On page 22 of CWL 15 there is a list to demonstrate the (“horizontal”) sequence of operations over time from the potentialities of nature to finished machine tools and to cotton dresses . In these two lists, one can sort out – rather than the (“horizontal”) sequence of contributions to a finished consumer product – the several (“vertical”) levels of capital goods and the one level of user goods within the economic process. There may be, for example, 4 levels of production in a “stack” of levels: 3 levels of capital-goods production and one level of consumer-goods production. Level 4 supplies to level 3 ; level 3 supplies to level 2; level 2 supplies to level 1. Finally, level 1 supplies clothing which exits the process and is consumed in a standard of living.
In most places, for a simple yet an adequate demonstration of economic principles, we have combined levels of capital goods circuits (levels 4 through 2) into a single “surplus” level. Thus, instead of a 4 circuits of outlays-incomes-expenditures-receipts with 4 crossovers up one level for repair-and-maintenance and expansionary capital and 4 crossovers merging down to the consumer-goods level, we have 2 circuits connected by crossovers. So, instead of point-to-surface, point-to-volume, or higher correspondences, we need deal simply only with the correspondence of current-determinate-pointflow-to-current-determinate-pointflow and current-determinate-pointflow-to-future-indeterminate-line-of-flows.[1]