EOnation: Burt's Global Model of our Present Condition

[WesBurt@aol.com]

To:  World Bank, The Quality of Growth E-Seminar, at
        qog@lists.worldbank.org

To:  The Treaty of Noordwijk aan Zee at URL  
       www.treatyofnoordwijkaanzee.com 
    
To:  Citizen's Income (CI) Discussion site at URL
      http://citiinco01.uuhost.uk.uu.net/discussion/index.shtml, 

To: Robley E. George, Director
      Center for the Study of Democratic Societies
      <A HREF="http://www.centersds.com/";>http://www.centersds.com/</A>

To: Friends on several mail lists.

Good day folks,

The subject model has been posted on the Internet at URL 
http://www.freespeech.org/darves/bert.html
for nearly two years, and not one of the frequent posters to the 
Internet has ever mentioned or questioned any of the 
controversial issues illustrated by the model.  For example, here 
are several issues that I have never seen addressed on the 
Internet or in the Media:

* How much money is used to run the US economy?  Is it M1, 
M2, M3, L, Federal Debt, or total national debt?

* Was the total tax rate of the late USSR correctly shown on 
Figure 1, or was the real total tax rate closer to 75% of the 
USSR GNP, when socialism included the expense of industrial 
management in the cost of government?

* The USSR public revenue was collected, 92% from indirect 
taxes on factories and businesses, with only 8% from direct 
taxes on personal incomes.  Why are sales and value-added 
taxes so popular in Europe and so often proposed in the US? 

* Why has the US consumer price index increased by 
2-3 percentage/year (Why has the value of the dollar declined by 
2-3 percentage/year since the 1890s?)

* Why does the Basic Income European Network (BIEN) and 
the Citizen's Income Discussion site seem to prefer a universal 
basic income for adults, and oppose a universal basic income 
for children?

* How will the over educated "chattering class" earn their living 
in a society without poverty or war?

>>>> End seven issues that I have never seen addressed <<<<<

Those frequent posters who believe that graphs, drawings, and 
blue prints are useful to tradesmen and carpenters, but not 
necessary for a public debate among members of the well 
educated class, may be right.  They continue to rule the roost 
with words only.  But for the benefit of the innocents who want 
to know what is being done to them, and who is doing it, please 
find copied below the text from the subject web site.

>>> Begin text only of Burt's model, figures do not copy. <<<

The following graphs were posted in January 1999 by Derek 
Darves to the Free Speech web site at URL: 
http://www.freespeech.org/darves/bert.html
If you have any questions about the graphs, please e-mail 
Wes Burt ( WesBurt@aol.com).  
  
WELCOME, you have found the only technically valid global 
model on the Internet, a global model which fairly illustrates 
both the macro and micro aspects of the present condition 
of our global industrial society.  This model is simple, but 
profound, because it addresses certain aspects of our 
present condition which are conspicuously missing from the 
content of other web sites which discuss global issues.  A 
small sample of such impressive but incomplete web sites 
includes: 

1, http://www.abel.co.uk/~febl/tst/frame.htm, by DR Diarmid 
Weir, 
2, http://www.kenraggio.com/, by Ken Raggio 
3, http://www.stakes.fi/gaspp/, by GASPP 
4, http://www.hri.org/docs/UDHR48.html, 1948 Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights 
5, http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/home.htm, by 
Cliff Pickover 
6, http://www.gaia.org/ic/market/money/, by Thomas H. 
GrecoJr.
7, http://www.mind-trek.com/reports/tl10-2.htm, by 
Frederick Mann 

Please scroll down to the lowest graph, Figure 10 .  That visual-
aid on the condition of the United States was drawn in 1969 from 
the centerfold illustration of the 166 year profile of the US 
Consumer Price Index (CPI) which was included in an article on 
inflation in the October 1966 issue of Fortune magazine.  Nothing 
like that centerfold profile was seen again in the US print media 
until 1993, when authors James Dale Davidson and Lord William 
Rees-Mogg published THE GREAT RECKONING with similar 
price index profiles for the UK on page 356 and for the US 
on page 359. 

The CPI profile in Figure 10 shows a century of stable operation 
of the American economy, during which the production of 
goods and services expanded faster than the medium of 
exchange in circulation, except during war time, to cause a 
steady increase in the value of the US dollar during peace 
time.  The "Great Transformation," as Karl Polanyi described 
it in his 1944 book of that title, became perceptible in the 1890s 
as a sustained trend of 2-3%/year inflation and 4-10% 
unemployment which continues uncorrected to this day. 

The subject global model, consisting of a macro-model, Figures 1 
through 6 (Fig. 4 and 5 omitted), and a micro-model, Figures 7 
through 9, has been evolving in my mind for about 46 years.  
It has its ancient roots in the corporations established in Rome in 
the days of King Numa, according to Emile Durkheim in his 1902 
preface to the second edition of his THE DIVISION OF LABOR IN 
SOCIETY, and its modern roots in the practice of corporate 
management, not as promulgated by Peter Drucker or Paul A. 
Samuelson, but as practiced in the General Electric Company 
and in the Electric Power Industry in the 1950s.  So you ask: 
what can the study of these greedy and powerful multinational 
corporations and power-outage prone utility corporations teach 
us about the ongoing transformation of our world, which our 
poets, prophets, and philosophers call "globalization?" 

Well, for one thing, both our corporations and our electric 
power industry have evolved during the 20th century from a 
population of isolated businesses serving local markets to 
become single integrated international organizations whose 
members are themselves decentralized, dispersed, and 
diversified sovereign corporations.  Both the corporation and 
the industry have successfully answered two vital questions 
about our social structure: 1, what functions of management, 
or government, must be centralized and held in common by 
all members? And, 2, what functions may be decentralized 
and delegated to the members? 

Our choice is not between "planning" and "no planning," or 
between Communism and Democratic-Capitalism.  Instead, 
every stable and prosperous nation has a planned, programmed, 
and budgeted (non-democratic) centralized function which 
amounts to between 30% and 60% of the total operation (GNP), 
as illustrated in Figure 1 .  Among stable and prosperous 
corporations, however, the centralized function was 30% of 
annual sales in each of the ten American corporations I worked 
for between 1947 and 1985.  If we recall that the book of 
Numbers in the Pentateuch (first five books of the bible) also 
prescribed three tithes as the proper direct tax structure for the 
twelve tribes of Biblical Israel, we might wonder if our 
corporations know something which many of our present 
governments have forgotten. 

At their present state of development, the General Electric 
Company (and every other equally well managed multinational 
business), together with the electric power industry (no other 
automated industry satisfies the demand for its product in real 
time), are themselves perfect miniature models of, and also the 
building blocks of, a national or global economy.  If you have 
seen one business enterprise, with its world market, its capital 
plant, its local labor market, and its workforce and their 
dependents as illustrated in Figure 6, you have seen every 
essential macro aspect of every "economy," from a family farm, 
to a community, a State, a Nation, or the Global economy. 

The micro aspects of the Global Model are illustrated by Figure 
7-9 and expanded Figure 8b, in a manner which pictures the 
whole workforce arranged in increasing order of the value-
added by each individual member of the workforce.  Only three 
regulating principles are invoked to support the technical validity 
of this micro model: 

One, Each member has a finite lifecycle, birth to death, beginning 
with a 16 to 26 year period of dependency upon parents and 
the current workforce, prior to the forty year productive period, 
and concluding with a second and final period of dependency 
on the current workforce.  Children and retired people do not 
produce what they consume, the current workforce produces 
what everyone consumes, day by day. 

Two, The normal competitive action of the labor market will tend 
to bring the unit price of every kind of labor to a single unit price 
(Dollars/unit of VA) as shown by the radial lines of Fig. 8 and the 
horizontal lines in Fig. 9.  This principle operates with all 
mediums of exchange, from barter to gold money, to paper 
currency, to computer blips. 

Three, Like death and taxes, the 50/50 expense of educating and 
supporting dependents is an unavoidable factor in the life of 
each member of the workforce.  This expense may be 
negligible for high income members, but it becomes the most 
significant factor for the younger and lower income members
of the workforce when they are starting their families.  
Everybody understands the benefits of a public investment in 
education.  Only the United Kingdom and the United States, 
among the industrial nations, still fail to understand the benefits 
of an adequate public investment in the support of dependent 
children, and, also fail to understand the extent to which the 
social order is depressed by the failure to make such an 
adequate public investment in the support of dependent children. 

And again, WELCOME, you have found the only technically 
valid Global Model on the Internet. 

Sincerely yours, 

WesBurt
  
>>>> Begin Figures on the web site, but not copied: <<<<<

Figure 1, National performance Vs tax rate (percentage of 
1994 GNP).
  
Figure 2-3, US Data, M1, DJI index, M3 Vs years, 1959 - 1994.
  
Figure 6, a macro-model of industrial society, (Fig 6 missing, 
as of 2000-10-04).

Figure 7-9, The Whole Divine Law, a micro-model of industrial 
society.

Figure 8b, The US Systemic Defect Of Omission, at the micro level.
  
Figure 10, The Characteristic of Systems, Nations, and the US.

>>>> End Figures on the web site, but not copied: <<<<<
 
Afterthought: An excerpt from a letter posted by Ian Ritchie in 
January 1999 at URL:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/3142/IR/items//19990119WesBurtSustaina

bleFuture.html

 Hi Folks, 

This note fairly summarizes my present understanding of the 
obstacles to a sustainable future and provides a way to 
surmount those obstacles. The primary obstacle is the fear and 
loathing with which our teachers, managers, and governors (the 
Thirteenth Tribe) regard the public.   As long as the conventional 
wisdom asserts that we live in THE ZERO-SUM SOCIETY and 
that THE ZERO-SUM SOLUTION is the only solution, then the 
establishment quite properly may truly believe that if they give 
the public an inch, the public will take a mile.  And P. T. 
Barnum affirmed the common practice and belief when he 
said: "Never give the suckers an even break!" 

That baseless self-delusion of the comfortable classes was 
discussed by Jose' Ortega y Gasset in THE REVOLT OF 
THE MASSES, 1930.  In a word, we can hold out until 
violent change is inevitable, or, we can engage in a 
constructive dialog to find alternatives to THE ZERO-SUM 
SOCIETY and THE ZERO-SUM SOLUTION. 

>>> End text only of Burt's model, figures do not copy. <<<

Upon my return on Dec. 16 from a delightful one week vacation 
at Marco Island in Florida, I was depressed to hear that my 
faviorite mail list, SANE-FORUM, is about to give up the fight 
for a just and prosperous society in South Africa.  They might 
just as well give up, if they believe a just and prosperous society 
can be built on alternative currencies, universal basic incomes, 
indirect taxes, and monetary reform; without correcting "the 
systemic defect of omission" which is latent in every 
industrial society.

Best wishes to all for a merry Christmas and a happy new year,

Wesley S, Burt

PS, Perhaps members of the "chattering class" sense the 
beginning of a trend toward the elimination of poverty and war, 
and want to get the Universal Basic Income for adults in place 
before their sources of funding dry up and they have to find 
useful employment to earn their living.