Yikes, is the Bolshevik disdain for all rurals, not just peasant farmers, THAT strong? Or is it just a matter of our service deficit being so bad we haven't even started on the countryside? Anyways, I get your point. Probably better to reform subsidies this plan, especially since reforming agriculture is Klimenko's big promise.
To answer your question to the best of my knowledge: Rural areas were predominantly agricultural in the 20's and 30's, so the state didn't expend any effort building social services to the peasantry who were regarded as an enemy class internally. The areas slowly became less agricultural as mechanization increased, but the state didn't attempt any social service expansion due to brain worms. With our efforts to reduce central planning, companies now see a large segment of unemployed and unprotected labourers and have an incentive to set up shop in rural areas. Reading a bit on literature the matter, there were basically factory towns in rural areas in the OTL soviet system, with the population being treated as "farmers" due to population density.
As a unintended result, you have a two-tiered system of citizenship based on the area you live in, with rural areas becoming ripe for economic exploitation by smaller factories (private or SOE). A strong mix of brain worms about rural workers being farmers and disinterest in doing anything for rural areas due to costs and difficulty.
And I too am starting to feel a loan might be needed. We gotta be careful to not drop spending too suddenly in the final couple turns of the plan though to avoid instability. Don't use it all at once, just use it to keep any ministry from falling too idle.
I agree on the loan. Now is a good time for some deficit spending, and it really helps smoothing out the current slump in investment, ensuring that the GDP doesn't stagnate.
[]Authorize Farmer-Programs: Farmer aid has been dogmatically fought against either out of some ideal that large enterprises represent technocratic efficiency or out of some outdated ingrained dislike of the "peasantry." Ensuring that general urban aid social programs apply to the rural workers will take a considerable political effort with very few set to champion their cause, but it is the right thing to do in the current context and the Supreme Soviet is unlikely to react too poorly from a low commitment attempt to push it through. (1 Dice)
[]Authorize Farmer-Programs: Farmer aid has been dogmatically fought against either out of some ideal that large enterprises represent technocratic efficiency or out of some outdated ingrained dislike of the "peasantry." Ensuring that general urban aid social programs apply to the rural workers will take a considerable political effort with very few set to champion their cause, but it is the right thing to do in the current context and the Supreme Soviet is unlikely to react too poorly from a low commitment attempt to push it through. (1 Dice)
Yeah, that action alone would probably do more to address the most dire poverty than the most expansive food stamps program the party could draw up. Should probably be done sooner rather than later under the guise of being a necessary agricultural reform.
Yeah, that action alone would probably do more to address the most dire poverty than the most expansive food stamps program the party could draw up. Should probably be done sooner rather than later under the guise of being a necessary agricultural reform.
I definitely think extending aid to rural workers would reduce poverty more than the basic food stamps Klimenko proposed last turn, but I think universally erasing food insecurity wins out both of them. Right now in terms of poverty relief, I think the ones that have the biggest impact are []An Expanded Food Program>>[]Authorize Farmer-Programs>[]Propose a New Food Program
Anyway, I understand going after the subsidies, but personally am leaning towards an expanded food program despite making plans for either. Its something that will not only massively decrease poverty, but will also increase demand for consumer goods, services and agricultural goods immensely and consequently help us with our profitability goals. Its also an extremely populist move that will help our boss undercut Masherov's image as the guy standing up for the little guy.
I definitely think extending aid to rural workers would reduce poverty more than the basic food stamps Klimenko proposed last turn, but I think universally erasing food insecurity wins out both of them.
Sure, but you can't universally erase food insecurity without expanding social services to rural areas. Any food plan implemented without farmer-programs will only apply to urban centers, with agricultural workers and rural workers in company towns being shit out of luck.
Anyway, I understand going after the subsidies, but personally am leaning towards an expanded food program despite making plans for either. Its something that will not only massively decrease poverty, but will also increase demand for consumer goods, services and agricultural goods immensely and consequently help us with our profitability goals. Its also an extremely populist move that will help our boss undercut Masherov's image as the guy standing up for the little guy.
Based on our status we are at the moving target in agriculture, and slightly behind the moving target in consumer goods. Our big issue in our plan priority isn't so much lagging demand for agricultural products and consumer goods broadly, it's the SupSov insisting everybody has to grow even more wheat despite producing more than enough of that. And I'm going to add that if we can revitalize rural areas by ensuring the farms are productive, as well as ensuring some degree of spending power for rural labour, we are likewise going to stimulate the economy by making the rural poor spend more on consumer goods and services. If our economy is doing well, the SupSov is probably willing to spend some money on making sure everybody can eat.
I also see our greatest priority as fulfilling our promise to fix agriculture, rather than making moves around trying to attack Masherov. We need to ensure our own political support before going on the offensive, and that means unfucking agricultural policy to the best of our ability.
I'm just confused by that Sevastopol option.
It's great, but why Sevastopol? Even if freshwater supply is not an issue via dams on Dnieper, picking a predominantly military port to build such a factory at is not an obvious choice to me, not when whole of Ukrainian SSR is available, to say nothing of Belarus and Baltics.
Broadly speaking, export potential, transportation integration, and wanting to attract high paying engineers with the climate. With the same technical base not existing in Sochi. Something like Rostov may have been chosen as a compromise, but the Baltic is broadly seen as your sea.
Sure, but you can't universally erase food insecurity without expanding social services to rural areas. Any food plan implemented without farmer-programs will only apply to urban centers, with agricultural workers and rural workers in company towns being shit out of luck.
[]An Expanded Food Program: Moving to expand a new food program through conventional avenues along with any food being purchasable can ensure that the general diet of the Soviet People will be improved. Providing every citizen with a bare minimal degree of credit to purchase food will shift demand away from bare necessities, serve as an effective income raise for the poorest, and start the long work towards shifting towards a developed socialist system. Quantities that are expected to be allocated will be a small factor, but a notable one towards entirely eliminating hunger for the Soviet people. Eliminating misuse by parasites may be tempting, but the costs involved are more than would be gained by simply allowing them similar access. (1 Dice) (Uses Favor) (Only Available This Turn)
Read the action again then, this is a universal policy. Klim is the one who drafted this with basically carte blanche to go nuts, it would be more surprising it if he didn't extend it to the countryside.
Based on our status we are at the moving target in agriculture, and slightly behind the moving target in consumer goods. Our big issue in our plan priority isn't so much lagging demand for agricultural products and consumer goods broadly, it's the SupSov insisting everybody has to grow even more wheat despite producing more than enough of that. And I'm going to add that if we can revitalize rural areas by ensuring the farms are productive, as well as ensuring some degree of spending power for rural labour, we are likewise going to stimulate the economy by making the rural poor spend more on consumer goods and services. If our economy is doing well, the SupSov is probably willing to spend some money on making sure everybody can eat.
I also see our greatest priority as fulfilling our promise to fix agriculture, rather than making moves around trying to attack Masherov. We need to ensure our own political support before going on the offensive, and that means unfucking agricultural policy to the best of our ability.
Larger demand means prices go up, and so goes profitability, simple as that. Reformatting subsidies will help the SoEs (remember that they are the ones being subsidized, not the coops and other smallholders) move away from monocroping grains, which is not going to super help with rural poverty though it will with profitability.
Something I also need to stress: The rural population is by no means a minority. Based on the numbers I found, about 50% percent of the OTL soviet population lives in areas categorized as rural in '65, with this number only going down to around 40% by the 1979. The percentage will vary based on timeline differences, but it's important to note that roughly half of our population would be impacted by efforts to give rural areas access to social services.
Read the action again then, this is a universal policy. Klim is the one who drafted this with basically carte blanche to go nuts, it would be more surprising it if he didn't extend it to the countryside.
Lack of state capacity for giving out welfare in rural regions might a problem, even if the program is nominally universal. Just because you have the right to receive a few rubels on paper doesn't mean much if you can't go to a government office to file your claim.
Lack of state capacity for giving out welfare in rural regions might a problem, even if the program is nominally universal. Just because you have the right to receive a few rubels on paper doesn't mean much if you can't go to a government office to file your claim.
The reason they don't get welfare is because the CPSU thinks the countryside is a den of reactionary social parasites. Lack of state capacity doesn't help either, but that's something we can't super adress besides building roads.
Lack of state capacity for giving out welfare in rural regions might a problem, even if the program is nominally universal. Just because you have the right to receive a few rubels on paper doesn't mean much if you can't go to a government office to file your claim.
I mean, you're right, but expanding state capacity isn't something politically contentious.
Indeed, building up roads in the countryside is something the SupSov is outright howling at us to do. So if we make the program universal on paper, then as we build out roads and law offices and banks and all that, the program in practise will naturally follow.
Imo universal food stamps no fuss no means testing is definitely the big take right now for that favor, off loading food costs to the state will turbocharge demand for other consumer goods, not to mention help mollify the public after our little oopsie last turn
[]Sevastopol Technical Equipment Plants: The Gorky dominance on machine tooling has served to slow the production of new equipment and while standards have improved throughput, they have only served to stagnate general industry. By combining computerization in the lightest units along with a guided numerical control mill, further advanced machining methods can be produced at scale. The production involved will be expensive both in experts and the techniques involved, but the highest quality machine tools must be made at significant scale for proper utilization. The introduction of a further sector of technical production will also provide a vector for competition, ensuring steady developments. (300 Resources per Dice 0/150) (-65 CI9 Electricity +2 Steel +3 Non-Ferrous +1 General Labor +3 Educated Labor) (High Profitability)
[]Approve Transfer of Venusian Funding: The Venus project faces immense technical challenges with the state of the atmosphere and severe issues facing the program. Rather than continuing on as is and shoveling more funding towards a program that is unlikely to work the funds can instead be partially committed towards working on manned and lunar programs. Those offer the highest return and scrapping the entire venus project until more funds are available is one of the ways to secure politically acceptable funding. (1 Dice)
[]Allow Enterprise Bidding: The communications networks that are launched are only growing in sophistication and cost. Rather than forcing every system to fly on state backing for an ever narrower set of criteria, general payload bidding can be opened for most categories of payloads. If an enterprise wants to launch something into orbit, there is no reason to prevent it from doing so. Similar policies have already been applied for CMEA and there is little reason not to allow our own people to do the same. (1 Dice)
[]Publicly Provide Atmospheric Information: Any information on the atmosphere that the program gathers may as well be provided publicly and freely to news organizations and those responsible for weather prediction. The weather over the Union will never be a matter of dire military necessity outside of for some short moments in the case of another world war. Providing universal information will allow for a far greater standard of predictions and further improve agricultural yields through improving weather accuracy. (1 Dice)
[]Modern Foods Production(Stage 1): To compete with the Americians and ensure that the average worker has the latest products an entire new generation of food production has become necessary. Packaged compact snacking food has been to an extent a popular demand along several population segments and investing into it now can achieve significant returns. Longer storage lives can serve to reduce general food wastage at a small cost in packaging, providing a base of production. Saturation and production sufficiency will take time and more funding then available at the current stage, but that can be done in time. (90 Resources per Dice 0/125) (-7 CI2 Electricity +3 General Labor) (High Profitability)
[]Modern Foods Production(Stage 1): To compete with the Americians and ensure that the average worker has the latest products an entire new generation of food production has become necessary. Packaged compact snacking food has been to an extent a popular demand along several population segments and investing into it now can achieve significant returns. Longer storage lives can serve to reduce general food wastage at a small cost in packaging, providing a base of production. Saturation and production sufficiency will take time and more funding then available at the current stage, but that can be done in time. (90 Resources per Dice 0/125) (-9 CI2 Electricity +3 General Labor) (Very High Profitability)
Dedicate Focus Towards a Project(Domestic Meat Programs(Stage 2)): (+5 Per Dice) (Unrolled) (Supreme Soviet)
Unified Passport Zone: The passage of a unified zone of migration and free movement is still distant, but unifying standards for passports and ensuring that any passport in European CMEA can go anywhere else represents a massive step in improving the mobility of labor. Workers from abroad are necessary for further development and the continued construction of the economy. Free movement is also the first step towards further economic integration and the elimination of trade barriers. Work towards that will likely take much of the next plan, but it will be pushed through due to strong internal backing. (1 Dice) (Supreme Soviet)
Resumption of Punishments: We are now almost twenty years past any Stalinism and the laxity in punishments has led to consistent failures in discipline. Rather than a full re-introduction of punishments, the most severe cases can be made examples of with a decade spent in prison and a full revocation rather than simple restrictions on pensions. The focus of this is around the anti corruption effort itself making it deeply politically involved from all sides. Some of the more reform-minded have criticized it, but given what their laxity caused their voices have mostly been ignored as irrelevant. (1 Dice) (Supreme Soviet)
Codify Convertibility: The new Euro has only just been founded and a scheme of convertibility towards it for external currencies has started to be implemented. A basis on gold is still expected for the new currency with each Euro pegged to a set quantity of gold. What this now formalizes is unspecific currency convertibility towards the Euro without the use of any intermediary and starts the transition of international transactions towards the universal use of Euros. Domestic work is still expected to happen in specialized currencies across the block, but a plan towards converting all economic activity towards the Euro by 1980 has been started. (1 Dice) (Supreme Soviet)
[]An Expanded Food Program: Moving to expand a new food program through conventional avenues along with any food being purchasable can ensure that the general diet of the Soviet People will be improved. Providing every citizen with a bare minimal degree of credit to purchase food will shift demand away from bare necessities, serve as an effective income raise for the poorest, and start the long work towards shifting towards a developed socialist system. Quantities that are expected to be allocated will be a small factor, but a notable one towards entirely eliminating hunger for the Soviet people. Eliminating misuse by parasites may be tempting, but the costs involved are more than would be gained by simply allowing them similar access. (1 Dice) (Uses Favor) (Only Available This Turn)
[]Reformat Farming Subsidies: Pushing for increasing grain production is counterproductive on every level. Instead of only driving for increasing production, a focus can shift towards good land management and improving efficiency. To improve profitability some land can be kept fallow to allow for recovery, with a higher intensity across the land that is being farmed. Work can also start on ensuring that desirable activity is conducted in the agricultural sector, favoring increasing meat production along with a wider variety of vegetables based around land regulation instead of price modification. As an added benefit the reformatting of tariffs will ensure that currency is contained in the economy, reducing trade balance concerns. (1 Dice) (Uses Favor) (Only Available This Turn)
[]New Services Department Head: The surgeon that is currently in charge of the services department is an active hindrance to productive activity and is effectively redundant. Instead of constantly working around him, he can be sacked now and replaced with someone far more capable. The relative lack of focus on the services department will limit the political impact of a replacement, as few care for the sector. By cooperating on policy, a new services head can also enhance any general effort, improving employment and general efficiency. (1 Dice) (Uses Favor) (Only Available This Turn)
[]Ask for More Funding: Asking for more funding to meet current goals can be justified from the sheer extent of personnel rotation and the need for reorganization. Underfunding in the heavy industrial sector has already led to economic wobbling and a loan would have a chance of not paying off. Instead of alternative means, the focus can fall towards improving funding directly through a provisioning bill. This will not be popular as it is altering from the plan, but it is accepted that the ministry does not have the funding to meet its obligations. (1 Dice) (Immediate 300 RpY Increase) (Uses Favor) (Only Available This Turn)
those are not, but... I think we should take them.
Honestly I think we were wrong in not taking the loan. 3000 extra resources could have allowed us to complete quite a few extra High Profitability projects in the short term, and we'd have more than recovered that money in 5 to 10 years, making it more than worth it.
+300 RpY would allow us to use an extra 2 or 3 dice per turn, which is not little...
not sure if it's worth using our Favor on the second action though.
[]Propose a New Food Program: With the retirement of the bread program the people that are the worst off are going to need some form of assistance to get by. The idealistic line that everyone can simply work to earn enough for a living without exception is nothing but base idealism and dogma. Instead of focusing on improving workforce participation or some technocratic shuffling of production a partially politically palatable program can be passed to provide direct funding for food for the most needy segments of the population. General funding is a non-starter due to the political environment, but a simple food and basic toiletries subsidy can likely be finessed through. (1 Dice)
"Doesn't help either" is putting it rather mildly. All social aid in the world is not going to help if it's literally impossible to get products to where people need them, and instituting such aid before we have the infrastructure for it seems rather premature, when we could instead use the favour to address the issue in other ways.
Speaking of infrastructure, I see plans either not taking Caucasus roads at all or only with 1/2 dice, and I must most strenuously object to this. Caucasus is one of the most important regions for high-profit agriculture, but since it's all in the mountains, the majority of it can't leave. It would be immensely helpful for our Agriculture goal to build enough roads there to get the produce from all the small farms and gardens to Black/Caspian Sea ports, but that will need at least Regional roads. With 4 dice, we are likely to knock High Capacity roads in a single turn and would be able to start on Regional roads next, but otherwise we'll have to wait until 68 at the earliest, which is much too late to really have an impact. Regardless of which way you want to go with Bureaucracy actions, I would ask you to focus Caucasus roads this turn.
I mean, you're right, but expanding state capacity isn't something politically contentious.
Indeed, building up roads in the countryside is something the SupSov is outright howling at us to do. So if we make the program universal on paper, then as we build out roads and law offices and banks and all that, the program in practise will naturally follow.
Just building roads by itself isn't enough for rural populations to access social services. The access gap is much more related to both the political will to deprive rural workers of access to social services, and the resulting lack of accessible offices in rural areas. Laying asphalt streets doesn't mean offices naturally follow them into smaller communities.
While rural transport infrastructure isn't politically contentious, rural access to social infrastructure very much is.
"Doesn't help either" is putting it rather mildly. All social aid in the world is not going to help if it's literally impossible to get products to where people need them, and instituting such aid before we have the infrastructure for it seems rather premature, when we could instead use the favour to address the issue in other ways.
Speaking of infrastructure, I see plans either not taking Caucasus roads at all or only with 1/2 dice, and I must most strenuously object to this. Caucasus is one of the most important regions for high-profit agriculture, but since it's all in the mountains, the majority of it can't leave. It would be immensely helpful for our Agriculture goal to build enough roads there to get the produce from all the small farms and gardens to Black/Caspian Sea ports, but that will need at least Regional roads. With 4 dice, we are likely to knock High Capacity roads in a single turn and would be able to start on Regional roads next, but otherwise we'll have to wait until 68 at the earliest, which is much too late to really have an impact. Regardless of which way you want to go with Bureaucracy actions, I would ask you to focus Caucasus roads this turn.
The food program is only available this turn. Its now or never, and we don't really have the political heft to push for a reform of this magnititude. We aren't Voz, the only reason we can do this is because Abramov needs every W he can get to outconsolidate Masherov in the Troika. Its very very unlikely we get this kind of opportunity again. And who cares if there is going to be a bit of inefficiency we are adressing anyway, we will have literally fed more than a hundred million people at the very minimum, this is the kind of stuff a Tsarist worker would look at and think "We have accomplished communism".
As for why not do Caucasus, we are almost done with Ural HR. The regional roads that are gated behind it have a lot more cultivated land that does not have access to good roads than the Caucasus does I am pretty sure. That's where the Chernozem belt spans and where a lot of the land we started cultivating in the last 30 years is.
The food program is only available this turn. Its now or never, and we don't really have the political heft to push for a reform of this magnititude. We aren't Voz, the only reason we can do this is because Abramov needs every W he can get to outconsolidate Masherov in the Troika. Its very very unlikely we get this kind of opportunity again. And who cares if there is going to be a bit of inefficiency we are adressing anyway, we will have literally fed more than a hundred million people at the very minimum, this is the kind of stuff a Tsarist worker would look at and think "We have accomplished communism".
No, it's not "now or never". Even leaving aside the possibility of getting another favor, as long as Klim remains in the seat, the possibility of doing it on our own is very much there. He will still be looking at the numbers that say that it's more efficient to just feed everyone without means testing, and if he manages to keep his seat, he will be quite influential in his own right. Then he would need to simply present the data and use it and his influence to convince SupSov, which is entirely possible in a few years. On the other hand, if we don't reform subsidies now, we definitely not getting them out in time to matter for the plan - and as I mentioned earlier, making it actually affordable for family farms to start producing meat and vegetables would do a lot to address food insecurity in its own right. In countryside it would do more, I would say.
As for why not do Caucasus, we are almost done with Ural HR. The regional roads that are gated behind it have a lot more cultivated land that does not have access to good roads than the Caucasus does I am pretty sure. That's where the Chernozem belt spans and where a lot of the land we started cultivating in the last 30 years is.
Our biggest source of poverty is rural poverty, which is something a state food program would be bad at addressing. Even if it applies in full, as opposed to programs mention in Authorize Farmer-Programs - I assume it does, given the "every citizen" - the state of rural infrastructure is so abysmal that a program wouldn't be able to really distribute things beyond, perhaps, what nearby farms grow already.
Ok, that's a pretty wild assumption about goods availability, there's still access to a modern economy in the overwhelming majority of our rural areas. You might have to drive your 1940s milsurp truck 40 miles on a mud road to get to the Tractor Supply Co., or even mail order something out of the state Sears catalog, but it is in fact a thing you can do. Like that's the beauty of a universal food credit, we don't have to distribute shit, they just get an extra 100 rubles a month or whatever and spend it on whatever they were already buying through existing distribution networks - except now there's also an extra 100 rubles in the budget to spend on something additional as well.
Which brings me to my second point that this isn't actually about minmaxing poverty line numbers, it's about injecting hundreds of millions of rubles into low level consumer spending every single month, reliably, everywhere, which should have a massive stimulating effect on consumer turnover in all sectors. Stimulus spending from the bottom up reliably circulates that money through far more businesses than top down spending.
And this would not be something enterprises take advantage of - in fact, family farms will be much more able to take advantage of a new subsidy regime, and what family farms produce is also what they eat. As such, making meat and vegetables affordable to produce would directly impact what people in the countryside eat, and in my opinion, to a greater degree than a state aid program.
I think this is also pretty out of touch, "family farms" absolutely do not eat what they produce. Our "family farms" here are still industrial operations that specialize into a small number of crops - not a sod house on the prairie doing yeoman homesteader stuff. The difference is who owns the industrial operation, not the industrial scale itself, and that scale means you have to sell your specialized produce on the market and then buy real human food from a store.
You send your 25,000 bushels of apples, or your 1,000 heads of livestock, or whatever else off to a commercial-scale wholesaler because there's nobody on the planet who personally needs 25kb of apples, and then participate in the consumer-scale market economy to meet your needs with the money you get from that. Breaking the yeoman self-sufficiency and forcing agricultural businesses into the market economy alongside the urban masses was a key feature of "modernizing" agriculture in the 20th century.
Plus, I'd like to repeat myself and say that we can institute a lesser version of a program that would still help on our own, without a favor. No such option exists for fixing the subsidy regime. Now, our own version would be less effective, true, but as long as we keep Klimenko in the seat, the same man who looked at the numbers and said "let's just aid everyone" will still be looking at the same numbers. The possibility of expanding the program would not be lost - as long as Klimenko is in the seat. Thankfully, that's something reformatting the subsidies so they emphasize profitable vegetables and meat and modern farming instead of exhausting the land with useless grain would really help with.
Food stamps are not a stimulating credit in the same way, because they're means tested and illiquid rather than being a cash stimulus you can count on every single Soviet citizen rolling into their consumer spending budget. At the risk of using too many modern American parallels, food stamps have been around for decades and chronically fails to stimulate any economic activity or even really effectively reduce poverty in a lot of cases. Meanwhile, the universal cash stimulus payments that got sent out during 2020/21 were one of the most effective per-dollar economic projects since the goddamned New Deal, there's a genuine qualitative difference between means-tested credits towards select federally approved food items and "here's a $100 bill, go nuts."
Made another plan, this one axes civilian airports and takes one dice off Modern Foods Production to give two dice to Samotor Field Development. That is to (Very High Profitability) projects likely to be done. Hopefully this means next turn we have enough budget to activate most dice, I am very pleased with this plan for that matter, that extra 350 RpT we got this turn made a huge difference
Here is a map of wheat yields, its current of course and only for wheat, so development in those areas are probably lower and it isn't totally representative but I think it illustrates why I think Ural Regional Roads will help us a lot.
We probably won't. The places we are cutting the trees isn't where we are worried about desertification and there is just so much lumber that just cutting it down is probably cheaper. Its nbd anyway, since climate change means we will need to burn it down anyway in Sequel Quest.
Here is a map of wheat yields, its current of course and only for wheat, so development in those areas are probably lower and it isn't totally representative but I think it illustrates why I think Ural Regional Roads will help us a lot.
You can see the divot the Ural mountains cause in agricultural yields, past the Volga District which presumably is part of the Western USSR roads. I don't know exactly where they will apply since we don't have a map showing exactly where each road will go, but I would imagine they are going to spread roughly around that region, and there is plenty of green there. In any case, the Western USSR regional roads will finish soon, and the Caucasus are much lower progress so we will pave roads there relatively quickly.
