I just quoted a young man a price on doing a few things for his European-manufactured euphonium. He’s coming over this evening. I thought about the price I quoted him, and realized that – though it sure sounds like a lot of money to me – it really wouldn’t buy very much stuff.
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semi-related:
Just over the past couple of days, Mrs. bloke, my son, and I have been unloading a second heaping trailer of brick rubble from a just-torn-down chimney (rubble which was given to us, though we had to obviously have our trailer there at the ready right next to where the chimney was being demolished).
Again: thinking about what it would’ve cost to have someone bring in two truckloads of riprap, and to pay some workmen to place that around the pond…probably: the price of a pretty nice tuba.
(‘ sorry: quarries, rock crushers, riprap retailers, and laborers)
That’s why we repair our own house, build our own fences, and build our own barns, along with an endless list of other things that most people hire done. Besides not having to earn the money to pay for others to do all those things, we don’t have to earn the money to pay the TAX on the money to pay all those people to do all those things, and “not paying the tax“ means “not feeding the beast“.
As a footnote, I always chuckle at the “green” people, who really waste a lot of material and fuel (many of whom are wealthy, and simply pay lip service to conservation), whereas I am truly geometrically more “green” than are most of them.
i married one, and a red headed one at that... 
