Sorry where did I rant? It is naive to expect higher taxes to solve problems, thats a proven fact of many countries. So perhaps you next get your knickers in a twist, you ought to think a little further.

Has higher fuel tax solved the oil crisis at all?
Did higher tax support the NHS or solve it's problems more?
Has a higher rate of tax done anything to end the welfare state mentality and over reliance?

All higher tax rates have ever done is lead to a increase in state employed workers and increased greed on the part of civil servants.

Now if you care to look at my suggestion about lobbying my local MP, that being all I'm capable of doing as a normal everyday person. Surely you must realize from that statement that I'm well aware of my limitations.
Or is it better to just take the apathetic course of no action?

Bill, Bullet's .010"'s.
Increased tax wouldn't work Bill. The owners of Cort or whoever wouldn't take a cut in their profit margin by high street prices affecting sales. They'd simply pay the workers less and offer the product at the same street price including the tax.

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No no and no

it was a joke - a quirky comment, you obviously keep missing that?

anyway i agree this thread is getting to heavy for a bunch of guitarists.

This one's dead to me, I will no longer check it.

Hey Gang, I guess this shows all of us all that we are all frustrated with these continuing problems... Nikki I think your right on here... We need to continue to lobby our politicians to get something done... If we keep it up (lobbying) some day we may find some one in power that give a damn about our countries and the world we live in. Until then Im going to try .010 Bullits!

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Hey, Boy Blue is back!

I agree, however, if you spend the same money on an American-made guitar rather than a sweatshop guitar, then your money is still supporting a human being.

i wonder if it will be in our life time bill. it often takes longer to stop a ball than what it did to get it rolling. sure wish Ronnie was still here with us.

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63supro
"The good thing is in a club situation, most of the patrons are trashed and really can't tell the difference."

Hi Bill: we may disagree on the tariffs thing, but that's OK. And just in case it isn't yet clear enough let me say one more time that I don't for one second imagine that you or anyone else on this thread is a Communist.

Now then. Super Bullets or Rotosound strings for me!

Cheers - C

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This is interesting. Unfortunately and tragically, this type of thing is widespread throughout the third world.

Any smokers on this forum? chances are if your ciggarette packet was made by British American Tobacco, then im afraid the tobacco has been hand-picked by a worker who could be as young as 3yrs old. Research it. There is a doco made by 'Unreported World' that will make you give up if you smoke as it is just disgusting.

Have an Apple ipod, iPhone or Mac? well we all know how many of their factory workers have commited suicide don't we?

What I am getting at is that most of the everyday products we have around us made in the east, probably are made by workers in adverse conditions. The solution isnt as easy as everyone makes it out to be.

If you boycott these companies at a distrubiter level, potentially this could lay off those workers and send them homeless. Continue buying these products, and the issue wont go away. It's a double edged argument.

The solution is for UN do do something about it. This needs to be addressed at a Government level and there needs to be a watchdog looking over this. I think the corporates are at fault here.

Ask yourselves though- Companies who have the head offices in your country and mine, and out-sourced our labour in the far east, do you really think anything is going to be done about it all without it affecting there massive margins profits?

This is why economies are collapsing, where has all the industrial work gone from our lands? has it gone to poor developing regions in countries that are lapping up the work that we no longer want- or has corporate greed for money taken us this far?

Industrialism is where it's at. Corporate Offices don't make money, asian factories do. China is fast making themselves a financial/military superpower, because the chinese government are doing the right thing in the past 10-15 years. Perhaps Communism works in some ways but you wont call me a communist.

Will your government do anything about it and can they afford to? Retail trade is bread and butter as far as tax earning is concerned.

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I'm certain they'll be as adept at this as they were on the sub-Saharan region of Africa back in the '90s, mediating the ethnic tensions between the Hutus and the Tutsis.

Those clowns at the UN couldn't solve a crossword puzzle!

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

Exactly.
See the BBC news lastnight. More banker bonus's despite them being heavily indebted to the taxpayer and goverment asking them to use the bonus to clear their debts.
Them clowns are lucky I'm not prime rib. I'd have demanded the £50Bil back for 9am this morning or close em down. Waive the interest to be reasonable.
Let the financial collapse happen, rather than try to put a bandage round a fractured useless system. That only differs from a casino in that it's not at all entertaining. The house always wins.

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No no and no

Industrial work is the bread and butter of an economy. A service oriented economy has know future without industrial works being able to afford the services. Thats the problem we are facing now, theres little you can't get and have in America true but affording things is a different story and the items people do manage to buy sends much of the profit to corporate and offshore where its made.

Fiat is going to start selling some cars like the 500 and a few others in the U.S.A. this year through Chrysler dealers yet they are going to make them in Mexico. So here we Americans can by the cars but we get none of the jobs of making them.
Just walk through a store and see what is made in the U.S.A. not much like it used to be. Yet there has to be a way of earning the money to buy, the masses can not survive in just a corporate and service oriented economy, where is the middle class? Steel workers , Press Operators, Pipe fitters, Ship fitters,Assembly Line workers, Factory maintenance workers like Welders, Electricians, Plumbers, Fork lift operators, the masses!!!!

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The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

Thomas Jefferson

Makes you wonder if abolition ever actually happened eh CV?
The only changes I see are the people and the places.

The entire problem comes down to greed. You can't pay employees enough to buy your or similar product and still maintain enough of a profit margin. If the owner of Nike had to employ American or British labour and pay them enough to buy the product. He'd have to up wages then up street price, then wages, then street price. Until the sheer amount of inflation became unbearable and the national economy got like pre WW2 Germany. A wheelbarrow of cash to buy a loaf of bread (no exaggeration). Or Ghana in the 90's, where the last time inflation could be calculated it was something like 6000%. In 1993 the Cedi fluctuated between 555-825C to 1$ in 2006 that had risen to 9300-9600 Ghanese Cedi to 1US $. A mars bar cost $15 in Ghana in 1995.
Now after bankrupcy the Cedi sits at around 1.49C to 1$.

Theres only one real solution, reign in the fatcats or let the economy collapse. As much as I hate to admit it.

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No no and no

At one point Nike was paying its workers less than $6 for what usually amounted to 12 hours a day and the cost of materials and labour equated to about $3-$4 per pair yet that same pair of sneakers retailed for maybe $125 or more and they paid Tiger Woods $14,000,000 a year just to wear a stupid Nike baseball cap and a few of their shirts.I think Nike could well afford to pay a decent wage to its workers if they weren't so hellbent on lining the pockets of their greedy shareholders.There's a special corner of hell reserved for opportunistic greedy jerks like them.It's said that it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter Heaven-maybe not in all cases but in some I'm sure that it's true.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.