this being treated as a political forum raise your hand.

Didn't we go through this a few weeks ago with the hurricane and the subsequent political banter that followed. Please keep this out fo the forum - email this crap to each other off list. We get enough of this in our everyday life by TV, newspaper and radio.

Let's get back on topic - JAZZ GUITAR.

Please can we close this thread down and stay on topic
- Jazz Guitar.

The group is international and our membership cover
the spectrum of political, social, economic and
religious views. Political, social, economic
or religious views are bound to upset someone, and
there are better forums to discuss these topics.

Thank you.

At 01:58 AM 9/26/2005, you wrote:

Hi Gang,

Wow all of this economic talk...I for one am not an expert in those lofty areas, but I do know something interesting...Alan Greenspan was a professional jazz sax player! He gave it up when he realized that he was pretty good but not great, BTW, he was also the guy in the band in charge of the finances!

Wow, interesting! I wonder if they ever played for free? :)

Agreed! Unless Michael Moore also plays a mean guitar on Donna Lee ... :) Hmm, on guitar, would he have a rather fat yet oddly winy tone I wonder?
He certainly would have to play a 100% made-in-America guitar and amp!