Total $Tax Rates$ In The Honorverse? ...

kzt wrote:How long does it take to build a SD that you have plan for and have a validated design and equipment already optimized. 18 months at best, with a highly experienced crew serially building just that ship, with all the parts needed already available.

So now you want to build something at least an order of magnitude bigger, without any existing plans. And it needs to accommodate a whole range of massive factory equipment that as yet needs to be built. How long do you think it will take? Hell, how long will the design process take? Which can't even start until after you put together the specifications for what it is supposed to do and accommodate. Then you need to order all the long lead-time parts.

You're making unnecessary assumptions. For one thing, they probably already have the necessary designs, they built it once. For another, they certainly have the specifications already. They even have practice rebuilding infrastructure from scratch from the Basilisk raid. It wouldn't surprise me if they'd had contingency design plans for the major stations in a Case Zulu folder somewhere.

The key to rebuilding the infrastructure is not to consider a single project but as a whole mess of smaller projects that use off the shelf equipment as much as possible. As you pointed out, there's no time to design anything.

Which isn't a plus. Essentially there is no way to get the money back if they tell you they don't want to pay or realize that can't pay. Since they really badly need the infrastructure built they have every reason to be optimistic on how they can pay it back. And if they can't or decide they won't you will do what? Stamp you feet and hold your breath until you turn blue?

Unless the lender is a Solarian transteller, there's pretty much no chance of them using military force to ensure repayment regardless of who they lend to. The biggest risk of lending money to Manticore (for the last twenty years and the foreseeable future) is that the polity will cease to exist. Not to mention there no evidence Manticore is in the habit of default on their debt, nor any particular need for them to do so.

noblehunter wrote:Not to mention there no evidence Manticore is in the habit of default on their debt, nor any particular need for them to do so.

You fail to understand the situation the Manticore is in. They lost generations of investment. Equipment and structures that were bought and amortized over 60 years needs to be replaced. Right now. They are not able to go looking for the lowest bidder and anyone who CAN bid is beyond the reach of Manticoran law.

"Manticore started the run up to the Havenite wars with technology that was as good as that of anyone else in the galaxy and a heck of a lot of money. What was destroyed in Oyster Bay represented, effectively, something like six decades of infrastructure development and improvement. It wasn't just the scale of Manticoran industry that put it ahead of everyone else; it was also the superiority of technique, of methodology, and of general tech level."

Assume only 5% of Star Kingdom of Manticore's Gross System Product went into development of infrastructure during the last 60 years. So essentially they have invested 18 times the entire GSP of the SKM. Got that?

The Earth's Gross World Product in 2013 was $75 trillion. So assuming that Manticore's is the same the value of what got blown up is 1350 Trillion Dollars.

$1,350,000,000,000,000

Who the hell can lend that to them?

Even is they only need to replace 10 percent, that is 135 trillion dollars, or two years of the entire GSP of Manticore A & B. That's roughly the same as the US Government wanting to borrow 35 trillion dollars. Extra, on top of any existing debts. Would you lend the US government $35 trillion?

Who COULD lend Manticore $1,350 or $135 trillion, or the USG $35 Trillion.

These numbers assume that they are not being ripped off by their vendors, but since they are hardly in a position to hardball negotiate on price, because that takes time and options, that is not a safe assumption. They need someone with enormously deep pockets and vast capabilities available right now and is located in one of three of the 2,000 or so government in the Honorverse to do the initial construction.

Doesnt that make it .05*60, or 3 times GSP? (assuming no inflation, alteration of spending, and that all the 5% every year went to new infrastructure, and none to maintenance or upgrades, and no wasted worker hours from upgrades and maintenance....)

kzt wrote:
Assume only 5% of Star Kingdom of Manticore's Gross System Product went into development of infrastructure during the last 60 years. So essentially they have invested 18 times the entire GSP of the SKM. Got that?

kzt wrote:You fail to understand the situation the Manticore is in. They lost generations of investment. Equipment and structures that were bought and amortized over 60 years needs to be replaced. Right now. They are not able to go looking for the lowest bidder and anyone who CAN bid is beyond the reach of Manticoran law.

"Manticore started the run up to the Havenite wars with technology that was as good as that of anyone else in the galaxy and a heck of a lot of money. What was destroyed in Oyster Bay represented, effectively, something like six decades of infrastructure development and improvement. It wasn't just the scale of Manticoran industry that put it ahead of everyone else; it was also the superiority of technique, of methodology, and of general tech level."

Assume only 5% of Star Kingdom of Manticore's Gross System Product went into development of infrastructure during the last 60 years. So essentially they have invested 18 times the entire GSP of the SKM. Got that?

The Earth's Gross World Product in 2013 was $75 trillion. So assuming that Manticore's is the same the value of what got blown up is 1350 Trillion Dollars.

$1,350,000,000,000,000

Who the hell can lend that to them?

Even is they only need to replace 10 percent, that is 135 trillion dollars, or two years of the entire GSP of Manticore A & B. That's roughly the same as the US Government wanting to borrow 35 trillion dollars. Extra, on top of any existing debts. Would you lend the US government $35 trillion?

Who COULD lend Manticore $1,350 or $135 trillion, or the USG $35 Trillion.

These numbers assume that they are not being ripped off by their vendors, but since they are hardly in a position to hardball negotiate on price, because that takes time and options, that is not a safe assumption. They need someone with enormously deep pockets and vast capabilities available right now and is located in one of three of the 2,000 or so government in the Honorverse to do the initial construction.

If the US had access to the Junction, sure. As long as Manticore exists and can collect fees and they charge less than the cost of going the long way around, the Junction basically prints money. It doesn't get used up or fall out of fashion or any of the other ways a source of national income disappears. People keep going through it and keep paying fees.

Also, Manticore is always going to have something people want to buy. They're literally selling time. Once the current crisis is past, no one's ever going to end up with Manticoran dollars and no one to pay them with. All roads lead to Manticore and they're toll roads.

As for who could lend it to them? Anyone with free capital outside the League. They don't need to sell one massive bond but rather thousands or millions of smaller ones. Sure the cost of borrowing is going to go up, but as long as the Navy survives, it's a guaranteed investment.

I'm not saying that it's not a lot of money or that they won't be riding the aftershocks for years, but it's not as insurmountable as you make it sound.

noblehunter wrote:As for who could lend it to them? Anyone with free capital outside the League. They don't need to sell one massive bond but rather thousands or millions of smaller ones. Sure the cost of borrowing is going to go up, but as long as the Navy survives, it's a guaranteed investment.

I'm not saying that it's not a lot of money or that they won't be riding the aftershocks for years, but it's not as insurmountable as you make it sound.

So all they need to do is market their bonds to every prosperous planet outside the SL. That's not a lot. And quite a few would be a LONG way away, like on the other side of the SL. So how long will this take to organize and how long to collect the money?

Once you have the money you can place the down payments that your prime will need to order the really long lead time components and start the design design process and start selecting subcontractors. Or you need a prime contractor who can float you a loan on that scale. Since the huge SL transtellars who could do that are excluded, who can?

So yeah, I'm still saying 1 year to have a functioning orbital platform is very optimistic. At least if you are talking about anything other then what amounts to a construction shack.

Well, most of the infrastructure blown up was privately owned... So... They will be the ones taking out the loans and guess who is the guarantor of said loans under war emergency conditions? Manticore. Also have to remember the loans already taken out for the 1st and 2nd Havenite war... In the short term, just change some zeros at Manticores equivalent of the Federal reserve or World Monetary Fund... ultimately have to sell those bonds to someone instead of the vacuum of "space".

Relax wrote:Well, most of the infrastructure blown up was privately owned... So... They will be the ones taking out the loans and guess who is the guarantor of said loans under war emergency conditions? Manticore. Also have to remember the loans already taken out for the 1st and 2nd Havenite war... In the short term, just change some zeros at Manticores equivalent of the Federal reserve or World Monetary Fund... ultimately have to sell those bonds to someone instead of the vacuum of "space".

What would you expect the interest rate on a trillion dollar loan to a company that has a net worth of -53 billion (owed in death benefits) and has a current income of zero with a burn rate of 150 million a month due to the HQ and staff on Manticore?

Or a shipping company owing 400 million a month on their 80 ships and are currently 6 months behind in payments to the banks, who also owe 1.5 billion to SL customers due to delivery defaults, laid off most of their ship crews and are still running in the red.

Essentially most of the companies in Manticore involved in manufacturing or shipping are functionally broke with no real possibility of escape other than actual bankruptcy or enormous subsidy for years by the government. They certainly cannot fund enormous capital projects themselves, or qualify for commercial loans of the scale needed.

In general, people are really reluctant to loan a huge amount of money to a company about to file bankruptcy because the odds are you won't ever see it back.

People would be a lot more likely to loan money to the SEM than, for example, a bankrupt molycirc design and fabrication firm that has no living designers and no existing fabrication facilities.

cthia wrote:Interesting though. How did the main currency of Earth, dollar, become the credit? It implies Old Earth's adoption of a world currency based on the European currency.

SWM wrote:There is two thousand years of history between the modern era and the Honorverse era. It would be extremely surprising if the Honorverse era currency had anything to do with the modern currency. I myself would find that impossible to believe, especially after the Final War wiped out all of the existing nations of Earth.

cthia wrote:I didn't mean to imply that the currencies had anything to do with each other in value, but in name. Just as English survived the purge of the final wars as the de facto language via attrition, so too did the language's objects. I surmise that the colony of Manticore took with it the nomenclature of "dollar" to the Haven sector. Why not?

"What shall we call our currency?"

"Let's just stick with "dollar."

Keep in mind that the original Manticoran colonists left aboard the STL ship Jason before Earth's Final War, so the dollar was probably in wide use at the time they left Earth:

A Beautiful Friendship, Chapter 1 wrote:She sighed again, with an edge of wistful misery, and wished her great-great-great-great-whatever grandparents hadn’t volunteered for the Meyerdahl First Wave. Her parents had sat her down to explain what that meant shortly after her eighth birthday. She’d already heard the word "genie," though she hadn’t realized that, technically at least, it applied to her, but she’d only started her classroom studies four T-years before. Her history courses hadn’t gotten to Old Earth’s Final War yet, so she’d had no way to know why some people still reacted so violently to any notion of modifications to the human genotype . . . or why they considered "genie" one of the dirtiest words in Standard English.
Now she knew, though she still thought anyone who felt that way was silly. Of course the bio-weapons and "super soldiers" whipped up for the Final War had been horrible. But that had all happened over five hundred T-years ago, and it hadn’t had a thing to do with people like the Meyerdahl or Quelhollow first waves. She supposed it was a good thing the original Manticoran settlers had left Sol before the Final War. Their old-fashioned cryo ships had taken long enough to make the trip for them to miss the entire thing . . . and the prejudices that went with it.

Italics are the author's, boldface is my emphasis.

kzt wrote:The Earth's Gross World Product in 2013 was $75 trillion. So assuming that Manticore's is the same the value of what got blown up is 1350 Trillion Dollars.

$1,350,000,000,000,000

Who the hell can lend that to them?

Even is they only need to replace 10 percent, that is 135 trillion dollars, or two years of the entire GSP of Manticore A & B. That's roughly the same as the US Government wanting to borrow 35 trillion dollars. Extra, on top of any existing debts. Would you lend the US government $35 trillion?

You seem to be ignoring the Talbot Quadrant's cumulative GSP as a tax base and the potential of selling bonds within the SEM. If the problem was limited to the Old Star Kingdom, you'd still be ignoring the potential of San Martin, Basilisk, and Lynx as income streams -- and sources of tech-savvy companies.

If the Manticore binary system was completely isolated, you'd still be rather pessimistic, but closer to correct. but the Manticore Binary system isn't isolated, it is the center of an Empire that is largely untouched. Some of that Empire is even up to the tech and educational standards of the central planets.

Jonathan_S wrote:

HB of CJ wrote:Could the Sollies raise taxes and get into war production that quickly? Dunno. In WW2 we built the B29 bomber from scratch in less than 2 years. In 2.75 years it was leveling Japan. That project cost more than the Manhatton Project A bombs.

One nation, the USA, built lots of war stuff. What was amazing is that all happened concurrently together. Everything came together. Taxes and War Bonds were the key. Could the Sollies do the same thing ... against the GA? And at what tax rate?

that timeline is a little misleading. Thanks to Lend Lease and the naval expansion acts the U.S. was well on its way to a war footing prior to Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt was working hard to get military production ramped up at least as far back as '39.
The Army didn't undergo its major expansion until later but the factories were spooling up before the end of '41.

Not that there weren't some amazing strides made after that; just that it wasn't a standing start.

My father and one of his brothers were both working summers durring high school before 1941 making guns. My uncle was at Marlin Firearms (in New Haven, CT) and, amoung other things, turning out machine-guns for the British. Dad worked at High Standard (Hamden, CT) which was making a variety of pistols and things like silencers for .22 semi-automatics (think OSS and spy stuff) plus rifles. By the time we got into the war, a lot of the machineshops and factories in CT had been cranking out war related materials and equipment on contract basis.