This is Wong!

You mean Famiry

Eventually their standard of living will match more closely with ours. Their wages will continue to grow, albeit slower now. It will make sense to produce some larger/heavier things domestically again. Eventually this bubble of cheap tech stuff will come to an end as things level out globally.

Currently they make 1/15th of what an American factory worker makes per hour, but their housing costs are 1/3 of what we pay in the US and food costs are roughly 1/2 as much (although often at a much lower quality). Give it 10 years and their wages will at least double that and they'll start having health benefits. In other words, I hope you're diversifying your investments.

You're correct. Then their standard of living will raise eventually. I guess my point is that things will level out with this many people on the planet. Our standard of living is going to decrease regardless, and it will really fast unless we make some tough choices soon.

BTW, I own a Vietnamese Telecaster copy. Cost me $120, put in new saddles, cut a new nut for it, new pickups, new pots and cavity shielding (tin foil), so throw in another $80, then did a fret job on it and it plays better than my 2002 American Telecaster. It plays better than most the vintage guitars I've touched over the years in honesty. Didn't know you were into guitars.

www.rondomusic.com
I have to admit those Agile Les Pauls are as good as the $8,000 ones, no joke. They just need to be set up right and usually need decent PAF pickups in there. The stock pickups aren't really 1/2 bad. They are Korean made.

I agree with you, but there are some things to consider.

First, China is 1/3rd of the world's population. Other countries can be exploited for cheap labor, but not near the scale of China. Second, like in China, there would be an exponential increase in wages. The growth could potentially be faster in smaller countries, as just a few large factories would have a huge influence. The last is resources. China is abundant with them, 3rd greatest in the world next to Russia and the US. Factor in transportation of raw materials and the inability to harvest at the source. We have the advantage of abundant natural resources. We need to start making a shift back in the other direction sooner than later.

Good thread!

I worked at a Guitar Center for a short period of time and saw a lot of vintage guitars come in. Occasionally there were mismatched Fenders, but I'm not sure there were fakes while I was there. There very well could have been and we wouldn't have ever known. This was nearly 10 years ago, so I may have left before it became more of an issue.

My favorites are acoustic guitars, especially the 50's stuff. I've got a Takemine EAN15C that I think is one of the best sounding acoustic guitar in the world. Really well balanced between the lows and highs, great sustain. I played guitars for hours in that store, all eras, all brands. For whatever reason, that model grabbed me.

They choose you, no doubt. When you're afraid to put it down even for a second because you're afraid someone else might get it, that is usually the sign to buy. The Takamine was not a planned purchase either.

Now back to China. China china china. Making stuff cheap. End of the world.

Nope, would rather derail about guitars.

PnP machines do the majority of the work with wave soldering on virtually all PCBs anymore anywhere, even small scale. Anything surface mount is not done by hand unless it is ultra cheap electronic crap. Generally only a handful of components need to be hand-done (header pins, connectors, jacks, etc.).

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports annually not only on our own country, but our competition as well. Your tax dollars at work.