Page 5 - Bulletin Vol 26 No 1 - Jan-April 2021 - FINAL

Message from Donald Hills, DDS

Editorial

Widget Supply Shenanigans

I ran into Tony the other day. Readers may remember Tony, the jovial widget
manufacturer I spoke with in a hotel bar back in the day when a conversation
with a stranger in a hotel bar was something that actually could happen. During
another spirited discussion, we once again shared some of the pitfalls and tri-
umphs of owning a small business.
Tony assembles complex biological widgets, which as you may recall, requires superb expertise, precision,
and a great many parts. Acme is the world leader providing supplies to widget manufacturers. Tony in-
formed me how Acme continues to dominate the widget supply universe and he continues to suffer with
rising costs. I interjected, “Don’t even go there, my PPE costs quadrupled in a matter of weeks.” Apparent-
ly, widget manufacturing requires significant PPE and I was not surprised to learn PPE demand boosted
sales at Acme; their Q4 profits, even in a pandemic were close to 20%. In fact, in a statement to the press,
the CEO of Acme announced sales were so strong, Acme was able to acquire 30 additional widget supply
companies. Their overseas operations expanded into 18 countries.

Acme aggressively promotes their services to widget producers and continues to polish their image by gen-
erously donating to and sponsoring many widget manufacturing events. Acme’s online courses have
reached thousands of widget makers. Although temporarily closed to on site learning, their recently com-
pleted $50 million education center is ready to entice both young and old with the latest high tech digital
widget production equipment. All of this does not sit well with Tony. He maintains the quality of a widget
ultimately comes down to the skill of the operator creating the widget. I argued perhaps the latest new
equipment will allow widget makers to produce a better widget. Tony insisted poor quality widgets contin-
ue to reach the market and the newest, always expensive, highly profitable for Acme technology will do
nothing to improve widget standards. Tony saw only increasing costs. I argued high tech, digital enhance-
ments will absolutely benefit everyone. Tony insisted the increased cost of high tech equipment is not sus-
tainable and widget consumers inevitably question the cost of their widgets.

Clearly, it was time for a change of direction in our conversation.
Some expenses are unavoidable. Benjamin Franklin famously remarked, “in this world nothing can be said
to be certain, except death and taxes.” Tony and I agreed, in a Covid-19 universe, it’s best to steer away
from any discourse concerning death, but taxes are truly fair game for our indignant rage. It was no shock
to me when Tony complained about his annual rent increase to cover his landlord’s real estate taxes. Simi-
lar to my lease, Tony is locked into a long-standing basis for establishing his share of his landlord’s tax obli-
gation. Tenants universally cover tax increases and landlords care little about curtailing such escalations.

Tony and I both rejoiced knowing Acme, with all its wealth, owns its real estate and cannot simply pass tax-
es on to tenants. We couldn’t be more wrong! Acme recently announced a planned renovation to its
headquarters. As many large employers in the area are prone to do, prior to any renovation they feign

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