The Work-Standard (2^nd Ed.) routinely employed the terms “State Budget,” “State Revenue,” and “State Expense” within the broader discussion of the LER (Life-Energization Reciprocity) and LERE (Life-Energization Reciprocal Electrification) Processes. The “State Budget” described therein and in The Third Place (1^st Ed.) was designed specifically for the Work-Standard. This is significant because the concept of a “State Budget” is also meant to be understood as distinct from the conventional budgets employed by Parliaments in Production for Profit and Production for Utility. It is one of the various characteristics associated with Production for Dasein.

Every Profession falls under a given Domain attached to the Work-World. The Domains of the Work-World correspond to a well-delineated range of related activities capable of contributing Arbeit and Geld to the Life-Energy Reserve. When a Profession gets attached to a Domain, it receives the ability to create sources of Arbeit and Geld. Such Domains, as I had pointed out in The Third Place, do not necessarily need to exist within the VCS Planned/Command Economy. They could just as easily be related to Domains presiding over the various economic activities of the Socialist Student Economy (SSE) or the National Intranet. The former in particular was an area of interest in The Third Place that culminated with me conceptualizing the “Shopping Citadel.”  

All contributions of Arbeit and Geld to the Life-Energy Reserve eventually counts toward the State Budget of the Council State. Here, the State Budget is the difference between the State Revenues and the State Expenses. The State Revenues are gathered from a combination of monetary and fiscal policies as part of the Socialist Nation’s broader economic policies. To recall what was written in The Work-Standard and The Third Place, State Revenue arises from direct contributions of Arbeit and Geld to the Life-Energy Reserve vis-à-vis the LER and LERE Processes. These contributions form the combined effort of the SSE, VCS Economy, Reciprocal-Reserve Banking System, Council State, and National Intranet within the State of Total Mobilization. This combined effort is represented by the TPP (Total Productive Potential) Equation.

Any expenditures incurred on the State, Totality and Self are State Expenses that must be paid off in full. That includes the Paygrades the Totality and Self are expected to receive at the end of each workweek for their contributions to the Life-Energy Reserve. Any remaining State Revenues will then be added to the State Budget and left to the discretion of the Council State. The Council State may decide to spend its surplus State Revenues now or it can save them for later. Sometimes, it is better to hold on to the State Revenues and spend them on a later date.

Back in The Work-Standard, the aforementioned procedure was contextualized in the form of two basic mathematical equations:

State Revenue = LER Account + SI-EF Accounts

State Budget = State Revenue – State Expense

Both equations are meant to be understood more broadly as part of the TPP Equation:

TPP = (State Budget + People’s Geld) + (RTEP + RTFP) + (NSFIs + State Investments)

TPP = TPP Account + LER Accounts + SI-EF Accounts

When we read the TPP Equation, we must realize that the “State Budget” here represents whatever State Revenues have been left unspent by the Council State. They are the Arbeit and Geld of the LER and SI-EF Accounts from the previous workweek, whose presence as the “State Budget” should be differentiated from the LER and SI-EF Accounts for the current workweek. We can refer back to what I had said earlier about how the Council State can always save its State Revenues from the previous workweek, carrying it over to the current one. Always keep that in mind because the State Budget also counts toward the RPF (Requisitionary Productive Forces) value, which affects how many units of currency can be brought into circulation by the Central Bank.    

Therefore, one must ponder on what exactly makes the State Budget so distinct from a Parliamentary Budget. There is noticeable distinguishable set of characteristics in a Parliamentary Budget that deserve mention insofar as it is related to the first and second Modes of Production, Production for Profit and Production for Utility. At first glance, it would seem that the State Budget and Parliamentary Budget are similar to each other. But initial appearances are deceiving because the former tracks and records Arbeit and Geld, whereas the latter is more fixated on Kapital and Schuld. In the case of the “Parliamentary Budget,” it is evident based on the manner in which it calculates the “Parliamentary Revenues” and “Parliamentary Expenses.”

If a State Budget is the difference between the State Revenue and the State Expense, then a Parliamentary Budget is polar opposite. In other words, the “Parliamentary Budget” is the sum of the “Parliamentary Revenue” and “Parliamentary Expense.”

Parliamentary Budget = Parliamentary Revenue + Parliamentary Expense

Here, we discover that the Parliamentary Budget represents the accumulation of both Kapital and Schuld within the official functions of Parliament. It tracks the Kapital that the Parliament collects from its taxation policies and the Schuld that the Parliament accrues from its own spending.

As Parliamentary Revenues pour in, it is then allocated to a series of three different “Funds” that are intended to be spent in one form or another. While two of them are called “Proprietary Funds,” and “Fiduciary Funds,” there is a third Fund that deserves the fitting title of “Parliament Fund” insofar as the Kapital and Schuld therein are at the discretion of Parliament.

The Proprietary Fund corresponds to Production for Profit because it refers to the Kapital Accumulation of economic activities conducted by Parliament. This Fund consists of Kapital made selling goods and services to Civil Society and Parliament. In a Parliamentary Democracy, it is mundane for organizations operating under the auspices of Parliament to charge each other Kapital for their services. This is also part of the same Incentive behind why the US National Debt happens to be the highest on Earth. Aside from the Kapital investments in US Treasurys by the American people, the Federal government under the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican Party reaps a significant portion of its Sovereign Schuld in this manner. Forget about the Schuld owed to foreign nations, the Schuld owed to itself and the American people are the most profound.       

The Fiduciary Fund corresponds to Production for Utility due to its inherent characteristics. It controls the Kapital and Schuld behind the financing of Welfare Capitalism in the forms of pensions and insurance plans, in addition to the Kapital and Schuld of organizations operating at the behest of Parliament. Production for Utility describes the Fiduciary Fund perfectly because of the fact that the Kapital and Schuld here are purely administrative and organizational in nature.    

Finally, the Parliamentary Fund is where most of the Kapital and Schuld comes from the levying of taxes and the mechanisms by which Parliament spends Kapital and accrues Schuld. There are Funds for specific taxation policies, such as tariffs and income taxes, as well as those intended for spending on subsidies and the repayments of Schuld over the long-term. Other Funds are Kapital acquired from issuances of Bonds as an LCFI (Liberal Capitalist Financial Instrument) and those which were simply donated to the Parliament by Private Citizens within the Civil Society.  

Based on the implications of the Work-Standard and how I handled the discussion of the State Budget, I am confident that the “State Funds” of the Council State will operate differently from the “Parliamentary Funds” of the Parliament. And even though I did not elaborate on the “State Funds” of the Council State in The Work-Standard or The Third Place, the precedent was already set into motion because of the specific equation for the State Budget:  

State Budget = State Revenue – State Expenses

Contrast that equation with the one for the Parliamentary Budget and we have the makings of another half of this Blog post:

Parliamentary Budget = Parliamentary Revenue + Parliamentary Expense

Categories: Politics

Tags: Accounting, ARPLAN, Economics, Finance, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Socialist Finance, Third Place, Total Educational Effort, Total Mobilization, Work-Standard