Provide a detailed but easy to understand explanation of Figure 68 (page 341) from Augustine's Laws.

IT'S WORTH, SAVE YOUR MONEY 341 of the fastest-growing team anywhere in the Free World. At least that's what the two founders told their enthusiastic class ar the local business school as they gave their final lecture before graduation. The two students in the front row, close friends through their interest in the model railroading club. listened attentively. The trend in the growth of government as measured by the number of people it employs is, of course, paralleled by the government's control of the economy as a whole as measured by financial receipts, and in turn by the government's ability to conduct its own projects on its own behalf as it sees fit. There is now a tax collector some- where in the United States extracting a dollar from someone every twenty-five milliseconds-including roughly half of each dollar of the profits earned by industry and perhaps half-again of the remain- ing portion passed along to shareholders. The average citizen now works until May 11 of each year simply to pay his or her taxes. By extrapolationg the trend shown in Figure 68, it can be seen that The Demise of Free Enterprise Figure 68 Governmental dominance of the national economy should help estab- lish the bond which some say is lacking in the United States between government and industry since even today government truly is industry's partner, thoughtfully sharing the fruits of industry's labors with industry on a roughly fifty-fifty basis (not including, of course, the government's subsequent additional sharing of any dividends that flow to the owners of industry)342 AUGUSTINE'S LAWS the government will by the year 2120 have all the money that is generated in the U.S. economy and, as has already been noted, will directly employ all the people about sixty years prior to that time. What will happen during the interim period between these dates is not yet clear, but poses the interesting question of whether the lay person left in the private sector will have to support the entire na- tion's work force, or whether this last tenacious individual instead will enjoy the full benefit of those residual funds not yet controlled by government. In terms of the fraction of the gross national product absorbed in government receipts, one can also use the extrapolation presented in Figure 68 to ascertain that in this respect the United States lags behind England by only seventeen years, Sweden by only fifty-six years, and the Soviet Union and China by about 125 years. As former Senator S. I. Hayakawa noted, regarding his experiences in reviewing money legislation, "So in five minutes we have disposed of two billion bucks, two billion, not two million; I never realized it could be so easy. It's all simple addition. You don't even have to know subtraction!" Bill Schneider, an associate director of the Office of Management and Budget in Washington, warns, "One thing we must particularly guard against is the danger that we might get all the government we pay for." The challenge which this unrelenting trend will pose for future presidents is stupefying. George Washington, for example, needed to dispose of only $14,031 per day during his period in office. Abraham Lincoln, abetted by a war, needed to sign checks for but $2,228,989 each day. Even Franklin Roosevelt had to contend with only $82,679,783 per day, but by Jimmy Carter's time his respons sibilities for spending had grown to $1,618,958,904 daily. Today, it takes less than seventeen seconds for President Clinton to dispose of what George Washington took an entire year to discard. Think of the challenge which will be found by future presidents. Based on the established trend, this individual will awaken each morning faced with the task of unloading five trillion dollars before nightfall. Of course, the possibility does remain that inflation may yet make this easy. Yogi Berra, for example, tells us that "a nickel ain't worth a dime anymore."FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH, SAVE YOUR MONEY Furthermore. the expenditure stakes are accelerating: In took the uderal government seventy-seven years to build up to where it could dispose of $1 billion in a single year, It reached the $10 billion level in another fifty-three years, jumped to $100 billion in just forty-three more years, and required only twenty-five years to smash through the $1 trillion ($1,000,000,000,000.00 for those who like figures) harrier. "Blessed are the young." said Herbert Hoover, "for they chall inherit the national debt." The significance of these observations to a businessperson in the private sector is obvious. Their significance to a government manager, although perhaps less obvious, is nonetheless every bit is devastating: namely, that competition among potential sources is the essence of a buyer's leverage, and the absence of a multiplicity of strong competitors caused by the government's election to provide its own goods and services can only lessen the government manager's own chances of success. It is thus with guarded optimism that Augustine's Final Law, the Law of Bureaucratic Absorption, is stated: LAW NUMBER LI People working in the private sector should try to SAVE money. There remains the possibility that it may someday be valuable again. Randy Jayne, formerly of the Office of Management and Budget and now an executive with the General Dynamics Corporation, offers the encouraging observation, "There is life after government. " But unfortunately, much of the evidence is to the contrary. As noted, it seems to suggest that eventually the government will employ all the people and tax away all their earnings in order to pay all their wages. In its final stage of development, government thus becomes the ultimate self-eating watermelon. Are live In Pot