The Dark Mage

Chapter 28: Reforms

     With the economic depression approaching day by day, Vixie found it imperative to ensure to make whatever actions were necessary for the wellbeing of the Kitsune clan. So, she began with having those civil servants under her command perform an investigation into the most essential goods and services people used everyday so that she could allocate government resources more efficiently. After all, with the economic depression approaching, the Kitsune clan government wouldn't have massive amounts of money to waste on pointless programs and outdated regulations that no longer served their purpose. Vixie did this also with the intent of lowering the tax burden on ordinary citizens who would also have less money during the depression while Vixie also believed a 32% tax on ordinary citizens was excessive. And she came to that conclusion after she had third party accounting firms audit all the major departments of the Kitsune clan government bureaucracy. After all, Vixie didn't expect certain departments to be honest about their finances after a few of the heads were arrested and thrown in prison for financial crimes when their family members were investigated. After all, a common financial crime the auditors discovered was money laundering through the relatives of high-ranking members of the departments in order to make their finances appear perfectly legal on paper.

     And it was after this discovery that many of these department heads were put on trial for felony fraud charges and almost universally convicted. But chief executor Vixie was a fair ruler of the Kitsune clan and only had the wealth of those directly responsible for the financial crimes confiscated and sentenced to prison. Then it became a matter of finding new department heads and making reforms to reduce the likelihood of corruption. And although this costed the Kitsune clan government a decent amount of money, it would end up saving much more over the time of the depression without corrupt officials covertly stealing massive amounts of citizens' resources.

     Inari would also check up on what Vixie was doing from time to time, and even someone as stingy as her agreed with Vixie's decision after seeing the summary the accountants made of how much money corrupt officials were costing her administration over time. But from Vixie's perspective, she believed she was giving back to the people what was rightfully theirs. And after just the governmental reforms alone, Vixie was able to cut the tax rate from 32% to 20% with no loss in quality but rather increase in quality with greatly reduced corruption.

     In response to this, nobody was complaining except the aristocracy who felt threatened now that ordinary citizens had more purchasing power and resources. And to this, many in the aristocracy paid their media lapdogs to slander Vixie, accusing her of all manner of things falsely and even so far as to absurdly accuse Vixie of being a Communist. But despite all the slander, Inari didn't believe any of it and kept Vixie in her position, because she knew from her own experience that Vixie was loyal to her country and did what she could to make it prosper and foster what she believed to be the good things in it. And that was something no ideologue purely seeking power through seizing the means of production and destroying the existing culture to impose her ideology would ever do.

     Vixie would also go around the Kitsune clan on its multiple islands and mainland and observe and enculturate herself with the different subcultures so that she would never forget what was put under her care. And seeing that many of her own people were being overworked and not given proper rest to the point that entire cultures were disappearing to promote marginally increased profits, Vixie made it illegal to force people to work more than 6 days a week so that workers could get their rest. And Inari was initially skeptical about this decision until she heard from the bureau of public health that illness had dropped dramatically, and quality of production increased now that workers were able to rest and recover at least once a week.

      But in response to this, the Kitsune aristocracy felt increased paranoia that now the workers they essentially treated as slaves would start to think for themselves during their time of rest. After all, they had become more able bodied, and communities came closer together now that they were able to do things on their days off and actually had time to spend money and contribute to the economy, something essential in order to prepare for the coming depression. And it was communities coming together that the aristocracy feared, because ordinary workers outnumbered them thousands to one and made everything and built everything and operate everything they own on paper. And if they so desired, they could overthrow the aristocracy and seize the means of production in a day if they were organized and desired to do so. But for the most part, most of the Kitsunes living on the many islands just used their day off to do nothing of monetary value.