Karaoke Forums

Obviously the hacks have an effect, that point has been well covered.

Here in the UK. Big corporates own most of the pubs.
When you take on one of their pubs, you are tied
to high rents, and you have to buy all liquids
through these corporates at highly inflated
prices or face very heavy fines.
They have meters on the beer lines so you cant cheat.
A landlord (bar owner) makes little money.
They often go out of business... New management.

If they put on entertainment to get customers,
they have to sell a lot of beer to just break even.
Therefore they want to pay as little as possible.
They will only pay more for a KJ who has a following.

Is this the way it is where you are...

The points you make are why free enterprise is the best mechanism for change and growth in the markets. Whenever fines, tariffs, taxes, and fees are levied upon a product or industry it reduces profit, and investment that the investor can make. It also kills incentive which leads to a stagnant market. The beauty of free market is the more one makes as an owner / investor the more they can hire others to help, and they become eventually a dominant competitive part of the industry. In this case the bar owner makes more cash so they can afford to pay more for entertainment. Then other people get the benefit of the entertainment, and more people (like the KJ's) derive and income too. Note also that other players benefit like the construction workers who build improvements for growing bars like new locations as they expand, or a new section to an existing building. People that manufacture karaoke disks and equipment make more money. Everybody in this scenario starts making more money.

Eventually you have lots of wealth in a country with individuals doing this type of thing. Some are multi billionairs like Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet. Instead of these people corrupting and stealing all the wealth from people you see them giving back. Warren Buffet recently gave away the large majority of his billions. Just gave them away to a good cause!! Bill Gates is involved in many outreaches across the globe for instance to help AIDS in Africa.

Governments and individuals think they lose money if they don't tax the type of things you mention, or if they don't enact something like a minimum wage, but artificial price manipulation suppresses the markets. With stagnation nobody makes any money. A 30% tax of nothing is still nothing. If you can't grow a business then governments, and those with their hands in your pockets can't  make any profits taxing it.

Free enterprise used to reign in the US of A, but as years go by we too seem to be losing focus and becoming more socialistic in our market design.

I'm not a KJ and can't really elaborate for them how it is over here, but I am aware of the issues related to copyright management with digital media and the new digital millenium copyright laws. It appears copyright owners and record companies have to be very careful that they don't over stifle growth in their industry or there will hardly be an industry.

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The Truth Is Out There

Interesting, and very well described.

My intent however was to indicate the corpoate intoxication
of income to the point where it is destroying the
very thing they publicly encourage.

They are activly destroying what they are selling.

In the UK a landlord has to have numerous licences to
be abe to have karaoke. On top of what I previously described
it is simply too expensive.
Landlord turnover is fanominal.

Heck you pay TV TAX in the UK, I find that nuts living in the USA. Maybe it is time for a revolution in the UK.  No wonder the Collinies went to war over taxes!

Didnt mention,
Our government imposes a Value Added Tax (VAT)
The result of which means there are only pennies profit on a pint of beer.

Got to tell yoy guys...

Robin Hood had the right idea.
So did Guy Forks

Not quite sure what you mean by TV tax...

What we do have to pay is ..... Think its £178 per year
to the BBC.
Most people dont watch the BBC.

You can still go to jail for not paying it.

Yeah, that....
NUTZ

Here in the USA the things that are killing bar biz and karaoke are OWI/DUI laws, and insurance costs.  Unless I have a DD, I don't go out to bars, unlles I can walk home.

Nutz is so right.

Dont understand
OWI/DUI laws, and insurance costs.  Unless I have a DD, I don't go out to bars

Speaking of tax. A lot of people here want to go with a flat sales tax but a lot of changes would have to be made to reduce the size of our government. As it is the Gov gets bigger then the taxes go up then the gov grows even more.

I would love to talk polotics with you.
Really would.
Trouble is ... being a foreigner...
Could be a death worse than the Jerkometer.

Sorry, I didn't even think about it. One side of my brain seems to be offline right now.

I need more coffe. Man, I can't even spell coffee.

Yeah

Two sugars

there can be no worse death than the jerkometer

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"Be who you are and say what you feel... Because those that matter... Don't mind...And those that mind... Don't matter."

I know.

But it's so good.

I will say you guys have some great beer over there. I was there in early 90's. I had a blast going to your taverns and hanging with the locals in the small towns. Good people.

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The Truth Is Out There

Yeah, I couldn't agree more.  Funny thing is, most of the European beers can be bought in the usa too.

I used to work at a brewery, and you'd be surprised how much beer is taxed here in the US as well.

It cost us about 6 cents to actually produce a pint of beer (not counting overhead from the equipment, employees, lease, etc.). Once we factored in all of our overhead costs, the pint of beer that cost 6 cents to actually make cost us a grand total of about 36 cents. That 36 cent pint of beer was then state and federally taxed about 70 cents. We wouild then sell the pint for $2.00 happy hour, $3.00 all other times.

I also know for a fact that producing beer in a small microbrewery like ours was considered expensive compared to the larger breweries, which I heard can produce a bottle of beer for a little less than 4 cents TOTAL, including their overhead.

Almost everything you buy in the US is taxed!!

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C Mc
KJ, FL

At a rate far lower than most every other developed country....

You know even today you can drive down the dock
road in Liverpool, and see factories with bricked up windows.
Yes... They used to tax daylight..

True. However one I particularly liked I could never find over here. I may be wrong but I think it was Tenants. One Brit I was hanging with insisted on drinking Guinness on tap. I couldn't stand it then, but have acquired a bit of a taste for it since. I tend to prefer darker beers now such as St Pauli Girl, Grolsch, and Becks dark versions. I like a lot of the Ambers too like St Arnolds, and Fat Tire.

It's really changed in the US since the time I took my business trip to England. Back then all we had was basic mostly tasteless IMO domestic beers. The only one I could stand to drink without literally getting physically ill after a few was Coors Lite (for some reason). That was my old college beer. I even did a Speech class presentation on it - funny as heck. All the class loved it. Buy anyway nowadays the US in many larger towns has really good micro breweries. Austin has some really good ones. My current favorite is: http://www.draughthouse.com/ Yum!!

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The Truth Is Out There