Word: parkinsons
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...classic form, Parkinson's Law (TIME, Oct. 28, 1957) holds that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion," ergo, an organization's personnel mushrooms faster than mushrooms. In his earlier book, Author Parkinson also bantered entertainingly on how to tell somebodies from nobodies at cocktail parties (the somebodies come late and shun walls), how institutions achieve perfection of layout just before collapsing, and how the deliberations of any finance committee "will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved." The Law and the Profits, well illustrated by Cartoonist Robert C. Osborn, is twice...
Epic Tax Dodge. Parkinson's Second Law-"Expenditure rises to meet income" -is scarcely a novel blockhead buster...
Still most governments, as Parkinson says, are too blockheaded to learn it. The power to tax creates the illusion of limitless income, and nations blissfully spend themselves into bankruptcy. France's Ancien Regime bled its life away in red ink before a single head fell under the guillotine...
Like certain poisons, taxes can be taken only in small doses. When the peacetime national tax passes 10%, people begin to take evasive action (in Parkinson's view, the Book of Exodus is the story of an epic tax dodge). At about 25%, inflation debases the currency. Over 35%, taxes are alms for oblivion; the nation is carting itself to history's junkpile...
Taxes sap the vigor of a country, says Parkinson, since the proceeds are almost totally wasted. In the old unsophisticated days, kings spent the money on banquets and concubines, and then biology, at least, imposed fiscal limits. But the modern bureau with its research analysts and printing presses gobbles up limitless funds -with no fun to show for it. The life cycle of a bureau is ruled by one law: "It spends and therefore is." In one of the skits with which Author Parkinson enlivens his chronicle, he pictures a breathless female statistician rushing in to the U.S. Secretary...