Death to Taxes!

THE LAW AND THE PROFITS (246 pp.)--C. Northcote Parkinson -- Houghton Mifflin ($3.50).

During World War II, a chairborne British army officer was assigned to a secret project "not essential to winning the war." In command was an air admiral, assisted by a full colonel, assisted by a major. Fourth in line was Captain Parkinson. One day the admiral was sent on a mission, the colonel went on leave, and the major was taken sick. Left in full charge, Captain Parkinson found that he did all of the project's work in an hour.

Actually, C. (for Cyril) Northcote Parkin son had discovered the most intriguing fact about the apple since Newton -- how many bureaucrats it takes to polish it.

Put in its now 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 as long and half as funny. Grappling with the tax spiral and inane bureaucratic waste, the onetime Raffles Professor of History at the University of Malaya has understandably lost some of his donnish laughter.

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 of Agriculture's office, bearing one of the thousands of pamphlets the Government publishes each year.

She: Mr. Secretary, here is the latest--Teenage Girls Discuss Their Wardrobes--and what a smart cover! We asked them whether they bought their own clothes or whether they took their mothers along to the store.

Mr. Sec.: Gee, that's quite an idea! And what did they answer? She: Some take their mothers. Some don't.

Mr. Sec.: Why, that's great.

She: But you haven't heard it all. No, sir! Sometimes they argue the matter and make a joint decision! The dialogue may be fiction, but the pamphlet is a 126-page fact.

The Abominable No-Men. Sporadic attempts to pare "the Anglo-Saxon waste line" are balked by "esoterrorism." In antiquated British budgeting, for instance, accounting is a branch of hieroglyphics, and not even a bureau chief can wholly decipher where the money goes. It is sometimes difficult in the U.S. too. The Pentagon, reports Parkinson, chalked off $7 1/2 billion in "surplus equipment" in 1958, including "$60 million in spare parts for the F-100 fighter--unwanted; $70 million for the Goose Missile--given up; $374 million for the air-to-air Rascal-abandoned; and $750 million for the Navaho guided missile--scrapped." These losses, Parkinson feels, simply reflect his sub-law that "when funds are limitless, the only economy made is in thinking."

For all the vast sums entrusted to them, bureaucracies never prepare adequately for war or skillfully shape the peace, says Parkinson. The reason: every new idea is in danger of dying a lingering death in the in-and out-boxes of "the Abominable No-Men" who endlessly pass the buck rather than make decisions for which they might later be held responsible.

The Sleepwalkers. Cassandra all but confiscates the jester's bells in the last chapters of The Law and the Profits. To Parkinson's somber eye, an overtaxed society lies under a multiple curse. Inertia replaces initiative. The spirit of envy displaces the sense of property. Freedom and purpose give way to a vexatious spirit of rebellion. Individual responsibility slackens and individuality dies. "The tax-gathering Utopia," as Parkinson dubs it, that was to legislate an equal chance for everyone has now reared the Teddy Boys with switchblades. "These are the first products of the Welfare State . . . They are children who, by comparison with earlier generations, have been given everything except a purpose in life."

With or without Teddy Boys, Parkinson warns, the U.S. may be sleepwalking down the same path.

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