The price of horns is Too Damn High!

[Ferguson]

Would it make any sense if I mentioned that tubas from Buffet/MW/B&S within the US are now sold through a distributor in Florida, rather than direct from Germany to dealers, like they were a few years ago? Might that account for some of the price increase? They're also billed in USD, rather than Euros, and I think they're not keen on lowering prices. (Who is?)

Miraphone tubas are sold direct to dealers in the US without an importer. They are also sold in USD, but their prices have remained fairly stable since the dollar has risen against the Euro.

School music dealers tend to like stable pricing for school bids, which makes imported goods sold in USD more popular.

Tubas sold in Euros include Alexander, Rudolph Meinl, Gronitz and G&P. The price has gone down slightly on some of these within the US due to the favorable exchange rate.

-F
/I benefit greatly from Federal Reserve policies. You have to play the game if you want to win.
//The Federal Reserve pays dividends of $47B annually into the US Treasury, about $141 per citizen
///https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_System <--read this before complaining

[Ferguson]

I like that our banking and regulatory system returns a profit to our citizens.

-F
/but that's just me
//you must not be playing the game I guess
///I don't care for our oversized military either, but that's off topic

[DaveWright]

Buy one of my horns. All horns are used, some more than others!

[tofu]

Warning - chicken waste is mentioned in quoted article below - hold your noses.

Joe, you need to start reading some good articles.....and don't worry, Pres HC will fix all

Do you seriously think that a woman who has absolutely no economic background and never ever run a business/met a payroll really has a handle on the economy? Of course there was her miraculous short lived commodities trading that netted in 10 months more than her & Gov. Bill's combined wages. Keep drinking the coolaid. Who knew Bisons stuck their heads in the ground. Perhaps with your head out of the ground you too could start reading some "good" articles.

By Marc Joffe, The Fiscal Times
February 2, 2016

The Clinton era of the 1990s is remembered as a prosperous time punctuated by a series of scandals. Today, we tend to dismiss these scandals as irrelevant because they mostly involved sex, were exaggerated by partisan Republicans and were mostly related to actions taken by Bill Clinton, who will not be on the 2016 ballot. But sweeping away all this history deprives voters of the chance to consider a largely forgotten financial scandal that directly involved Hillary Clinton during 1978 and 1979.

Under the guidance of an attorney representing Tyson Foods, Hillary Clinton made a $98,540 profit from a $1,000 initial investment in less than one year trading commodity futures. While $98,540 may not seem like much money relative to the Clinton family’s wealth today, it exceeded Bill and Hillary’s combined annual income at the time.

When this story was revealed in the spring of 1994, Hillary Clinton’s press secretary suggested that the enormous profit was the result of the First Lady’s own research — but the Tyson-linked attorney, James Blair, admitted that he advised Clinton when to buy and sell the futures. Further, there was no evidence that Clinton had previously traded in commodity futures or knew much about the market.

Careful readers at the time also learned that Clinton’s initial trading also had a serious irregularity. Unlike stock investments, commodity futures are almost always purchased with high levels of margin, meaning that the investor is using a substantial proportion of money borrowed from the broker to control positions. Exchanges and regulators typically require investors to keep a minimum amount of cash in their futures accounts to avoid getting into a negative position if futures prices move in the wrong direction. In Hillary Clinton’s case, her $1,000 initial investment was well below the $12,000 deposit required by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for the first trades she executed. So not only did Hillary make an extraordinary profit for a novice investor, she did so without following the rules applied to less well-connected traders.

By the time the so-called “cattle futures” scandal fell out of the headlines, readers of The New York Times and Washington Post — mainstream outlets that both extensively reported the story — were left with the impression that Hillary’s trading activity was suspicious. But, since Hillary was not an elected official, the scandal was eclipsed by bimbo eruptions and the Whitewater Affair, both involving the president himself.

It also was not much of an issue in 2008 — but that was before the federal government started bailing out banks and other big corporations. In the aftermath of TARP and other widely reported instances of crony capitalism, Clinton’s behavior back in 1978 and 1979 warrants further scrutiny.

The factor that makes the cattle futures scandal relevant is that Hillary Clinton received her trading advice from Tyson Food’s outside counsel. Tyson was a major agricultural producer in Arkansas and had numerous issues that Attorney General and later Governor Bill Clinton could affect.

One such issue involved enforcement of environmental regulations affecting Tyson’s chicken-processing plants. It can be costly for factory farmers to properly dispose of chicken manure, but the failure to do so can cause serious damage. This was demonstrated by an incident at the company’s Green Forest plant in northwest Arkansas. As The New York Times reported in March 1994:

In 1977, the state pollution control agency reissued the license for Tyson's Green Forest plant on the condition that the company meet with city officials to work out a plan for treating its wastes. But the state never enforced the order, and in May 1983, the waste from the plant seeped into the town's drinking water. Residents became ill, and 15 months later Governor Clinton declared the town a disaster area.

So it is possible to link Tyson’s support for the Clintons to water contamination, an ironic circumstance given Hillary Clinton’s criticism of Governor Rick Snyder’s handling of the Flint water crisis.

The Times also reported, “During Mr. Clinton's tenure in Arkansas, Tyson benefited from a variety of state actions, including $9 million in government loans, the placement of company executives on important state boards and favorable decisions on environmental issues.”

Tyson appears to have obtained these results for what looks like a bribe delivered though Hillary Clinton’s commodities account. To quote the company’s former chairman: politics is “a series of unsentimental transactions between those who need votes and those who have money.”

This perspective should provide cause for concern today, since Hillary Clinton made $2.9 million in speaking fees from large financial institutions between 2013 and 2015. That total includes $675,000 from the much reviled Goldman Sachs. One is left to wonder whether Goldman and the other financial industry behemoths stand to gain any transactional benefits for their money.

While paid speech-making is not illegal, bribery is. Tyson might have simply made a campaign contribution to Bill Clinton back then, but that would have violated limits then in effect. Instead, Bill and Hillary pushed — and seemingly broke — ethical and legal limits to get the cash they needed.

[pjv]

Lets not forget that the last two financial crisises were caused by the banks just going out there and having a good time playing with money that was not theirs. Money that was entrusted into their keeping. Many major banks over the entire world were bailed out by their own governments. Governments are financed by the people.
And yet we argue amongst ourselves. Ironic? Maybe it wasn't planned this way but it sure seems to pan out well for the real criminals.

[bisontuba]

Would it make any sense if I mentioned that tubas from Buffet/MW/B&S within the US are now sold through a distributor in Florida, rather than direct from Germany to dealers, like they were a few years ago? Might that account for some of the price increase? They're also billed in USD, rather than Euros, and I think they're not keen on lowering prices. (Who is?)

Miraphone tubas are sold direct to dealers in the US without an importer. They are also sold in USD, but their prices have remained fairly stable since the dollar has risen against the Euro.

School music dealers tend to like stable pricing for school bids, which makes imported goods sold in USD more popular.

Tubas sold in Euros include Alexander, Rudolph Meinl, Gronitz and G&P. The price has gone down slightly on some of these within the US due to the favorable exchange rate.

-F
/I benefit greatly from Federal Reserve policies. You have to play the game if you want to win.
//The Federal Reserve pays dividends of $47B annually into the US Treasury, about $141 per citizen
///https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_System <--read this before complaining

Steve-
Very informative-thanks.
Mark

[bisontuba]

Warning - chicken waste is mentioned in quoted article below - hold your noses.

Joe, you need to start reading some good articles.....and don't worry, Pres HC will fix all

[/quote] Do you seriously think that a woman.......[/quote]

Well, good to see you have no bias .... never heard a male presidential candidate described as 'Do you seriously think that a man....'

Mark ' wishing it were Bernie but knowing what the alternative is, HC is the one...'
PS. Even if she is a woman...

[Lee Stofer]

The price of professional-grade horns may be too high for the non-professional, but there is no such thing as the price generally being too high. Yamaha continues to make the Yama-York, because there are buyers at $40,000.00+. There are a very few ultra-high-Dollar instruments made, and they would not be made at all if there was no market for them. Moderately-priced American-made CC tubas have gone by the wayside in the past few years, notably the Conn 25/54/56j tubas, and the Getzen G-50 CC tuba, because there was not sufficient demand to make it profitable. Kanstul introduced a fine copy of the York 33, much like the Getzen overall, but they are making very few of these, at least for US buyers, because they can make a lot more profit making trumpets, trombones and corps-style instruments right now and export them to markets waiting with money in hand.

The Chinese are now supplying the correct price-point low brass for the US consumers, and whenever they fail to offer instruments that fit the market's acceptable compromise of quality and cost, someone else will step in and take their place.

The manufacture of tubas in the West has always been a very labor-intensive, not-very-profitable enterprise. Rudolf Meinl has told me that his most plain, generic 4/4 rotary BBb tuba takes approximately 400 man-hours to build. He insists on the very best alloys to work with, and does not cut corners in the least in the building of his instruments. When you start adding up a living wage at this many man-hours, and all of the overhead involved in running an industrial operation like this, then you may well wonder how they can make instruments so cheaply!

[tofu]

Warning - chicken waste is mentioned in quoted article below - hold your noses.

Joe, you need to start reading some good articles.....and don't worry, Pres HC will fix all

Do you seriously think that a woman.......[/quote]

Well, good to see you have no bias .... never heard a male presidential candidate described as 'Do you seriously think that a man....'

Mark ' wishing it were Bernie but knowing what the alternative is, HC is the one...'
PS. Even if she is a woman... [/quote]

Once again you fail to answer a simple question by trying to make up some bias on the part of the questioner. I would ask that question of any male candidate. How in the world can you think she can be qualified to handle the economy. Where is her expertise? How do you square her blatant disregard of securities laws. Come on man - back up your position. Let us also not forget why many of the feminists supported the other guy in this campaign What self respecting woman these days would have stayed with her husband after what he did to her and then lied to her face about it? I can see why any self respecting feminist would not support her. And yeah Bernie - lets put a socialist in charge of capitalism. Keep drinking the coolaid.

[bisontuba]

Dear Church of the Regressive:
Go back and worship your idol....Ron Paul...

[Donn]

the north American 18th century experiment (where ALL are citizens, and ALL individual citizens - regardless of station, heritage, or property - have MORE rights that do the rulers)

What north American 18th century are we talking about here? Was it over by the time George Washington showed up with 13000 Virginia militia to put down the Whiskey Rebellion? Does it matter that women, slaves etc. weren't citizens?

[Donn]

Say what? I did make reference to a historical fact or two, so I guess sacraments and catechism ... sure. One would have have to wonder, though ... if you knew someone who was unalterably committed to an ideal that has never really been put into practice in any durable way at any known time in history, but is sort of exemplified by a fairy tale version of events two centuries ago, would you put that somewhat in the category of religious faith?

Meanwhile, people who are attracted to stuff that works when put into practice, just judging by things like life expectancy or infant mortality, could there be something kind of practical to it?

[bisontuba]

We'll see if currency volatility shifts dramatically next week with the vote of Brexit, and what happens to the pounds sterling/Euro/Dollar, etc....

.....and for my next prediction....

[bisontuba]

How does it compare to a Jupiter BBb, which schools seem to like these days?

[bort]

There was once a guy who would buy entire production runs of tubas from the German makers, especially "new" models. He would tie up those factories for a year or two making those "new" models, sell them at @ a 7-9% margin, completely saturate the market, and then move on to the next models of "new." Other dealers couldn't do the same and once he was done selling his supply, they couldn't raise prices as that other guy had set the market

Sounds sort of like Wessex...?

[bort]

BortBrass... that'll be the day! Well, what do I know, then!

BTW, I'm just a Minnesota transplant, so I'm the last person that'd ever say things like dontchaknow, uffda, oh yaaaaah?, or any of the other local phrases here.

I'm from Baltimore, and if you've ever watched Scott Van Pelt on ESPN when they make fun of his accent, that's pretty much what I've got too (the letter "O" in particular). Thankfully, after enough years of practice and not living there, I can turn it off (and on) pretty well... but even with that, people still know that I ain't from around these parts.

[tofu]

I'm not sure I understand how these HS horns sustain so much damage. Granted it's been 40 years since I was in HS, but in my 4 years I don't ever remember a tuba being knocked over/dropped or actually damaged in any way. This was an urban school of 5400 students. We never sat the horns on their bells and when not in your hands they were in their storage slots. Some parents with carpenter skills built a tuba room with 8 horizontal wooden storage slots (4 stacked on 4) for the upright tubas and cabinets on top for the old Conn 20j's and sliding lockable doors to the room. We had a rolling rack for the 8 36K sousaphones. The orchestra director was a tuba player, as was the marching band/jazz band director (a retired former jazz tuba player) and they imparted respect for the equipment to us. We were reponsible for cleaning and maintaining the horns ourselves.

Are kids today just leaving them on their bells and they get knocked over? Is damaged being inflicted on purpose? Would recording bells being a better choice since they can't be set upright on their bells? Perhaps recording bells horns would also make sense for schools with the typical old multi-use bad acoustics auditorium where the tuba sound justs gets muffled in the stage drapes.

[Rick Denney]

the north American 18th century experiment (where ALL are citizens, and ALL individual citizens - regardless of station, heritage, or property - have MORE rights that do the rulers)

What north American 18th century are we talking about here? Was it over by the time George Washington showed up with 13000 Virginia militia to put down the Whiskey Rebellion? Does it matter that women, slaves etc. weren't citizens?

Those problems were addressed without undermining the meaning of the American experiment.

Humans are sinful and all nature groans under the weight of sin. There is nothing any government or economic system can do to correct that. The American experiment, based as it was on reward for individual effort, private ownership of both land and the means of production, freedom of movement, and the obligation to live with one's own consequences of their decisions, was strong enough to accept whole new categories of individuals into the ranks of the free, including (but not limited to) former slaves and women. In 1960, fewer than one in five married women worked. Presently, fewer than one in five married women do not work. That is a very strong economic system that can absorb that kind of increase in the labor force over half a century.

But humans (rich and poor) are still fundamentally sinful, and sin knows no economic boundaries.

It is quite easy, and also seductive for the young, to think that a change in system will solve all the problems. But as long as humans are sinful, it will only move them around.

I think Ferguson has addressed the rather microscopic reason why some tubas are more expense and others not so much. The retail price for a Miraphone 186 was over $11,000 ten years ago. The macroeconomic conditions have not resulted in an increase in that price.

Will it all collapse? Assuredly. Because humans are sinful and will destroy their own house. Will there be future successes? Assuredly. Will those successes be sustainable indefinitely? It has not happened yet in human history.

But here is where I agree with Bloke: Countries need to make things. The reduction in the value of the British pound yesterday will make that easier, because their goods will be less expensive in the rest of the world. Why do you think the Chinese try so hard to keep the American dollar expensive relative to the yuan? And what has caused Chinese production to slow down a bit in the last several years? (A strong yuan is one reason. The demand by the Chinese people to enjoy the fruits of their labors is another.)

There were always cheap tubas that appealed to the impecunious. I bought a Sanders tuba in 1984, made by Amati-Denak (aka Cerveny) and sold to me as a demonstrator model for $1500. Retail was $2800, as I recall. Since that time, my income has increased by a factor of about 7. I paid $10,000 for my most recent tuba purchase. I figure that makes me about as willing to spend as I always was--my tuba-hobby purchases, which are made rather infrequently compared to most hobbies, still consume about the same percentage of my salary they always did. (The Hirsbrunner York Model sold for $12,000 in 1984.)

New people in my profession are starting out with salaries of 40-50% of what I make these days. If they are as willing to spend money on a tuba as I am, they'll be willing to spend $4000-5000 on a tuba. Who makes a tuba at that price point? The modern equivalent of that Czechoslovakian Communist planned enterprise: China. And the Chinese tubas of today are at least as good as those crappy low-end Cervenys.

What I see is that the fine-instrument manufacturers are pricing for people my current age, not the age I was when I bought that Cerveny. That was less true then. But a lot more people are my age now relative to the early 80's. German (and the better models of Japanese) tuba makers are targeting older hobbyists, and matching quality to budgets. They are no longer targeting the school and college market as they once did. Also, their workers are older and better paid. But their labor costs are much higher, too, in part to fund the social wealth distribution in the European system. Where cost enters the equation is that Europeans (just like Americans) can no longer afford to make tubas for young people with smaller incomes. So, they target the abundant supply of older and wealthier hobbyists, who can bring them more revenue and profit even if production declines, and let companies in countries where labor is much cheaper take over the student and young hobbyist market. When the Baby Boom dies off, things will change (again).

Rick "long before that Florida rep started controlling M-W prices, as Ferguson describes, a certain FM was controlling imports of many brands" Denney

[Donn]

So, they target the abundant supply of older and wealthier hobbyists, who can bring them more revenue and profit even if production declines, and let companies in countries where labor is much cheaper take over the student and young hobbyist market. When the Baby Boom dies off, things will change (again).

Cool! Oh ... wait, I'm dead in that picture. Well, who cares, I haven't bought a new tuba since the '80s (and that was a "scratch and dent".)

Quite a few of the founding fathers wanted to abolish slavery

Sure, I reckon you can find opposition to the practice going back as far as you want. Just wanted to check if in practice there was anything especially egalitarian going on anywhere in North America in the 18th century. I was thinking it might have been the French, who seem to have been way ahead of the English in this matter at the time.

[bisontuba]

I was thinking it might have been the French, who seem to have been way ahead of the English in this matter at the time.

They may have been ahead of the English, but not very far ahead, and the end result, obviously, was no better.
All the French ended up doing was taking a tour up their own rear ends and ending up with the same-ol'/same-ol' time-immemorial feudalism (socialism).

The unique thing about the American model (which has been corrupted since Lincoln, but - in particular - has been corrupted since Wilson) is that each person (and each state, actually) is sovereign, and is supposed to have all the say over his own destiny, rather than his rulers. Again, the French "egalitarian" thing (socialism) is just the trite "equal results/rewards regardless of effort" thing...and (of course) an all-powerful ruling class to make certain that this is so.

Yes, that Damm Lincoln.....he caused all the problems