11.10.13

The Plutocrat’s Telecaster

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Made in China, Rock 'n' Roll at 3:53 pm by George Smith

Originally designed and made by Leo Fender, in southern California, as the first mass-produced electric guitar for the working musician. Now part of the bifurcation in US society, marketed for the 1 percenters, corporate fascists and their yet un-obsoleted upper middle class servants, the $3,700 Fender Telecaster. (By contrast, the “crafted in China” — really, that’s what it says on the headstock — Fender Squier Telecaster, recently on sale at Guitar Centers nationwide: $119.00.)

That’s an order of magnitude x 3 times difference in cost, the latter item — an electric guitar originally a southern California icon, sent back across the Pacific to its ancestral origin in a container ship. (And if you think there’s an order of magnitude difference in the sound and quality, you need to be put to death.)

The travesty of this is easy to grasp.

Global trade, what once was a good idea, or could have stayed an at least tolerable idea, is now twisted well into the bad.

There is no way to reverse conditions other than the very unlikely institution of a global minimum wage, mandated elevation of US wages, or imposition of tariffs on things like entry of container ships into US ports, tariffs to be paid as dividends to taxpayers, like oil or geologic asset revenue sharing. The latter would be reasonable under the thinking that it was the conditions in post WWII America that allowed for the creation and development of goods, desired around the world, that were domestically produced and then moved overseas. In all these cases more money must be put into the hands of everyone but the top tier types.

Until then, it remains one of the many and growing consumer choices in the new Culture of Lickspittle

Previously — Rock n Bluesmen for the Plutocracy.

Comments are closed.