Chapter 718: Top Cattle and Horses

Chapter 718: Top Cattle and Horses

Arnault had a relatively long vacation, which is quite rare.

After the holiday, he didn't know where he would be sent or what mission he would be assigned to.

Logically speaking, Ossena should cherish this time and try to take some time out from work to reunite with her family and spend time with each other.

But I really can't get away.

Matters came one after another. First, before the Governor left, a series of meetings were held to set the general direction for the subsequent work. This period of time could not be delayed, and Governor Gu could only stay in the alliance for another month before leaving.

After seeing Mr. Gu off, she not only did not become freer, but became even busier.

Originally, many decisions could be made in the Governor's Office. The hundreds of the Empire's most elite staff would follow the Governor's advice and send the decisions to the Alliance Government. For this part of the work, Ossena had an easy time. She didn't have to think about it and just followed the Governor's Office's advice.

And there won't be any room for wrangling.

Are the government departments dissatisfied with the decision? Do you have any opinions?
Keep them all for me!

That is the will of the Governor, and there is no room for bargaining.
Ossena doesn't need to use her brain or come up with a plan. She just needs to settle all parties and execute it.

But now, no!
In the absence of the governor, it is naturally impossible for the staff in the governor's office to convey the governor's opinions.

Although more than half of them stayed and did not go to Holy Terra, the rest...actually there was no need for them to exist, and they were all stuffed into the government, law, and military as middle and senior officials.

This was the traditional place for the Governor's staff. The Governor's staff would always draw personnel from government units, legal units, local units, military units, and schools to serve as the Governor's staff. Even among them, there would be a considerable proportion of outstanding graduate talents. Members from complex backgrounds together formed the Governor's Office.

After working for a period of time, they will be assigned to other places and generally receive a significant promotion.

This is also a common method used by the governor to train senior officials.

It can be considered as gilding, but it is more than just gilding. In the Governor's Office, these staff members can be exposed to the high-level affairs of the entire alliance, and their perspectives will become broader; they can often listen to Governor Gu's high-level ideas and understand Governor Gu's thinking. After being sent out, they can represent the Governor's will for a long time. Their loyalty is beyond doubt.

From Gu Hang's perspective, this is also to cultivate the loyalty and ideological awareness of the current potential stars and future mainstays of the alliance in advance, so that Governor Gu can better control the entire alliance.

Now, these people have been released. Although the government departments have gained a lot of excellent personnel, none of them can replace the decision-making role of the governor.

Now, many things need to be done by the government, that is, Ossena herself.

Not to mention the huge increase in workload, I was already exhausted, and now I am even more exhausted.

For example, right now, the leaders of the alliance’s production department, civil affairs department, and tax special group are arguing in front of Ossena.

The three parties have different opinions, mainly regarding the supply of agricultural products and industrial consumer goods, the overall welfare of the people of the alliance, and the special coordinated collection of imperial taxes, which will indeed cause conflicts among them.

There is actually no big problem on the supply side. Director Zhao Jiuzheng of the Production Department came here mainly to report on the current coordinated production situation of the alliance. He actually has no big opinion on how to divide it specifically.

If he had to express any opinion, he would stand on the side of Minister of Civil Affairs Wen Zhengnan: he hopes to ensure that the living standards of industrial workers not only do not decline, but should also improve.

That means a promotion in job rank in a general sense.

Wen Zhengnan meant the same thing.

In fact, what he needs to do is not just targeting workers in various industries.

In the context of the entire alliance, he must steadily promote the stable improvement of the career levels of all people.

The salary and welfare level of the people in the alliance is linked to their rank. The low ranks below E9 actually have a very low burden, and the welfare and consumption of a single person are not much. Although this is the largest proportion of the population, they also generate income, and their output is often much greater than the welfare provided by their rank and the consumer goods exchanged for their salary.

But as you go up, gradually, the expenses on benefits and salaries become larger.

Of course, it does not mean that those who are at a high level cannot make contributions. On the contrary, the reason why they can be promoted to a relatively high level means that they must have made great contributions.

This is especially true for those who are promoted quickly. Within E level, one level is promoted every year; starting from D level, one level is promoted every two to three years, and there is also an assessment. If you fail the assessment, your promotion will be postponed. If you want to break the routine and get promoted quickly, you must have good performance; at D5 and above, you will be promoted every 5 to 6 years. At D8 and above, you will be promoted every 8 to 10 years.

According to a person, when he reaches E18 at the age of 5, he will stay in E for 5 years, and then D5 for 14 years, which means he is 37 years old. To D8, it is another 18 years, and to D9, it is another 9 years, which means he is 64 years old. He basically gets a D9 rank and enjoys retirement benefits - when he retires, he enjoys all political benefits, 70% of welfare benefits, and 40% of salary benefits according to his rank.

If a citizen of the Alliance lives from adulthood to old age, this is the trajectory of his life.

If you can get promoted like this, it would be wonderful. At D1 level, you will have a comfortable life, no worries about food and drink, and you can also have enough salary to buy relatively good large appliances. In terms of welfare, there are also multiple guarantees such as housing, medical care, and education. At D5 level, it is the middle class level defined by the Alliance. According to the hives of ordinary imperial worlds, some small industrialists can live the same standard of life. Even in some garden worlds, the living standard of people with good incomes is just like this. At D9, it is the level that most imperial civilians can only think of when they are dreaming, and it is the top that the working class can reach in most imperial worlds.

Those above grade C are considered wealthy in terms of personal life.

Obviously, at this level, the treatment of Alliance citizens is quite good.

But even if it is an alliance, it is impossible to make everything as wonderful as a utopia.

If all the people can smoothly grow from the age of 18 to 64, the high welfare and salary expenses will be too much for even the league to bear the financial pressure.

In fact, starting from level D, the assessment becomes difficult. You have to be assessed according to the years of service. If you fail the assessment, your promotion will be postponed. Only if you pass the assessment can you continue to accumulate years of service. If you do well in the assessment, you can be directly promoted regardless of the years of service. If you have made significant contributions, you can skip a level.

Furthermore, all job levels must be matched with jobs. If you are unemployed, you will not be promoted, but will be demoted every year.

To put it bluntly, this "assessment" is based on indicators.

The huge system of the Ministry of Civil Affairs will calculate the total budget for human resources expenditure this year according to the fiscal budget, and allocate these upgrade indicators according to the overall plan. From production units to functional units, whether they are enterprises, individual businesses, or government personnel departments, it all depends on how well they do. If they do well, the department will have more upgrade indicators, otherwise it may even have downgrade indicators.

The organization department within the department will then allocate these quotas to the lower-level departments and finally to individuals. From a macro perspective, to put it bluntly, how many upgrade quotas there are depends on the total output of the alliance and how much of the total output is allocated to human resources expenditures.

During the war, a large amount of resources were invested in military production. In addition, a large number of newly occupied areas needed funding for construction, and the number of upgrades that could be given was relatively limited.

There were even some war mobilization orders, which meant that benefits and salary ratios needed to be reduced at all levels.

Now, the war mobilization order is to be lifted, and the newly recruited population in each occupied area, even if the initial rating is very low, is in the tens or hundreds of billions. The expenditure on labor costs has in turn increased a lot.

In addition, the organization departments of various units are constantly giving feedback to the upper level. As the alliance has started a large-scale production plan, each unit is introducing a series of production incentive policies for people. People who work well and strongly are more likely to be promoted, which can stimulate stronger production enthusiasm.

All of this requires labor costs to continue to rise.

To put it bluntly, this is paying back the debt for the exploitation of the people during the war, and in order to stimulate development in the subsequent period of great development, the dividends of development must be shared with the people.

To improve people's living standards, they don't need military products or heavy machinery. What people want is a serious quality of life.

This requires a more abundant supply of materials, from food, clothing, housing, transportation, to all kinds of entertainment consumption...

Whether it is the growth of service industry personnel or the living standard requirements of ordinary people, they all require a large number of consumer goods.

This created a conflict with the Alliance's Special Taxation Office.

They specifically addressed the problem of collecting imperial taxes, the bulk of which was on heavy industry, but collection of consumer goods, especially food, was also a top priority.

This contradiction broke out in the distribution of agricultural products and processed agricultural products in the areas once occupied by orcs in the northern part of the Dragonhawk star field, where there was a general bumper harvest this year.

The civil affairs department requires that more consumer goods be included in the budget, but the tax department requires that a considerable proportion of consumer goods enter the tax system and be transported to the storage world under construction, Shiping Star, located in the Tangu Star Region at the easternmost end of the Spider Web Universe.

Neither side would give in. They each went to their own leaders and argued for several times, which escalated to the point where it came to Ossena.

In the past, Ossena would sometimes handle similar matters, but sometimes she couldn't handle them, so she would just send them to the Governor's Office for processing. Once the document representing the Governor's will came down, no one would say anything and just do it.

But now, it's all on Ossena.

After listening to the quarrel between the two sides, Ossena rubbed her head, and quickly followed her own ideas and the opinions left by the governor before he left. She did not let the conflict continue to be argued, but quickly made a decision.

"According to Minister Wen Zhengnan's opinion, we do need to invest a large amount of consumer goods in public incentives."

"The value of civilian consumer goods is relatively low, and collecting a large amount of filler tax is a drop in the bucket."

"But the civil affairs department must work with the production department to make requirements for each production department and each local government. After the quota is given, the corresponding production indicators must be improved. We must use civilian consumer goods with lower added value to exchange for more output value. Military production, shipbuilding, and raw material processing are all top priorities. The effect I expect is to use one billion shirts and 100 million tons of food to exchange for more warships, and then send them to the empire as imperial taxes, rather than simply improving people's welfare."

After making the decision and sending the person away, she immediately called her secretary:

"Also, have someone from the Ministry of Commerce come over to see me."

Afterwards, she arranged some business work.

She asked the Ministry of Commerce to strengthen trade exchanges within and outside the alliance. Some high-value-added consumer goods should be promoted and sold at higher prices so that the money in the hands of the people with higher ranks can be spent; at the same time, these high-value consumer goods, including some military products and heavy machinery, can be traded with the outside world by the alliance if it is rich, and directly exchanged for tax coins.

The market will change, and the imperial tax has a clear value target for each product. However, some planets may be suffering from a food crisis, and some external worlds may be at war, requiring more military products. Often at this time, the corresponding products can be exchanged for a higher value.

Give 100 million consumer goods to the people of the alliance, produce 1 billion military products, sell them to some planets in need in exchange for 2 billion consumer goods, and then give them to the people to encourage the production of more military products... In the exchange, more circulation value is generated.

Output that exceeds market demand is taxed directly, so there is no need to worry about overcapacity; the profits from commerce are used to pay taxes, thus magnifying the value of production capacity...

The means of meeting the imperial tax burden must be diverse.

Not to mention, in addition to paying taxes, Ossena did not forget that she also had to take into account the development of the alliance.

After finishing all these, Ossena suddenly realized that she hadn't rested for another 33 hours. The meals she had in between were all simple and ordinary.

Sometimes she couldn't help but smile bitterly. After all, she was treated as an A7 level employee. Logically speaking, the salary and benefits allocated to her in a year should be worth more than three thousand tax coins.

However, it was a great achievement for her to spend a hundred tax coins a year.

She eats fast work meals, lives in the office, and wears the uniforms given by the tailor. Her body is still in its prime, and the rejuvenation surgery not only extends her life, but also makes her energetic. She will not get sick even if she works continuously at high intensity and high load...

There was no use for luxury goods. When traveling, the cars and spacecraft were all provided by the government.

Sometimes, she felt that she was the top cow horse - a term that came from a joke told by the Governor and has now spread throughout the Alliance.

But even for someone as energetic as her, thirty-three hours without rest would already make her very tired and exhausted.

I looked at my schedule and there was still a mountain of work to do.

She planned to sleep for six or seven hours before continuing.

However, before going to bed, she had one last thing to do.

The time has almost come to talk to Sage Wu Jiarong.

They also need to communicate again about the alliance's production issues.

(End of this chapter)