The Economy.. will hi end audio mfgs lower prices?


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The state of California just laid off 20,000 employees. National unemployment is at a 30 year high.

Will there be a shake-out in high end audio? Will we continue to see $10k preamps and $30k amps?

According to the article below, prices of most consumer goods, especially big ticket consumer goods are going down.

....copy and paste it into your browser

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/176714/American-Retail-Goods-On-Sale-Now----and-Forever?tickers=sks,%5Egspc,%5Edji,wmt,jwn,wfmi,cost
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128x128mitch4t
When I first started looking at the Naim CDX2 it was $5600.00, it went up to 6150.00 and more recently back to 5600.00. Sonus Faber just had a sale of speakers. I think that there will be a reshuffling of prices in some areas and consumers will be more carefull about their purchases.
Bombaywalla, you beat me to it.
Abucktwoeighty, I agree. CEOs maximizing short term profits with no concern for the future isn't necessarily in capitalism's best.
Heres my thoughts since we are in a hi end hobby expect luxury tax from the liberal movement soon. With a large part of our taxes going to illegals and citizens that are on welfare it leaves us the working sheepel to pay for all of this big government spending. Hope i'm wrong, from what i've seen so far we are in Big Trouble moving from a free market country to a socialist society. We will have a state run audio company who will provide us with gear.

Better listen to your music now while you can before the bubble bursts.
If you are the shareholder of a public corp. you want a good rate of return of your investment. In the US, cost of materials, labor, medical insurance, workman compensation....etc... these increasing overhead expenses will decrease your net earning per share. You have two choices : 1. jack up your price on the same product to keep the same rate of return of investment and running a risk of loosing cutomers to competitions or 2. Find a backward country or countries where labor is cheaper, medical insurance is affordable....to get a better profit and there is nothing wrong with making a profit in a trade of for the risk of an investment. It's a simple concept of economics 101. Red or Blue, you face the same problems. The question is would you'd rather have a temporary solution to a permanent problem or you want to survive ?