High End is Dead?

The 50K  TT's are out there because if you sell one a year you make as much as you could on a thousand 800$ ones .

High End isn't dead in USA . At least 90% of the population can't afford It and more than  that  have no interest in it  .
But, as we have the highest inequality of income in the world that still leave millions to to whom 50K is chump change .
It is hurting in Scandinavia and those few countries who system operates
like theirs .
In Norway 80% of the population is middle class which is why it is VERY expensive . They like it like that and American tourists are bewildered by it .

Because most dealers aren’t all that rich and those others are who are really rich are too busy making billions on the various economic bubbles American public eats up to bother with audio .
What money there is in Audio is made by manufacturers .
Average markup in Audio is 40% . Dealers under pressure move a lot at
around 30% . After all expenses a dealer is lucky is get 5% in his own bank
account .
If an average audio dealer did not stand fast on some lines he would be paying you to buy it .
Car dealers and audio dealers make  money on used stuff . If they do sell you new stuff, even at their cost. they
then have an item that is all profit  .

Nope . real dollars where worth a LOT more back in the day than the currency that has lost 25% against the Euro in last year .

How long did you look in their basement ?

Nearly every big American City has become expensive . Here in St Paul
average home price has increased 40% in 4 yrs as wages have stayed stable .And they are far lower than coastal cities .
No house stays on Market longer than 3 days even if it’s a dump .
Two blocks from me a 190 unit seniors only condo with prices from 250-450 $$
opened 6 moths ago and was sold out 6 months before it was completed .
There is no affordable housing being built in USA and it appears there never will be again .
  And no generation will ever again exist that  became wealthy only because all the other industrial countries
  were flat on their back from WW II .

gnaudio , Brilliant and and informative post .
One thing I would say , that 10 year out recession is far from being resolved . The present market bubble is
there only to prolong the inevitable . The US dollar was hours from collapse in 2008, factors that caused it
have been ignored and that chicken will come home to roost .A 401K buck put in today is in Zurich tomorrow .

What part hasn't ?
The part where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer .

Amen to all that craigl59 !
Few days ago I went to a Symphony Concert with a good friend of mine who is a Psych Prof at the U of MN . And a very prominent one at that .
Looking at all the white heads he threw me a line I had not heard .

"As the country gets dumber and dumber , fewer and fewer people read
books . People who don’t read books in the digital age have too short an attention span to listen to classical music ."
I said, and have bad taste as well !

Looking at this post, which has a lot of smarts from a lot of smart people leads me to say out loud what I have said under my breath for a long time .
People who don't go to live concerts of acoustic music on a REGULAR   basis , no amps allowed , have no reference in reality and  therefore have no idea what music really is . It's not a hobby for us , its a consuming passion .
In terms of streaming etc , music has become no different than any other commodity in that more and more is controlled by fewer and fewer . More than half of the phrases an average American utters were written by a marketer !

Mom and Dad were right .

The exact opposite is taking place .