Independence, Death and Taxes

As we emerge from the United States Independence Day holiday amidst a bevy of Supreme Court controversies and the aftermath of a televised presidential debate referred to as “the season finale of the United States,” I thought a look back at a more optimistic time might be nice. So, let’s talk about death and taxes.

Benjamin Franklin has the distinction of being the only person to sign all the four foundational documents that led to the formation of the United States: the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Alliance with France, the 1783 peace treaty with Great Britain and the United States Constitution. Following the ratification of the Constitution in June 1788, Benjamin Franklin wrote to a friend in Paris, “Our new Constitution is now established, everything seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.”  These may not sound like the words of an optimist, but he was perhaps one of the world’s most pragmatic optimists.

And dare we say it? Taxes are good business! While much of the collection process has moved online, the US Internal Revenue Service alone sends approximately 170 million individual, multi-page income taxpayer notices and another 40 million to businesses. This is before considering all the other types of fee and tax collection activity at the federal, state and municipal level. This is a business that VariVerge knows well. VariVerge now prints tax notices for roughly half of the counties in the State of Texas and since 2019 their volume of business has doubled. I had the opportunity to talk with their CEO, Luke Austin about the role that inkjet presses from Screen and Kyocera played in driving double digit growth. There’s no doubt that inkjet can create new optimists.

Once such optimist is Paddy O'Hara who is the head of sales for Inkjet Solutions at Epson Europe who shared his insights on all the different types of applications that can, and are, tackled with Epson printheads in the industrial arena. Toshiba TEC is also trying to expand their boundaries with new oil-based, UV printheads that increase speed versus previous models without sacrificing velocity or stability. The inkjet industrial revolution is alive and well and no doubt headed to an application near you.

I’m afraid that I have no words of optimism to offer on our current political condition, but Franklin certainly expected our better angels to eventually prevail. Before his death he wrote: 

“The rapid progress of the sciences makes me, at times, sorry that I was born so soon. Imagine the power that man will have over matter a few hundred years from now. We may learn how to remove gravity from large masses and float them over great distances, agriculture will double its produce with less labor, all diseases will surely be cured, even old age. If only the moral sciences could be improved as well. Perhaps men would cease to be wolves to one another and human beings could learn to be…human.”

I fear we are not nearly as morally advanced as wolves, but I’m only certain of death and taxes.

Elizabeth