It really isn't. Everyone, let's not forget that one of the goals of this plan is to create a wealthy domestic consumer base that can provide internal demand to our industry. Unsurprisingly, the best way to create said base is to actually pay our workers a lot - so, what is the point in trying to push through an immigration reform explicitly aimed at dropping the labor prices? That's just shooting ourselves in the foot.
Moreover, having to actually pay their workers will pressure the management into modernizing the production lines on its own, without us having to force it from above. We've already committed to one strategy, changing course now would be really counterproductive.
All good points. But on the other hand, it sounds like a general reform to the immigration system to attract highly educated folks, and by altering the system to attract people who can be picky, it will give people at the bottom end of the scale - our people and guest workers - a better situation due to grinding down the number of ways that low skilled immigration can be used to screw over domestic low skilled folks.
Still, between what you're saying and the evident weakness of the Euro drive, maybe immigration reform isn't the most important priority right now...
The issue with the Euro is that well, its biggest backer (Kosygin) retired, and it seem its main SoE proponents got their political influence decimated during the Voz-Klim transition (through the anti-corruption campaigns and economic crisis I suspect) as you can see mentioned in the previous Euro favor:
[]Accelerate Euro Adoption: Current tepid questions on the Euro are due to the resignation of Kosygin and some agitation for local currency. The enterprises that have massively pushed for further trade integration have to an extent been discredited but the cause itself is still justified. Ensuring that the previously made plan for a universal currency across European CMEA is adopted in full and not politically fought can provide significant long-term dividends. Forcing the vote before 1975 and in what is likely to be an economic upturn will only further improve the odds of universal passage. (Costs a Favor from Romanov)
So right now, we have an uninterested Romanov (it cost a favor from him to make sure he is onboard with the vote), a Semyonov in a very shaky political position (if it takes a favor from him, the Euro's biggest proponent, to force a vote, it means he must be wary of spending his political capital in pushing for it) and well, us. If we aren't proactive here, I expect things to move very slowly in terms of the Euro. Especially if Semyonov loses his position in the next couple of years. So I guess the rationale of pushing for a vote now is ensuring the question of the Euro isn't thrown into the backburner.
The option as it is written seems relatively reasonable, certainly ensuring some fiscal responsibility in say, Yugoslavia would probably help us avoid some issues down the line, though at the cost of some economic growth, and having a version of the ECU should help with interbloc trade and to develop CMEA's financial insititutions. The main issue, of course, is if it fails. If it does, Semyonov spent a lot of political capital to look bad at a time his position is already shaky. We would probably lose some face and hurt our relationship with his faction as well. If it works, we please some enterprises, give ourselves and Semyonov a W and get significant progress on the question of the Euro.
On the other hand, Semyonov is perhaps the most pro-Euro politician in power right now. So if we need to use a favour to encourage him to push it through... Why is Semyonov so shy? Does he feel some economies are not ready for it, does he feel that he lacks the political capital, is he just worried that if it goes wrong, it will bring down his already weak secretaryship?
I super feel that Blackstar is not telling us important information. (I know, I know, situation normal in this quest, but this particular information dearth is especially unsettling.)
I am also torn. The events in Austria might make our allies keen to join the Euro and make it work, basically with the idea that anything that goes wrong in one country post Euro will be bailed out by the rest. On the other hand, maybe our allies will be less keen to join because they will fear that this project has become a way of taking their money to save Austria. Also, we were also in fairly hot water during Klim's early years, will our keenness for the Euro be seen as us trying to get our allies to subsidize us?
And just in general, a rushed adoption of the Euro will leave lots of time bombs to explode later. Bringing the entire European CMEA (I think that's the target, and our Asian and African allies will not be brought in) into one currency system will require alot of work to harmonize the various economies, much as the OTL Euro required years of harsh budgetary discipline and banking reforms from each member before joining. Because instead of each country being able to take a fiscal and monetary approach that suited their own situations, they needed to wedge themselves into a one-size-fits-all approach. And in 2008, we all found that the efforts to harmonize Europe's economies failed, and there were serious financial crises in Greece, Ireland and Spain (and almost France and Italy). A rushed implementation of TTL's Euro could lead to worse problems.
But TTL's Euro also includes a bunch of very important financial reforms, like ditching the gold straight jacket!
This is high risk, high reward stuff.
One thing that caught my eye this turn was this tidbit... 1972 is awfully close, and with it comes new elections. There is basically zero chance Humphrey gets re-elected, the man is nowhere near as competent as Johnson and has to deal with all the baggage of the New Deal and Civil Rights movement that is about to slam the Dems right in the face (the US has faced severe rioting this past turn). It is very likely that in 1973, the President of the United States might be someone a lot more protectionist and hostile to our interest, so I think there is a very strong case to be made on starting this project right now. Same with the []Scientific Exchange Programs. I will see if I can make a plan with it soon if I have some time.
I've gotta say, it's wild that the Democrats have been able to maintain a monopoly on the Presidency until now. FDR won in 1933 as OTL right? So if Humphry loses the next election, that means we'll get a Republican in 1973 - 40 years of Democrat monopoly! The corruption is gonna be staggering, just like Republican during their monopoly on power in the decades after the Civil War led to corruption.
That said, I notice that no plan so far has actually put any dice into the
Saratov Machine Building Plant - did the discord group decide against it or something?
Seems to me that this should be a priority. We want to get onto this while the Humphrey regime isn't fighting for its political life...
It also arguably helps in that it means the Soviets might not solve all disagreements with their puppet states via tightening the leash and cracking the whip. At least not nearly openly as they did OTL, something which might help in keeping some what better relations between the various areas and some more ability to try out new ideas.
Right, making people feel their countries are slaves does not advance our geostrategic aims at all.
Admittedly a lot of these ideas are unlikely to go anywhere fast, though there is one bulk launch system that could be made to work in principle even in the 70s. Which would be the spacegun concept. One of the most interesting variants of that idea was to use a light gas gun suspended in the ocean, so you could afford to have a super long and straight barrel, thus allowing for larger objects and higher speeds. Obviously the high acceleration and velocity would create limitations on what one could send, but light gas guns are real and should definitely be capable of hitting very high speeds indeed, 7+ km/s is certainly in reach.
I'm not sure there are many other some what realistic ideas that could be used any time soon. But I'd have to admit I would have some interest in the chance of developing a spacegun. That certainly could have prospects on say making resupply for space stations a lot cheaper, or supply an early space industry more affordably perhaps.
I also kind of disagree with your premise it would just be cheaper to do it all in space. Considering the complexities of a lot of our technologies a link between earth bound and space industry for a long time to come is likely. So eventually there would be a need to greatly depress launch costs to help get through that bottleneck when setting up a full space industry. Else all your costs will become ridiculously high for that goal.
A spacegun would be fairly comparable to a rocket sled I think. And all of these bulk launch options are also big, big pieces of infrastructure that require us to be launching thousands of tonnes into orbit every year to be worthwhile.
Also, all of the bulk launch facilities have rather limited payload bays, meaning they work best for bulk exports of raw materials and the like. Stuff that is better off coming from the moon. And they aren't particularly scalable - they're kind of like cutting edge chip fabs - if you aren't using more than 90% of total capacity, you are in big trouble. And like all large construction projects, they'll take a long time to build, cost a freaking bomb and will suffer degradation, meaning we need to use these things enough that we can pay off the R&D effort, the building costs and the regular maintenance costs.
Rockets by contrast are very scalable. And can be much cheaper if you build bigger rockets and you crack reuseability. And since bigger rockets can carry wider payloads, they are able to carry alot more kinds of cargo too. There is a limit to the number of rocket launches you can do per year because every rocket going up is punching a hole through atmospheric layers that is causing increased atmospheric mixing and things like ozone layer degredation result. But we won't have enough viable launch sites in the Soviet Union to be able to cause even a tiny fraction more damage than we are already doing with our mad aircon roll-out. So even if we stuck with the RLA-3 as our biggest vehicle for the rest of time, we could still launch many hundreds of tonnes into orbit without causing major issues. If we revived the RLA-5, we could maybe hit the low thousands in payload tonnes to orbit. If we went with a clean-sheat super heavy of Sea Dragonish proportions, we could get high thousands of tonnes into orbit. I really struggle to see us ever needing so much launch capacity that something bigger than that like a launch loop or a rocket sled became economical. Especially because most of the mass needed in orbit is for things like structural steel, water and oxygen. i.e. stuff that can be sourced in bulk from the moon, allowing Earth to focus on exporting the high value stuff, like food, people, electronics and so on...
While that is true, it is conceivable the nuclear program could take 10-15 years to complete. In which case one would be looking at a potential missed opportunity cost, where one could have used the much larger Mars Lander and recovery system development to help aid in developing a better and more reliable manned Lunar lander. It would after all require developing a far more sophisticated lander and landing system capability, together with being bigger then any previous system, thus helping on getting more scale experience.
Of course this isn't necessary either, but it is something to keep mind.
On the science side... we've never actually managed to get a Mars return sample ourselves sadly, maybe next decade. And if one wanted to maintain some level of higher space enthusiasm, a Mars sample return would definitely get you a bit on the PR side. And thus potentially help contribute to some more budget space.
Well understandable, though an argument could be made that having an early station design to test out requirements for a later larger inflatable one could make sense as well. It depends a bit on how much momentum one wants to maintain in the manned part of the space program I guess. Though admittedly the cost for the station is pretty high...
A Mars Sample Return with chemical power could return a few grams of dust. A Mars Sample Return with nuclear engines could return kilos of material, including whole rocks, maybe even some drill cores. To me that seems worth waiting for the nuclear engines, even if it took as long as you think to develop (I would be surprised if we didn't have a viable nuclear engine by 1980, which is only 9 years away).
As you say, maybe there are political reasons to press ahead with a Mars Sample Return now. It is a mission that will feature the RLA-3 in a starring role. And even a few grams of Mars WILL be infinitely more data than we have right now...
I could be convinced.
But so far, people are paring the Mars Sample Return with the Mercury Probes. IMO the inflatable experiments are the high priority new option. We've been badly neglecting our manned program, especially in the area of providing our cosmonauts with simple working volume. A VA capsule with an inflatable trunk would ENORMOUSLY increase what our Cosmonauts could do in orbit, since we could give them a low-mass shirt-sleeve environment with actual room to move in. On one wall (the hard wall with the hatch to the capsule) you could have drawers with experiments, the other walls are an inflated hemisphere of flexible composite. The increased science capability? Enormous. Increasing the prestige of Intercosmos among our allies, giving our cosmonaut corps the chance to build up experience that will help our station design. And our cosmonaut corps really do need more useful things to do. Picking either Mars or Mercury will be enough to keep space money going into better electronics, and besides which, the demand for computers means we have a healthy civilian demand for advanced electronics, this isn't like when our moon program died and we had to cut everything else to make sure our high end electronics industries didn't crash.
Fucking with salary raise schedules to try and get something as close to a de facto wage freeze as we can get without officially calling a legal wage freeze (again).
"Reducing same-job cost increase maximums can allow current growth in labor costs to be slowed and improve the dynamism of labor by encouraging varied employment" translates roughly to "reducing possible raises will keep costs down and ensure only the most desperate workers (who will take any shit we give them out of necessity) stay in low wage jobs"
I thought I smelled something bad about it...
At least we won't have Klimenko for much longer...
Regards,
fasquardon
