Comparative price of military expenses to overall economy.

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Re: Comparative price of military expenses to overall econom
by Hasek » Fri Feb 27, 2015 11:18 am
Hasek Ensign Posts: 14 Joined: Wed Jan 07, 2015 11:20 pm	Material cost is virtually 0, most production is automated, massive trade with the wormhole would be able to bring in whatever consumer goods the entire system would need. I think people underestimate how much money the MHJ brings in.
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Re: Comparative price of military expenses to overall econom

by Hasek » Fri Feb 27, 2015 11:18 am

Posts: 14
Joined: Wed Jan 07, 2015 11:20 pm

Material cost is virtually 0, most production is automated, massive trade with the wormhole would be able to bring in whatever consumer goods the entire system would need. I think people underestimate how much money the MHJ brings in.

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Re: Comparative price of military expenses to overall econom
by Somtaaw » Fri Feb 27, 2015 11:29 am
Somtaaw Rear Admiral Posts: 1184 Joined: Mon Sep 01, 2014 11:36 am Location: Canada	I'm not sure if the original point of this was some form of war bonds, "buy a pulser, and help build a bigger fleet" concept, or actually trying to understand the Honorverse economy. Existing fleets are mostly paid off taxes, I don't think we ever did get told whether Manticore had introduced some form of victory bond concept, during it's buildup against Haven, pre-1900. We did get numerous references to both Junction Use fees, and general taxes going up (repeatedly), but offering a war bond/victory bond thing for people like Hauptman or Stacey whatername, from the related trading company, to invest above and beyond what they already do. Hauptman had already invested fairly heavily in the form of smelters, and shipyards, both in Manticore and Grayson, but a war bond would not only give short term Naval increases, but also further increase his substantial wealth later. Win/win for him, since he'll get money later for having bought the bonds, and he gets paid immediately since he owns shipyards that would get (some of) the work, and the Navy gets more ships now.
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Re: Comparative price of military expenses to overall econom

by Somtaaw » Fri Feb 27, 2015 11:29 am

Somtaaw
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I'm not sure if the original point of this was some form of war bonds, "buy a pulser, and help build a bigger fleet" concept, or actually trying to understand the Honorverse economy.

Existing fleets are mostly paid off taxes, I don't think we ever did get told whether Manticore had introduced some form of victory bond concept, during it's buildup against Haven, pre-1900.

We did get numerous references to both Junction Use fees, and general taxes going up (repeatedly), but offering a war bond/victory bond thing for people like Hauptman or Stacey whatername, from the related trading company, to invest above and beyond what they already do.

Hauptman had already invested fairly heavily in the form of smelters, and shipyards, both in Manticore and Grayson, but a war bond would not only give short term Naval increases, but also further increase his substantial wealth later. Win/win for him, since he'll get money later for having bought the bonds, and he gets paid immediately since he owns shipyards that would get (some of) the work, and the Navy gets more ships now.

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Re: Comparative price of military expenses to overall econom
by Belial666 » Fri Feb 27, 2015 7:39 pm
Belial666 Commodore Posts: 972 Joined: Fri Jun 17, 2011 7:26 pm	The original point was to compare cost of military to the size of the economy. The amount of people the Honorverse, and especially the larger nations, had into the military seemed oddly small to me. For example, for 400+ billion people, Haven having about 10 million people in its fleet is really small. So I was trying to see if there was some sort of cost issue somewhere. BTW, the efficient way to get a powerful military is to put roughly 1 person in 20 (or more, if you could support them) out of your workforce into the military. Then you have them do all stages of the work for whatever the military needs, from resource production, to fabrication, to construction, to instruction, to administration, to logistics, to crew and command. Essentially, you partition off a portion of your workforce and put all of it 100% into the needs of the military. That way, you know exactly how much you can afford to spend on it without collapsing your base economy and get the maximum possible bang for your buck as there is no profit or inflation between transactions. Also, you don't have politicians on your @$$ for forcing a wartime economy and any sort of military control on the nation. You simply recruita percentage of the population directly into it.
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Re: Comparative price of military expenses to overall econom

by Belial666 » Fri Feb 27, 2015 7:39 pm

Belial666
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Posts: 972
Joined: Fri Jun 17, 2011 7:26 pm

The original point was to compare cost of military to the size of the economy.

The amount of people the Honorverse, and especially the larger nations, had into the military seemed oddly small to me. For example, for 400+ billion people, Haven having about 10 million people in its fleet is really small. So I was trying to see if there was some sort of cost issue somewhere.

BTW, the efficient way to get a powerful military is to put roughly 1 person in 20 (or more, if you could support them) out of your workforce into the military. Then you have them do all stages of the work for whatever the military needs, from resource production, to fabrication, to construction, to instruction, to administration, to logistics, to crew and command.
Essentially, you partition off a portion of your workforce and put all of it 100% into the needs of the military. That way, you know exactly how much you can afford to spend on it without collapsing your base economy and get the maximum possible bang for your buck as there is no profit or inflation between transactions.

Also, you don't have politicians on your @$$ for forcing a wartime economy and any sort of military control on the nation. You simply recruita percentage of the population directly into it.

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Re: Comparative price of military expenses to overall econom
by wastedfly » Fri Feb 27, 2015 7:41 pm
wastedfly Commodore Posts: 832 Joined: Thu Feb 10, 2011 6:23 am	Uh, he "owned" shipyards. Now he owns space debris.
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Re: Comparative price of military expenses to overall econom

by wastedfly » Fri Feb 27, 2015 7:41 pm

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Uh, he "owned" shipyards. Now he owns space debris.

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Re: Comparative price of military expenses to overall econom
by kzt » Fri Feb 27, 2015 7:49 pm
kzt Fleet Admiral Posts: 11355 Joined: Sun Jan 10, 2010 8:18 pm Location: Albuquerque, NM	And I'll bet the insurance company uses the "Act of War -DENIED" stamp on his insurance claims.
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Re: Comparative price of military expenses to overall econom

by kzt » Fri Feb 27, 2015 7:49 pm

kzt
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And I'll bet the insurance company uses the "Act of War -DENIED" stamp on his insurance claims.

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Re: Comparative price of military expenses to overall econom
by Belial666 » Fri Feb 27, 2015 7:58 pm
Belial666 Commodore Posts: 972 Joined: Fri Jun 17, 2011 7:26 pm	That's what you get for not putting your shipyards inside a 100+ kilometer moon, with a 10-kilometer-thick outer armor layer, bubble sidewall and PDLC arrays to prevent such accidents. If you can manage to build a big enough hyper generator for it too, even better. If a single torpedo can take out your shipyard, you're doing it wrong.
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Re: Comparative price of military expenses to overall econom

by Belial666 » Fri Feb 27, 2015 7:58 pm

Belial666
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That's what you get for not putting your shipyards inside a 100+ kilometer moon, with a 10-kilometer-thick outer armor layer, bubble sidewall and PDLC arrays to prevent such accidents. If you can manage to build a big enough hyper generator for it too, even better. If a single torpedo can take out your shipyard, you're doing it wrong.

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Re: Comparative price of military expenses to overall econom
by thinkstoomuch » Fri Feb 27, 2015 9:27 pm
thinkstoomuch Admiral Posts: 2727 Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2009 1:05 pm Location: United States of America	Belial666 wrote:The original point was to compare cost of military to the size of the economy. The amount of people the Honorverse, and especially the larger nations, had into the military seemed oddly small to me. For example, for 400+ billion people, Haven having about 10 million people in its fleet is really small. So I was trying to see if there was some sort of cost issue somewhere. BTW, the efficient way to get a powerful military is to put roughly 1 person in 20 (or more, if you could support them) out of your workforce into the military. Then you have them do all stages of the work for whatever the military needs, from resource production, to fabrication, to construction, to instruction, to administration, to logistics, to crew and command. Essentially, you partition off a portion of your workforce and put all of it 100% into the needs of the military. That way, you know exactly how much you can afford to spend on it without collapsing your base economy and get the maximum possible bang for your buck as there is no profit or inflation between transactions. Also, you don't have politicians on your @$$ for forcing a wartime economy and any sort of military control on the nation. You simply recruita percentage of the population directly into it. You are over simplifying things by saying "1 in 20 in the military". The cost of a Navy guy compared to a Marine or Army guy is not even vaguely close. More like an orders of magnitude or more different. For example 60 guys on a Roland. Each one just for equipment is costing millions. No idea how much but the whole ship must cost at least a billion Manticore dollars probably several. WoH Chapter 5 wrote:“Assuming that we freeze construction on all units not at least sixty-five percent completed, scrap about twelve percent of our older ships of the wall still in commission, mothball another sixteen percent of the wall to go with them, and put the yard space we won’t need anymore into inactive controlled storage, we can implement your plans and still reduce naval spending by approximately fourteen percent of the currently budgeted funds,” Houseman continued, and this time there was a pronounced note of approval in his voice. “That amounts to the better part of two trillion dollars we can divert to far more useful ends.” Bold is my emphasis. 14% is ~2,000,000,000 dollars. That means that RMN budget is ~14 trillion dollars during the High Ridge government period. For me I would project the system GDP to be roughly comparable to the worlds economy in 2000 or there abouts. A SWAG I admit. But that would give High Ridge something like what a thousand dollars a person to buy votes. For the RHN it isn't really 400 billion people (if that number is accurate). As many will be on systems like the Cutworm systems that are mostly budget sinks. They cost more to maintain than they provide. So they are sucking money out of the economy and thus military. Not adding to it. So you have 20-40 systems that are not only supporting the military but all the other things required to make things better for tomorrow. So that they can then spend more on the military in the future. Otherwise you are eating your seed corn which we have demonstrated here in WW2. It ended up more than anything a fight to exhaustion in a mere 6 or 7 years. Less than 4 for the US which didn't even have to deal with a lot of wars infrastructure destruction. A lot of other thoughts in my head that I can't figure out how to get into this already rambling post. But I hope it helps some. Have fun, T2M ----------------------- Q: “How can something be worth more than it costs? Isn’t everything ‘worth’ what it costs?” A: “No. That’s just the price. ... Christopher Anvil from Top Line in "War Games"
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Re: Comparative price of military expenses to overall econom

by thinkstoomuch » Fri Feb 27, 2015 9:27 pm

thinkstoomuch
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Belial666 wrote:The original point was to compare cost of military to the size of the economy.

The amount of people the Honorverse, and especially the larger nations, had into the military seemed oddly small to me. For example, for 400+ billion people, Haven having about 10 million people in its fleet is really small. So I was trying to see if there was some sort of cost issue somewhere.

BTW, the efficient way to get a powerful military is to put roughly 1 person in 20 (or more, if you could support them) out of your workforce into the military. Then you have them do all stages of the work for whatever the military needs, from resource production, to fabrication, to construction, to instruction, to administration, to logistics, to crew and command.
Essentially, you partition off a portion of your workforce and put all of it 100% into the needs of the military. That way, you know exactly how much you can afford to spend on it without collapsing your base economy and get the maximum possible bang for your buck as there is no profit or inflation between transactions.

Also, you don't have politicians on your @$$ for forcing a wartime economy and any sort of military control on the nation. You simply recruita percentage of the population directly into it.

You are over simplifying things by saying "1 in 20 in the military".

The cost of a Navy guy compared to a Marine or Army guy is not even vaguely close. More like an orders of magnitude or more different.

For example 60 guys on a Roland. Each one just for equipment is costing millions. No idea how much but the whole ship must cost at least a billion Manticore dollars probably several.

WoH Chapter 5 wrote:“Assuming that we freeze construction on all units not at least sixty-five percent completed, scrap about twelve percent of our older ships of the wall still in commission, mothball another sixteen percent of the wall to go with them, and put the yard space we won’t need anymore into inactive controlled storage, we can implement your plans and still reduce naval spending by approximately fourteen percent of the currently budgeted funds,” Houseman continued, and this time there was a pronounced note of approval in his voice. “That amounts to the better part of two trillion dollars we can divert to far more useful ends.”

Bold is my emphasis. 14% is ~2,000,000,000 dollars. That means that RMN budget is ~14 trillion dollars during the High Ridge government period. For me I would project the system GDP to be roughly comparable to the worlds economy in 2000 or there abouts. A SWAG I admit. But that would give High Ridge something like what a thousand dollars a person to buy votes.

For the RHN it isn't really 400 billion people (if that number is accurate). As many will be on systems like the Cutworm systems that are mostly budget sinks. They cost more to maintain than they provide. So they are sucking money out of the economy and thus military. Not adding to it. So you have 20-40 systems that are not only supporting the military but all the other things required to make things better for tomorrow. So that they can then spend more on the military in the future.

Otherwise you are eating your seed corn which we have demonstrated here in WW2. It ended up more than anything a fight to exhaustion in a mere 6 or 7 years. Less than 4 for the US which didn't even have to deal with a lot of wars infrastructure destruction.

A lot of other thoughts in my head that I can't figure out how to get into this already rambling post. But I hope it helps some.

Have fun,
T2M

-----------------------
Q: “How can something be worth more than it costs? Isn’t everything ‘worth’ what it costs?”
A: “No. That’s just the price. ...
Christopher Anvil from Top Line in "War Games"

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Re: Comparative price of military expenses to overall econom
by Belial666 » Fri Feb 27, 2015 10:33 pm
Belial666 Commodore Posts: 972 Joined: Fri Jun 17, 2011 7:26 pm	The cost of a Navy guy compared to a Marine or Army guy is not even vaguely close. It's the same. X amount of food/water/consumables, X amount of personal amenities, X cost for personal housing, X amount of entertainment. In the partitioned economy model, the rest of the nation is only giving each person in the military those resources and nothing else - it's the job of everyone in the military to work and make everything else the military needs. Of course, the navy has a lot more guys overall than the army if you include everyone needed to make it work. You want a superdreadnought? People in the military will mine the asteroids, people in the military will refine the ore, people in the military will fabricate the parts, people in the military will assemble and construct the hull, people in the military will build and maintain the production lines for components and missiles, people in the military will train the crew, people in the military will be in R&D, people in the military will be in administration, and people in the military will finally crew and run it. Hypothetical Example: (numbers may or may not reflect reality) 1) 4 million people in the Manticore system in the mining ships and deep space refineries meant for military consumption. 2) 4 million people in the Hephaestus and Vulcan stations doing anything from part/missile fabrication, to ship assembly and trials, to R&D, to station support and administration. 3) 1 million people in training, support and logistics in all levels. 4) 800.000 people in overall administration and organization. 5) 200.000 people as ready crew per year. 6) Annual building/support capability = 100 superdreadnoughts. So 10 million people working for 1 year = 100 SDs. Assume average salary of $100.000. That's $1 trillion, or $10 billion per SD. Now, the real price per Gryphon SD in Manticore is around $50 billion instead (extrapolated from price money), which means either the base annual salary I assumed ($100k) was too low, or that civilian contractors and political interference amount to around 40% profit and another 40% corruption.
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Re: Comparative price of military expenses to overall econom

by Belial666 » Fri Feb 27, 2015 10:33 pm

Belial666
Commodore

Posts: 972
Joined: Fri Jun 17, 2011 7:26 pm

The cost of a Navy guy compared to a Marine or Army guy is not even vaguely close.

It's the same. X amount of food/water/consumables, X amount of personal amenities, X cost for personal housing, X amount of entertainment. In the partitioned economy model, the rest of the nation is only giving each person in the military those resources and nothing else - it's the job of everyone in the military to work and make everything else the military needs. Of course, the navy has a lot more guys overall than the army if you include everyone needed to make it work.

You want a superdreadnought? People in the military will mine the asteroids, people in the military will refine the ore, people in the military will fabricate the parts, people in the military will assemble and construct the hull, people in the military will build and maintain the production lines for components and missiles, people in the military will train the crew, people in the military will be in R&D, people in the military will be in administration, and people in the military will finally crew and run it.

Hypothetical Example:
(numbers may or may not reflect reality)

1) 4 million people in the Manticore system in the mining ships and deep space refineries meant for military consumption.
2) 4 million people in the Hephaestus and Vulcan stations doing anything from part/missile fabrication, to ship assembly and trials, to R&D, to station support and administration.
3) 1 million people in training, support and logistics in all levels.
4) 800.000 people in overall administration and organization.
5) 200.000 people as ready crew per year.
6) Annual building/support capability = 100 superdreadnoughts.
So 10 million people working for 1 year = 100 SDs.
Assume average salary of $100.000. That's $1 trillion, or $10 billion per SD.

Now, the real price per Gryphon SD in Manticore is around $50 billion instead (extrapolated from price money), which means either the base annual salary I assumed ($100k) was too low, or that civilian contractors and political interference amount to around 40% profit and another 40% corruption.

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Re: Comparative price of military expenses to overall econom
by Daryl » Sat Feb 28, 2015 7:25 am
Daryl Fleet Admiral Posts: 3504 Joined: Sat Apr 24, 2010 1:57 am Location: Queensland Australia	All along I've believed that the Manticore economy doesn't seem to be on a war of survival level of war time intensity. That said I disagree with the concept of having a certain set percentage of the population in uniform doing everything from industrial stuff to pointy end war fighting. An extreme example would be battles like Culloden and Rorke's Drift, where civilian industry over time built weapons that the military used on the day, and the "soft" English beat hardened warriors. Or even more extremely, a thousand brave Highlanders with claymores could be stopped by one machine gunner using ammunition prepared months beforehand in a civilian factory. Effort put into war preparation such as designing and building weapons, devising tactics, and training troops is capital built up to be expended on the day. So a strong economy will generally beat a weaker economy even if their troops are brave and more numerous.
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Re: Comparative price of military expenses to overall econom

by Daryl » Sat Feb 28, 2015 7:25 am

Daryl
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All along I've believed that the Manticore economy doesn't seem to be on a war of survival level of war time intensity.
That said I disagree with the concept of having a certain set percentage of the population in uniform doing everything from industrial stuff to pointy end war fighting.

An extreme example would be battles like Culloden and Rorke's Drift, where civilian industry over time built weapons that the military used on the day, and the "soft" English beat hardened warriors.

Or even more extremely, a thousand brave Highlanders with claymores could be stopped by one machine gunner using ammunition prepared months beforehand in a civilian factory.

Effort put into war preparation such as designing and building weapons, devising tactics, and training troops is capital built up to be expended on the day. So a strong economy will generally beat a weaker economy even if their troops are brave and more numerous.

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Re: Comparative price of military expenses to overall econom
by Relax » Sat Feb 28, 2015 7:49 am
Relax Fleet Admiral Posts: 3106 Joined: Tue Oct 27, 2009 7:18 pm	Daryl, that is nice when comparing say, the USA to IRAQ. It does not compute when it is Germany verses France in WWI. Haven vrs Manticore is far closer to Germany vrs France in WWI than USA vrs IRAQ. In a war for survival, the spacer population should have exploded in regards to building new ship building slips. Instead we barely see a building program increase at all. There should have been tens of millions of people building ship building centers along with the smelters to create the basic materials infrastructure to build the ships in question along with the training of new ships crew. Instead we got a ho hum, couple million working while the rest cross their fingers. Gotta remember WWII the limitation was natural resources, not enough raw power as well to smelt, etc, not manpower in the case of the USA production. In Germany's case it was manpower and the simple fact their transportation infrastructure was blown to bits halting production. RFC is on record saying that the Honorverse civilizations do not have a choke point for natural resources OR power systems. Therefore the limitation is manpower. What do the books demonstrate? A lack of resources, not manpower. Otherwise there would be 10,000 building slips, and a hundred thousand ships, not the couple hundred we see produced. They literally should have had idle ships sitting in orbit they could not man if manpower truly was their limitation when natural resources were NOT the limitation. _________ Tally Ho! Relax
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Re: Comparative price of military expenses to overall econom

by Relax » Sat Feb 28, 2015 7:49 am

Relax
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Joined: Tue Oct 27, 2009 7:18 pm

Daryl, that is nice when comparing say, the USA to IRAQ. It does not compute when it is Germany verses France in WWI. Haven vrs Manticore is far closer to Germany vrs France in WWI than USA vrs IRAQ.

In a war for survival, the spacer population should have exploded in regards to building new ship building slips. Instead we barely see a building program increase at all. There should have been tens of millions of people building ship building centers along with the smelters to create the basic materials infrastructure to build the ships in question along with the training of new ships crew.

Instead we got a ho hum, couple million working while the rest cross their fingers.

Gotta remember WWII the limitation was natural resources, not enough raw power as well to smelt, etc, not manpower in the case of the USA production. In Germany's case it was manpower and the simple fact their transportation infrastructure was blown to bits halting production. RFC is on record saying that the Honorverse civilizations do not have a choke point for natural resources OR power systems. Therefore the limitation is manpower. What do the books demonstrate? A lack of resources, not manpower. Otherwise there would be 10,000 building slips, and a hundred thousand ships, not the couple hundred we see produced. They literally should have had idle ships sitting in orbit they could not man if manpower truly was their limitation when natural resources were NOT the limitation.

_________
Tally Ho!
Relax

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