Estado Social (Rumahoki): Difference between revisions

| conventional_long_name = Rosarian Republic<br>{{nobold|{{small|(1935-1976)}}<br>''República Rosariana''}}<hr>Delepasian Commonwealth<br>{{nobold|{{small|(1976-1994)}}<br>''Mancomunidad Delepasiano''}}

One of the greatest issues that have plagued the Delepasian economies from 1852 until the rise of the ''Estado Social'' was the exponentially-growing public debt. The debt was so bad that no matter which entity, whether private or public, some of the Delepasian polities have approached in hopes of getting a loan, either these requests were rejected on the spot, or those polities were unable to meet the terms and conditions for each loan. During this era of financial uncertainty, [[Isador de Santa Anna]], the leader of the military dictatorship in Rosaria, invited Pascual to become the regime's minister of finance in 1931, complete with a near-{{wp|blank cheque}} on his veto powers when it came to any and all forms of government expenditure regardless of the department. Thanks to these special powers and financial know-how, Pascual was able to balance Rosaria's budget and stabilise the peseta. This restoration of order to the national coffers through austerity measures and censoring waste gave Rosaria its first out of many budgetary surpluses, which at that time was considered a near-impossibility. This would be followed by the other Delepasian polities copying what Rosaria did to balance the budget which too were met with budgetary surpluses.

In July 1945, the Almadarian ''Fuero'' magazine featured an article on Rosaria and the rest of the Delepasian polities, and, referring to its recent chaotic history, asserted that "just a quarter-century prior, our Delepasian neighbours to the east were in such a sorry state of affairs that they were worth more dead than alive in many cases. Their governments were atrocious and filled with blunders that wound up bankrupting them through things such as petty vanity projects. Their living conditions were so squalid that it made even the poorest of our nation look wealthy in comparison, and such conditions were perpetuated through both near-constant epidemics and abysmal literacy rates. Indeed, the term "Delepasian" was for the past several decades a byword for the absolute worst of the worst in the Occident. It would not be until 1919 when the Rosarian Republic was overthrown by its own armed forces which by that point had had enough of the extreme poverty and miserable living conditions that the Republic was suffering under." ''Fuero'' added that after 1852 it would've been easier to tame the jungles of Vallo than to rule a Delepasian polity before going on to explain how Pascual "entered the public sphere to a land of chaos and destitution, and transformed it into a stable and even prosperous regime complete with multiple annual economic surpluses for the past decade; even the other Delepasian polities were able to replicate this success story".

By the early 1980s, the ''Estado Social'' saw the rise of younger technocrats, many of whom were often aligned with the nascent reformist faction that arose in the early 1970s, who studied abroad and majored in economics as well as having obtained technical-industrial expertise during their studies. These technocrats wanted to revitalise the fledgling nation's economy in hopes of turning Delepasia into a hub for international investment. New industries were developed with the express purpose of building up the stagnant economy as well as to catch up with the [[Vallosian Economic Association]]'s average; Delepasia would use this average as a benchmark for their goals and as a means to determine which sectors of the economy should be given priority in development at a given time. Free trade agreements with neighbouring countries and an increase in international trade beyond just Vallos were achieved during the 1980s, with plans being drafted up for the purpose of opening up select sectors of the economy to foreign firms. Pascual had finally decided that it was time to let go of the corporatist economy, especially as much of the Delepasian polities that had joined up with Rosaria had better economies thanks to them having abandoned corporatism decades ago. This new economic outlook allowed for foreign trade in both exports to imports to greatly increase, and by 1993 the nation's total output was more than double the nation's total output in 1980.

For a comparison, the regime's GDP per capita was only at 42 percent of the VEA's average in 1980, and yet by the end of Pascual's tenure as prime minister in 1988 it had grown to 54 percent thanks to him having granted some token economic reforms, with it rising even further to 61.7 percent by 1993 during the latter days of the Torres premiership thanks to his liberal economic reforms, which were promptly reversed by Pascualist hardliners that same year in favour of a return to the economic policies as implemented before 1988. Through an analysis of the previous 130-plus years of Delepasian economic history at that time, the economic growth that was experienced during the early years of Pascual's premiership was in fact only a slight economic recovery which had slowed down thanks to Pascual's insistence on maintaining corporatism and economic {{wp|autarky}}. It would not be until 1980 when the regime began to pursue a path which involved a strong economic convergence with the wealthiest economies of Vallos, which was ended with the Velvet Revolution in April 1994. The period of economic growth that was experienced from 1980 until 1993, even with the effects of an expensive war effort in Loaland against liberationist groups, created many opportunities for real integration into the economies of the VEA. Through emigration, trade, tourism and foreign investment, individuals and firms changed their patterns of production and consumption, bringing about a structural transformation. Simultaneously, the increasing complexity of a growing economy raised new technical and organizational challenges, stimulating the formation of modern professional and management teams designed to handle these challenges.

As for Loaland, which had become the responsibility of the ''Estado Social'' since Delepasia's formation in 1976, the regime opted to develop Loaland into a so-called "internal protectorate" where it may receive economic aid from the government as needed. In order to accomplish this strategy, the regime engaged in population and capital transfers, liberalised trade, and even created a separate currency for Loaland that would be pegged to the Delepasian [[Peseta]]. As a part of the new integration programme as established in 1981, Delepasia would remove any and all duties on imports from Loaland by 1984, but Loaland would retain the right to levy duties on any and all goods imported from Delepasia proper so long as it was at a preferential rate such as a 50 percent discount off of the normal duties levied by Loaland. The intended effect was to provide Delepasian exports preferential access to Loaland's markets, allowing the protectorate's economy to boom.

The economy of the ''Estado Social'' began to take on the trappings of {{wp|capitalism}}, albeit a heavily-regulated form of capitalism that had industrial licensing requirements that would not be removed until after Pascual's removal from power. The liberalisation of the economy during the final years of Pascual's rule was very slow and came very late into the regime's existence, and it took until the beginning of [[Nicola Torres]]'s premiership for the regime to take a more proactive role in economic liberalisation. Industrial licensing requirements for most firms were among the first things to have been abolished by Torres, followed by a free trade agreement with the Vallosian Economic Association in 1992. Under the agreement, which was effective at the beginning of 1993, the regime had seven years to abolish much of its protectionist policies on most goods, and an additional five years on products that make up at least 10 percent of the VEA's total exports to Delepasia. Beginning in 1980, being granted observer status in the VEA as well as successes in attracting foreign investment allowed for the regime to modernise its sorely-outdated industry and to greatly increase its export diversification by 1993. With economic growth well underway, Torres was able to award a monthly pension to rural workers who had never had the chance to pay into social security.

Although the means of production was still concentrated in the hands of a small number of firms and holding groups that were more often than not held by wealthy and influential families, Delepasian business culture still allowed for the upward mobility of middle-class university graduates into positions of professional management which were often lucrative.

Before the 1994 [[Velvet Revolution]], the largest, most technologically advanced (and most recently organized) firms offered the greatest opportunity for management careers based on merit rather than by accident of birth unlike older firms which were established in the early years of the ''Estado Social''.

Because of Delepasia's fast economic growth allowing for the increase of {{wp|mass consumpation}} on a wider scale, automobile sales rose drastically, encouraging the regime to focus on improving [[Transportation in Rumahoki|transportation]] throughout the country. The [[Consolidated Transport Administration|ATC]] was founded in 1992 and the State granted the company a 30-year concession to design, build, manage, and maintain a modern network of express motorways to handle the sudden increase in vehicular traffic.

The Delepasian economy grew well above the Vallosi average by late April of 1994, with the average family purchasing power rising alongside the emergence of new consumption patterns and trends. These new patterns and trends necessitated the expansion of investments through {{wp|captal equipment}} and through the expenditure of consuming durable and nondurable goods.

The ''Estado Social'' regime's economic policy encouraged the formation of large, family-owned {{wp|conglomerates}}. Through {{wp|corporatism}}, this allowed for the rise of the ''[[gransindinales]]'', which were large, family-owned-and-operated conglomerates. The most notable of these ''grandsindinale'' familes included the [[Alonso family]], the [[de la Puente family]], the [[Zavala family]], and the [[Serrano family]].

The Zavalas, whose ancestry dates back to the first arrival of the Pelaxians onto Vallos, was the most prominent of these ''gransindinales'' through their ownership and operation of the [[United Manufacturing Company]], which offered a wide and varied range of interests spanning multiple sectors including but not limited to {{wp|insurance}}, ship-building both naval and commercial, tourism, banking, paper-manufacturing, and even consumer electronics (mostly video game consoles and computers; there was an attempt in 1985 to buy [[Videocom|Televideo]] from the state which fell through due to the high price tag).

Below the ''gransindinales'' were the ''[[agrupresas]]'', which were medium-sized companies that tended to specialise within one given sector of the economy, but much like the ''gransindinales'' they were also family-owned-and-operated. These groupings tended to exist in rural areas further inland while the ''gransindinales'' dominated urban and coastal areas, with the former most often engaging in agriculture and forestry, but there was often the occasional ''agrupresa'' that instead engaged in small-scale tourism or engineered wood.

Although {{wp|labour unions}} were permitted as per the papal encyclicals that inspired the formulation of corporatism, they had to be state-controlled which meant that labour unions that adhered to socialism or free-market capitalism would either be forced to abandon those political beliefs or be forcibly dissolved by the state. {{wp|Minimum wage}} laws were neglected for many decades, with some having been last update in the 1920s in the most extreme cases. However, with the advant of a growing and expanding economy, the rise in living conditions throughout the country in the 1980s, and the outbreak of the Loaland campaigns, there emerged certain social changes such as the rise in female employment within the labour market. The reforms heralded by Nicolas Torres allowed for further economic growth and even social improvements such as an extensive pension reform that allowed for rural workers to collect a pension even if they never had the chance to pay into social security. The pension reform was a three-pronged endeavour that was intended to provided equity for millions, reduce the financial imbalance between the urban workers and the rural works, and expanding economic efficiency in general. The crowning achievement during the brief era of reform under Nicolas Torres was the introduction of some very limited yet significant democratic reforms inspired by the reforms enacted in Volonia just two decades prior, complete with the formation of the first democratic labour union movement in Delepasia's history.