These Machines Were Made For Walking

Our annual Open House was very busy and we moved a good deal of machinery last week. Why?

We demonstrated a number of current generation in-line or near line machines that reduce labor. Surprised? I didn’t think so. Over the weekend I heard pundits talking about how businesses could hire right now but can’t find good people. Sound familiar?

The new Drylam ALM3220 is a single or double sided laminator that works just like a copy machine. You put the stock in, hit start and walk away. You can go get a cup of coffee, read the paper, or go over to The new MBM Aerocut slitter, cutter and creaser. This machine slits, cuts, and creases business cards, CD booklets, brochures, or anything up to 19” wide and infinite in length. Just put the stock in, hit start, and walk away. You may want to walk over to your digital printer or load up The Sterling Digipunch automatic “touch screen punch.” Simply load up to five reams of paper, hit start, and walk away. Your material will be sitting in the delivery tray on each of these machines when you return. Or, you can use the Graphic Whizard Creasemaster and UV coater in-line to produce eye popping brochures, creased, coated, and ready to go.

It’s hard to resist machines that reduce labor, and are as easy to run as these machines are. Either do these things the way you have always done them, or just keep walking.

Let Them Eat Cake

There’s been a great deal of talk about class warfare lately. Apparently the President wants to raise taxes on millionaires a couple of points. Also, the top .4% of the country’s top earners will have their earnings taxed as income, rather than on the much lower rate of capital gains. This is now known as the Buffet Rule, after Warren Buffet wrote an Op-Ed piece complaining that his secretary paid about a 33% income tax rate while he only paid about 15%.

Now to the picture above. The French Revolution was carried out against an aristocracy unmoved by the plight of the poor people living under their rule. How large was this aristocracy? .5%. So the French Aristocracy was about the same size as our capitalist aristocracy over two hundred years later. If this were class warfare, we’d be rolling out the guillotines—not asking for a fair tax rate for the wealthiest of the wealthy.

Some say that this top .4% are job creators and that a higher tax rate will hamper the creation of jobs in this country. And they are 100% right. The wealthy are creating jobs. But where?

Two weeks ago The Swiss watch company, Vacheron Constantin opened their first store in the United States. Their shelves are stocked with 55 watches, a 50 million dollar inventory. Yes that’s right, the watches sell for $905,000. Just imagine how many jobs will be lost if billionaires have to cut back and are unable to purchase million dollar watches? How many employees will have to high tail it back to Switzerland?

Meanwhile, the wealthy still have to drive over the same crumbling roads and bridges that we do. They still have to wade through the homeless after going to fine restaurants.

Time is money and we're running out of time. The wealthy are not running out of money. Perhaps it is time for these most affluent of us to pitch in for more important things than a perfect timepiece.