dlewis0160 wrote:Ok. Got a bone to pick with a certain red-blooded American author, item #4 above. I knew I remembered an instance where the SK raised junction fees and taxes. Of course the author says nay, that they would never do that, but text-ev has already established that precedent. Perhaps a certain red-blooded author thought I meant it to be used as an additional attack levied against the SL. But I never meant the sentiment to be used as a personal attack heaped on the League but applied across the board. Nothing personal, it is just business. As used twice here. . .My bold.Flag in Exile Ch. 15 wrote:He sipped more coffee and watched the light dots of impeller-drive freighters plying back and forth between Minette's two asteroid belts and Everest's orbital smelters. Minette's industry was unsophisticated, but the system was an important source of raw materials and heavy industrial products, and there'd been plans, once, to upgrade its defenses by adding a powerful shell of orbital fortresses around Everest itself. Like much else, however, that project had been overtaken by the war. Although it required massive fixed defenses to cover the repair and maintenance bases that supported the Fleet in wartime, they were only built during peacetime. Once the fighting actually started, they cost too much, for not even the Star Kingdom could afford to build everything.
It was remarkable that the prewar arms race hadn't wrecked the Manticoran economy, Stanton mused. Although it had been a boom for the armaments industry and done amazing things for applied research, the monetary cost had been staggering. Only the Star Kingdom's enormously productive industrial base and vast merchant marine, coupled with its control of the Manticore Worm Hole Junction, had given it the wealth to absorb such huge peacetime military budgets without major disruptions.
It was getting worse now that the war had actually begun. Taxes and toll fees on the Junction's merchant shipping had already been raised twice. No doubt they'd be going up yet again soon, and finding the trained manpower to simultaneously crew the Fleet and merchant marine and sustain the work force might become a problem, but things might have been far worse. No one else in the Peeps' path had possessed the capability to build a war machine that might stand up to them. Only Manticore had been able to do it . . . and even then only with the Liberal and Progressive Parties screaming like gelded hexapumas at "diverting" so many tax dollars into "alarmist, unproductive military hardware."
Well, Stanton thought grimly, only a thin shell of Peep bases still stood between Admiral White Haven's "unproductive military hardware" and Trevor's Star, the single nexus of the Manticore Junction controlled by the People's Republic, and on his way there, White Haven had decisively blunted the Peeps' overwhelming prewar advantage in ships of the wall. At the same time, Stanton admitted, the Peeps had yet to lose a truly vital system. White Haven's capture of Sun-Yat and its major shipyards had hurt them (and, ultimately, with proper technical upgrades, would no doubt help Manticore), but Sun-Yat's loss was only a flea bite against the military infrastructure they'd spent fifty years building. Which explained why the Alliance could no longer divert capacity to fortifying its rear areas. It had to concentrate on the ships to take the war to the Peeps. And, as certain elements of BuPlan often pointed out, those same starships would also be the most mobile and flexible means of responding to any counteroffensive the Peeps managed to launch.
I just thought that was because manticor was in the fight of it's life at the time. Now that the War is over, There is no need for jacking up fees. at lease that's how I read RFC comment
[/quote]Likely there will be lot of political repercussions involved in changes in fees. Some places make get preferential treatment in exchange for reciprocated favors.
Or it could be the same for everyone. Manticore got very rich from the fees. It can continue to get very rich.
