u/IndividualNo5275

The Free Trade Zones were created by the Galactic Senate in 124 BBY to jump-start legitimate commerce in the region in the hopes of ending the political isolation, stagnation and crime that had gripped the area since the Ruusan Reformations. Unfortunately, the acts benefited various mega-corporations, like The Trade Federation.

The Free Trade Zones were reformed in 67 BBY after an intense debate on the issue. However, the Trade Federation and several other major commerce corporations opposed this act as it would give startup companies in the Outer and Mid Rim, as well as small planetary business, greater control over trade in the outlying systems.

Later on, on 32 BBY, The Republic Abolished The Free Trade Zones and reimposed Taxation

I want to understand how exactly it was bad to impose Free Trade Zones on Mid and Outer Rim, focused on Raw Materials production. Was letting The Megacorporations gaining from The Trade Zones the problem?

I want a Fic where this happens differently:

1- Dooku leaves The Jedi Order, but did not join The Sith

2- There is no Corporate influence in The CIS

3- Detail The CIS Economy, Government, etc

4- Did not villanize The Jedi, or The Republic

What was their differences on structure, legislature, membership, taxation, military, etc?

In Legends, the Sith were working behind the scenes for 1,000 years to undermine the Republic from inside, fostering corruption. Without Sith influence, would The Republic still decays and ignore The Outer Rims?

https://preview.redd.it/l4o1gkwhlgeh1.jpg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=93b4a67cc3dc81203c552f9a65e2311ecc98c140

Rules:

1- You can only remain in office until 1869, when Grant is due to succeed you.

2- You cannot be a Radical Republican; one of the reasons Lincoln chose Johnson as his Vice President was to gain the support of War Democrats against the Copperheads. You have to be either a War Democrat or a moderate Republican like Lincoln.

In my case, i would be a War Democrat, maybe from Kentucky, and i would agree on abolishing slavery, give some rights to Freedmen, etc.

Here´s my Reconstruction Plan:

1- A Proclamation of mine is made with establishes the following principles of Reconstruction:

• Slavery is dead and cannot be revived in any form (as Sharecropping).
• Black civil rights and Black voting rights are federal commitments, not optional state concessions.
• States may be restored only if they accept emancipation, Black rights, and a substantially broader loyalist base than Lincoln’s original 10 percent idea. The new standard is a 25 percent loyalty threshold.

2- Freedmen’s Bureau is extended indefinitely instead of letting it wither, by enlarging his budget, and giving broader authority over labor contracts, family reunification, schools, and local disputes. The idea is to turning Freedmen autossuficient.

3- Instead of confiscating land as a punishment for treason, i would design a two-track land settlement:

• Freedmen are settled on abandoned federal lands, swamp and marsh reclamation tracts, public domain parcels, unused federal acreage, and lands obtained through tax delinquency or legal forfeiture where the government can make a clean title case. These are distributed in small family farms, usually 40 to 80 acres, with title, seed and tools, low-interest credit, and a short tax holiday being given to them with help of Freedmen Bureau.
• The large plantations of the old elite are not simply seized and handed to freedmen. Instead, a compensated land-purchase and subdivision program is established. Under this program, very large estates are assessed, the owners receive long-term federal or state bonds, and the estates are broken into manageable farm units, which would make poor white tenants, veterans, and landless laborers be able to buy them on favorable terms.

The result is that the South is no longer dominated by one giant planter class. Instead, it starts drifting toward a two-peasant-class structure

4- A stronger Civil Rights Act of 1866 or a similar bill would be signed.

5- Federal marshals and troops may intervene against intimidation, fraud, and political violence, with harsh penalties being imposed.

6- Instead of 20.000 troops as happened in real life, here at least 60 to 100.000 troops would stay in the South to guarantee Black´s rights.

7- A broad program of internal improvements would be made to reduce racial tensions and increase control of rural areas, with major federal infrastructure projects, including roads, railroads, and bridges. Federal soldiers will be assigned to protect these projects and to suppress attacks by insurgent groups.

8- Morrill Land-Grant Act would be extended into the South to help fund Black Schools and the Homestead Act would be broadened to help freedpeople and poor whites seek land in the West. But only separate colleges for Black students, not mixed ones.

9- Former Confederates get universal pardon and property protection, except for a small number of atrocity cases, and there would be no draconian military occupation of the South beyond what is needed to stop violence and protect elections.

10- 14th and 15th Amendments would still happen, but later.

11- As a Bourbon Democrat myself, i would propose a Hard Money Monetary Plan. The reform program had several parts.

• First, the Independent Treasury would be turned into a strict neutrality rule for public finance. Treasury funds were held only in specie or fully redeemed coin equivalents. Bank paper was not treated as preferred public money, and the Treasury would not support selected banks or favor one class of financial institutions over another.
• Second, legal-tender favoritism would be sharply reduced. The idea is to limit coercive rules that forced the public to accept one kind of money over another and to weaken monopoly protection for any single currency type.
• Third, move to abolish fixed mint ratios between gold and silver. Instead of having Congress determine the relative value of the metals, the exchange rate would float in the market. This is intended to reduce distortions.
• Fourth, the most radical part of the program is the legalization of private coinage and competing assay institutions. Private mints, coin certification firms, and metal-money producers would be allowed to operate under market conditions, provided that their products met standards of weight and fineness.
• Fifth and last, i would also opened banking to real competition, allowing freer entry, freer branching, and freer circulation of bank liabilities. Usury ceilings and other lending restrictions would be repealed or liberalized.

12- A Compromise Tariff would be proposed. Under this tariff, everything essential to rebuilding Southern agriculture receive either zero tariffs or very low duties, consumer goods receive moderate reductions to reduce cost of living, raw materials should flow freely, several industries receive increases to appease Republicans, luxury imports gains increases to offset revenue losses, food tariffs are nearly abolished and manufacturers also receive cheaper inputs.

13- A bunch of Constitutional reforms proposals would also be made based on Confederate Constitution as a way of reconciliation:

• Change the General Welfare Clause from: “to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States” to “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, for revenue necessary to pay thedebts, provide for the common defense, and carry on the Government of the United States”.
• The President gets a line-item veto.
• Appropriations would need a two-thirds vote instead of a simple majority.
• All appropriations must specify exact amounts and purposes.
• Ban extra compensation after contracts or service.
• Eliminate omnibus spending bills through a single-subject rule.

I doubt many of these proposals would be approved by Congress, but it is worth it to take the risk.

https://preview.redd.it/fnxbrntj1udh1.jpg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fd14ff2f5e204fb6ad0cc590a14ccf85e8791733

Rules:

1- You can only remain in office until 1869, when Grant is due to succeed you.

2- You cannot be a Radical Republican; one of the reasons Lincoln chose Johnson as his Vice President was to gain the support of War Democrats against the Copperheads. You have to be either a War Democrat or a moderate Republican like Lincoln.

In my case, i would be a War Democrat, maybe from Kentucky, and i would agree on abolishing slavery, give some rights to Freedmen, etc.

Here´s my Reconstruction Plan:

1- A Proclamation of mine is made with establishes the following principles of Reconstruction:

• Slavery is dead and cannot be revived in any form (as Sharecropping).
• Black civil rights and Black voting rights are federal commitments, not optional state concessions.
• States may be restored only if they accept emancipation, federal supremacy, Black rights, and a substantially broader loyalist base than Lincoln’s original 10 percent idea. The new standard is a 25 percent loyalty threshold.

2- Freedmen’s Bureau is extended indefinitely instead of letting it wither, by enlarging his budget, and giving broader authority over labor contracts, family reunification, schools, and local disputes. The idea is to turning Freedmen autossuficient.

3- Instead of confiscating land as a punishment for treason, i would design a two-track land settlement:

• Freedmen are settled on abandoned federal lands, swamp and marsh reclamation tracts, public domain parcels, unused federal acreage, and lands obtained through tax delinquency or legal forfeiture where the government can make a clean title case. These are distributed in small family farms, usually 40 to 80 acres, with title, seed and tools, low-interest credit, and a short tax holiday being given to them with help of Freedmen Bureau.
• The large plantations of the old elite are not simply seized and handed to freedmen. Instead, a compensated land-purchase and subdivision program is established. Under this program, very large estates are assessed, the owners receive long-term federal or state bonds, and the estates are broken into manageable farm units, which would make poor white tenants, veterans, and landless laborers be able to buy them on favorable terms.

The result is that the South is no longer dominated by one giant planter class. Instead, it starts drifting toward a two-peasant-class structure

4- A stronger Civil Rights Act of 1866 or a similar bill would be signed.

5- Federal marshals and troops may intervene against intimidation, fraud, and political violence, with harsh penalties being imposed.

6- Instead of 20.000 troops as happened in real life, here at least 60 to 100.000 troops would stay in the South to guarantee Black´s rights.

7- A broad program of internal improvements would be made to reduce racial tensions and increase control of rural areas, with major federal infrastructure projects, including roads, railroads, and bridges. Federal soldiers will be assigned to protect these projects and to suppress attacks by insurgent groups.

8- Morrill Land-Grant Act would be extended into the South to help fund Black Schools and the Homestead Act would be broadened to help freedpeople and poor whites seek land in the West. But only separate colleges for Black students, not mixed ones.

9- Former Confederates get universal pardon and property protection, except for a small number of atrocity cases, and there would be no draconian military occupation of the South beyond what is needed to stop violence and protect elections.

10- 14th and 15th Amendments would still happen, but later.

11- As a Democrat myself, i would propose a Hard Money Monetary Plan. The reform program had several parts.

• First, the Independent Treasury would be turned into a strict neutrality rule for public finance. Treasury funds were held only in specie or fully redeemed coin equivalents. Bank paper was not treated as preferred public money, and the Treasury would not support selected banks or favor one class of financial institutions over another.
• Second, legal-tender favoritism would be sharply reduced. The idea is to limit coercive rules that forced the public to accept one kind of money over another and to weaken monopoly protection for any single currency type.
• Third, move to abolish fixed mint ratios between gold and silver. Instead of having Congress determine the relative value of the metals, the exchange rate would float in the market. This is intended to reduce distortions.
• Fourth, the most radical part of the program is the legalization of private coinage and competing assay institutions. Private mints, coin certification firms, and metal-money producers would be allowed to operate under market conditions, provided that their products met standards of weight and fineness.
• Fifth and last, i would also opened banking to real competition, allowing freer entry, freer branching, and freer circulation of bank liabilities. Usury ceilings and other lending restrictions would be repealed or liberalized.

12- A Compromise Tariff would be proposed. Under this tariff, everything essential to rebuilding Southern agriculture receive either zero tariffs or very low duties, consumer goods receive moderate reductions to reduce cost of living, raw materials should flow freely, several industries receive increases to appease Republicans, luxury imports gains increases to offset revenue losses, food tariffs are nearly abolished and manufacturers also receive cheaper inputs.

13- A bunch of Constitutional reforms proposals would also be made based on Confederate Constitution as a way of reconciliation:

• Change the General Welfare Clause from: “to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States” to “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, for revenue necessary to pay thedebts, provide for the common defense, and carry on the Government of the United States”.
• The President gets a line-item veto.
• Appropriations would need a two-thirds vote instead of a simple majority.
• All appropriations must specify exact amounts and purposes.
• Ban extra compensation after contracts or service.
• Eliminate omnibus spending bills through a single-subject rule.

I doubt many of these proposals would be approved by Congress, but it is worth it to take the risk.

https://preview.redd.it/rvi0q2xz2gdh1.jpg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e3bc118b552598ccb12add352a0d9d400c618c9c

Despite the various reasons why the Great Depression occurred, I firmly believe that this is the main reason:

The Federal Reserve in the 1920s, especially under Benjamin Strong expanded the money supply too rapidly during the 1920s: By introducing artificially low interest rates, excessive borrowing was encouraged, with businesses investing in projects that only looked profitable because credit was cheap ("malinvestment"). These investors borrowed heavily to speculate in stocks, to the level that when the Fed eventually tightened policy in 1928–29, these unsound investments were exposed, leading to the stock market crash.

Benjamin Strong also cooperated with Britain, by working with Montagu Norman, and he also wanted Britain to successfully return to the gold standard. To help Britain, the Fed often maintained lower interest rates than it otherwise might have. This policies were not also restrained to Britain, but also to other European Countries, and instead of using this help to fix their economies, they contributed to the stock bubble, and many of them, as Britain, tried to return to the pre-WW1 Gold Standard levels, which was simply impossible. Britain, for example, returned at its prewar parity, which many economists believe overvalued the pound.

Although there is many causes of the Great Depression, it´s undoubtely to me that the Federal Reserve credit expansion during the 1920s was the main responsible, as it created the Economic Bubble that lead to the 1929 crash.

And this is where Coolidge should have done differently:

1- Instead of treating Benjamin Strong’s easy-credit policy as a clever way to “help” Europe and keep the boom going, he publicly frames inflation as a hidden tax and credit manipulation as a danger to ordinary savers. So from roughly 1924 onward, the Fed does not flood the system with cheap credit to support foreign stabilization and domestic speculation. Interest rates stay higher. That sounds painful at first, but it blocks a lot of bad behavior before it gets huge. Farmers borrow less to expand into overproduction. Construction still grows, but less feverishly. Stock speculation still exists, but margin buying becomes less attractive because the cost of leverage is real. The market can still rise, but it rises on actual earnings and productivity more than on borrowed money.

2- Now Europe. European states are forced to devalue their exchange rates, but they remain nominally on the gold standard. It means they do not pretend they can restore prewar parity forever. They accept that their currencies must find a new, lower, more realistic level relative to gold and relative to the dollar. As a example with Britain, instead of restoring Gold Standard to £1 = $4.86, it is restored to maybe $4.40. Coolidge refuses to make America the lender-of-last-resort for a broken European adjustment process. Instead, Europe is told: if you want gold-standard credibility, fine, but you must do it at a sustainable rate. No magical overvaluation, no endless U.S.-financed rescue credit. The result is less international credit addiction and fewer cross-border distortions.

3- Prohibition. Ending Prohibition early (maybe 1926 or 1927 instead of 1933) means the federal government stops wasting enormous resources on a failed moral crusade. It also restores a legal industry, legal tax revenue, and a lot of normal commercial activity that had been shoved underground. Breweries, distilleries, transport, hospitality, agriculture, and retail all benefit. Even more important, ending Prohibition reduces corruption and removes one major symbol of federal overreach, which would help Coolidge image of minimalism.

4- Tariffs. This is the least plausible element, as Coolidge was a protectionist himself, but still important. If Coolidge actively reverses Tariffs maybe to Underwood levels, the U.S. should have became a much more open trading nation during the 1920s. That reduces retaliation abroad, supports export industries, and prevents the world trading system from becoming so brittle.

Put all of that together and you get a very different 1929.

The stock market may still correct. Corrections are normal. But the crash is less likely to become a civilization-level catastrophe. There is no giant mountain of bad leverage waiting to collapse. Banks are less exposed. Commodity speculation is less extreme. Farms are less overexpanded. Europe is less dependent on artificial U.S. credit. Trade is more open. Alcohol is legal. Tariffs are lower.

So what happens instead of the Great Depression? The most plausible answer is a mild recession in 1929–1930, followed by a relatively quick adjustment. The U.S. might still have a rough 1930 or 1931, but not the catastrophic collapse we saw historically. Hoover is much less likely to become the symbol of failure that he became in our timeline. If Coolidge leaves behind a more stable monetary and trade policy, Hoover inherits a less explosive situation.

Roosevelt may still win someday, as i think social programs would be inevitable, but the situation would be less desperate for big changes like The New Deal

https://preview.redd.it/z07cmekshadh1.jpg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=645f4ff330dfeda79b0ac108c7de1b3fce53942b

Despite the various reasons why the Great Depression occurred, I firmly believe that this is the main reason:

The Federal Reserve in the 1920s, especially under Benjamin Strong expanded the money supply too rapidly during the 1920s: By introducing artificially low interest rates, excessive borrowing was encouraged, with businesses investing in projects that only looked profitable because credit was cheap ("malinvestment"). These investors borrowed heavily to speculate in stocks, to the level that when the Fed eventually tightened policy in 1928–29, these unsound investments were exposed, leading to the stock market crash.

Benjamin Strong also cooperated with Britain, by working with Montagu Norman, and he also wanted Britain to successfully return to the gold standard. To help Britain, the Fed often maintained lower interest rates than it otherwise might have. This policies were not also restrained to Britain, but also to other European Countries, and instead of using this help to fix their economies, they contributed to the stock bubble, and many of them, as Britain, tried to return to the pre-WW1 Gold Standard levels, which was simply impossible. Britain, for example, returned at its prewar parity, which many economists believe overvalued the pound.

Although there is many causes of the Great Depression, it´s undoubtely to me that the Federal Reserve credit expansion during the 1920s was the main responsible, as it created the Economic Bubble that lead to the 1929 crash.

And this is where Coolidge should have done differently:

1- Instead of treating Benjamin Strong’s easy-credit policy as a clever way to “help” Europe and keep the boom going, he publicly frames inflation as a hidden tax and credit manipulation as a danger to ordinary savers. So from roughly 1924 onward, the Fed does not flood the system with cheap credit to support foreign stabilization and domestic speculation. Interest rates stay higher. That sounds painful at first, but it blocks a lot of bad behavior before it gets huge. Farmers borrow less to expand into overproduction. Construction still grows, but less feverishly. Stock speculation still exists, but margin buying becomes less attractive because the cost of leverage is real. The market can still rise, but it rises on actual earnings and productivity more than on borrowed money.

2- Now Europe. European states are forced to devalue their exchange rates, but they remain nominally on the gold standard. It means they do not pretend they can restore prewar parity forever. They accept that their currencies must find a new, lower, more realistic level relative to gold and relative to the dollar. As a example with Britain, instead of restoring Gold Standard to £1 = $4.86, it is restored to maybe $4.40. Coolidge refuses to make America the lender-of-last-resort for a broken European adjustment process. Instead, Europe is told: if you want gold-standard credibility, fine, but you must do it at a sustainable rate. No magical overvaluation, no endless U.S.-financed rescue credit. The result is less international credit addiction and fewer cross-border distortions.

3- Prohibition. Ending Prohibition early (maybe 1926 or 1927 instead of 1933) means the federal government stops wasting enormous resources on a failed moral crusade. It also restores a legal industry, legal tax revenue, and a lot of normal commercial activity that had been shoved underground. Breweries, distilleries, transport, hospitality, agriculture, and retail all benefit. Even more important, ending Prohibition reduces corruption and removes one major symbol of federal overreach, which would help Coolidge image of minimalism.

4- Tariffs. This is the least plausible element, as Coolidge was a protectionist himself, but still important. If Coolidge actively reverses Tariffs maybe to Underwood levels, the U.S. should have became a much more open trading nation during the 1920s. That reduces retaliation abroad, supports export industries, and prevents the world trading system from becoming so brittle.

Put all of that together and you get a very different 1929.

The stock market may still correct. Corrections are normal. But the crash is less likely to become a civilization-level catastrophe. There is no giant mountain of bad leverage waiting to collapse. Banks are less exposed. Commodity speculation is less extreme. Farms are less overexpanded. Europe is less dependent on artificial U.S. credit. Trade is more open. Alcohol is legal. Tariffs are lower.

So what happens instead of the Great Depression? The most plausible answer is a mild recession in 1929–1930, followed by a relatively quick adjustment. The U.S. might still have a rough 1930 or 1931, but not the catastrophic collapse we saw historically. Hoover is much less likely to become the symbol of failure that he became in our timeline. If Coolidge leaves behind a more stable monetary and trade policy, Hoover inherits a less explosive situation.

Roosevelt may still win someday, as i think social programs would be inevitable, but the situation would be less desperate for big changes like The New Deal

https://preview.redd.it/z2kj6qyio2dh1.jpg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3202e90c17775a0404a8fbd4826dd988bcc1cec0

Despite the various reasons why the Great Depression occurred, I firmly believe that these are the main reason:

The Federal Reserve in the 1920s, especially under Benjamin Strong expanded the money supply too rapidly during the 1920s: By introducing artificially low interest rates, excessive borrowing was encouraged, with businesses investing in projects that only looked profitable because credit was cheap ("malinvestment"). These investors borrowed heavily to speculate in stocks, to the level that when the Fed eventually tightened policy in 1928–29, these unsound investments were exposed, leading to the stock market crash.

Benjamin Strong also cooperated with Britain, by working with Montagu Norman, and he also wanted Britain to successfully return to the gold standard. To help Britain, the Fed often maintained lower interest rates than it otherwise might have. This policies were not also restrained to Britain, but also to other European Countries, and instead of using this help to fix their economies, they contributed to the stock bubble, and many of them, as Britain, tried to return to the pre-WW1 Gold Standard levels, which was simply impossible. Britain, for example, returned at its prewar parity, which many economists believe overvalued the pound.

Although there is many causes of the Great Depression, it´s undoubtely to me that the Federal Reserve credit expansion during the 1920s was the main responsible, as it created the Economic Bubble that lead to the 1929 crash.

And this is where Coolidge should have done differently:

1- Instead of treating Benjamin Strong’s easy-credit policy as a clever way to “help” Europe and keep the boom going, he publicly frames inflation as a hidden tax and credit manipulation as a danger to ordinary savers. So from roughly 1924 onward, the Fed does not flood the system with cheap credit to support foreign stabilization and domestic speculation. Interest rates stay higher. That sounds painful at first, but it blocks a lot of bad behavior before it gets huge. Farmers borrow less to expand into overproduction. Construction still grows, but less feverishly. Stock speculation still exists, but margin buying becomes less attractive because the cost of leverage is real. The market can still rise, but it rises on actual earnings and productivity more than on borrowed money.

2- Now Europe. European states are forced to devalue their exchange rates, but they remain nominally on the gold standard. It means they do not pretend they can restore prewar parity forever. They accept that their currencies must find a new, lower, more realistic level relative to gold and relative to the dollar. As a example with Britain, instead of restoring Gold Standard to £1 = $4.86, it is restored to maybe $4.40. Coolidge refuses to make America the lender-of-last-resort for a broken European adjustment process. Instead, Europe is told: if you want gold-standard credibility, fine, but you must do it at a sustainable rate. No magical overvaluation, no endless U.S.-financed rescue credit. The result is less international credit addiction and fewer cross-border distortions.

3- Prohibition. Ending Prohibition early (maybe 1926 or 1927 instead of 1933) means the federal government stops wasting enormous resources on a failed moral crusade. It also restores a legal industry, legal tax revenue, and a lot of normal commercial activity that had been shoved underground. Breweries, distilleries, transport, hospitality, agriculture, and retail all benefit. Even more important, ending Prohibition reduces corruption and removes one major symbol of federal overreach, which would help Coolidge image of minimalism.

4- Tariffs. This is the least plausible element, as Coolidge was a protectionist himself, but still important. If Coolidge actively reverses Tariffs maybe to Underwood levels, the U.S. should have became a much more open trading nation during the 1920s. That reduces retaliation abroad, supports export industries, and prevents the world trading system from becoming so brittle.

Put all of that together and you get a very different 1929.

The stock market may still correct. Corrections are normal. But the crash is less likely to become a civilization-level catastrophe. There is no giant mountain of bad leverage waiting to collapse. Banks are less exposed. Commodity speculation is less extreme. Farms are less overexpanded. Europe is less dependent on artificial U.S. credit. Trade is more open. Alcohol is legal. Tariffs are lower.

So what happens instead of the Great Depression? The most plausible answer is a mild recession in 1929–1930, followed by a relatively quick adjustment. The U.S. might still have a rough 1930 or 1931, but not the catastrophic collapse we saw historically. Hoover is much less likely to become the symbol of failure that he became in our timeline. If Coolidge leaves behind a more stable monetary and trade policy, Hoover inherits a less explosive situation.

Roosevelt may still win someday, as i think social programs would be inevitable, but the situation would be less desperate for big changes like The New Deal

This has always puzzled me. Some say it's like meditation, others say it's dissociation (as Rowling explained with Draco), others say it's clogging the mind with some overwhelming emotion (as Harry thought after Dobby's death), but what exactly is it and how is it taught? Is it by continuously attacking the mind until it intuitively resists, as Snape tried with Harry? And that's where the doubt comes in: if Legilimency isn't mind reading, then what is it?

I know that he already became Spy in First War, but I want a fic were he deserted earlier to Dumbledore, maybe after Lily ends the friendship with him and after much thinking he asks Dumbledore to be his spy, or whatever.

I also want a focus in The Order operations during The War, and Dumbledore and Snape working behind the scenes.

People sometimes attempt to compare Hogwarts and the wider wizarding community directly to modern Muggle Britain, only to discover that the numbers do not align particularly neatly. This has led to many ingenious calculations, some of which are more persuasive than others.

However, the difficulty largely arises from a mistaken assumption: namely, that wizarding society developed in the same way as non-magical society.

It did not.

The wizarding world separated itself formally from the Muggle one at the end of the seventeenth century with the introduction of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy, but its obvious that magical communities had already begun diverging culturally and socially long before that date. Consequently, many of the social and demographic patterns familiar to modern Muggles simply do not apply in the same way to wizarding populations.

Muggles often assume that advanced societies naturally possess:

• low birth rates,
• long life expectancy,
• large elderly populations,
• highly urbanised populations,
• and extensive bureaucratic institutions.

Wizarding society possesses some of these features, but notably lacks others.

For example, witches and wizards never depended upon many of the medical and sanitary revolutions that transformed Muggle life during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Long before Muggles understood the causes of contaminated water, magical households were capable of cleaning, repairing and preserving both homes and food by magical means. Injuries fatal to Muggles could often be cured within hours by competent healers. Epidemics that devastated non-magical communities were sometimes mitigated by potions and magical quarantine measures.

Yet paradoxically, magical Britain remained — and remains — a dangerous place.

Wizards live alongside creatures capable of killing fully trained adults. Experimental magic is common. Broom accidents, dangerous potions, rogue enchantments and cursed artefacts all contribute to mortality in ways unknown to Muggles. Magical warfare is also unusually destructive. A single dark wizard can cause devastation out of all proportion to his numbers, as demonstrated twice within 1970 to 1998 with the two Wizarding Wars.

This combination of advanced magical healing and persistent magical danger produced a society with demographic patterns distinct from both medieval and modern Muggle Britain.

The wizarding population of Britain has historically remained small (3,000 if we consider J.K Rowling guess). Small populations behave differently from large ones. Old family names persist longer. Intermarriage between magical families becomes common over centuries. Social networks remain dense and highly interconnected. Most witches and wizards, knowingly or unknowingly, are related if one traces their ancestry back far enough.

This is one reason blood status became such an obsession among certain old wizarding families. In a tiny population, genealogy acquires disproportionate social significance.

Hogwarts itself reflects these demographic peculiarities. The school draws students from across Britain and Ireland rather than from a single region, making it simultaneously a school, a boarding institution and the central socialising mechanism of magical Britain. Many lifelong friendships, rivalries, marriages and political alliances begin there.

People occasionally observe that Hogwarts appears simultaneously crowded and oddly small. What can be said as a error by Rowling is not entirely accidental. Numbers at Hogwarts fluctuate considerably between generations, particularly during periods of instability. Harry´s year group was relatively small because it was born during the height of the First Wizarding War, when many witches and wizards postponed having children altogether.

By contrast, periods of peace tend to produce significantly larger generations.

Wizarding families also differ considerably from modern Muggle ones in structure and expectation. Although smaller families became increasingly common during the twentieth century, large magical families were historically quite normal. The Weasleys household is often viewed as unusually large, yet several old magical families in previous centuries (and muggle ones) routinely produced six, seven or more children.

This tendency partly reflects economics. Magic reduces many domestic burdens associated with raising children. Household charms, self-repairing objects and magical food preparation make large households easier to sustain than they might be for Muggles of comparable income.

However, another important factor is cultural continuity. Wizarding society remained family-centred and tradition-oriented far longer than modern Muggle Britain. Many pure-blood families viewed children not merely as heirs, but as continuations of ancient magical lineages stretching back centuries (like the Blacks).

Curiously, wizarding society also displays a certain resistance to demographic modernisation. Because magic solved some problems that forced Muggle societies to industrialise rapidly, the wizarding world retained many older social structures. The Ministry of Magic is far less bureaucratically rationalised than a modern Muggle government; family influence still matters enormously; and many aspects of magical life remain closer to the eighteenth century than the twenty-first.

In this sense, magical Britain did not simply become a hidden version of modern Britain.

It became something else entirely:
a small, insular magical civilisation evolving along its own peculiar historical path.

****

Based on this Meta...

https://preview.redd.it/szx767fn9l1h1.jpg?width=1919&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f329f014ff90c3a3994b173a7d3f3ad25e6bf503

Some time ago, i make a post here asking what would have been if Reagan implemented similar economic policies to Thatcher. What was a little test turned into a idea for Alternate History Series.

All OTL presidencies in this series are the same until Obama, and all will stay the same in Foreign Policy, while all their Economic Policies will be based and inspired by Thatcherism, Blairism, Austerity, etc.

I will talk the reforms in a more technical way, to create something more complex than simple "tax cuts, budget cuts, etc."

Now let´s begin:

****

REAGAN

Tax Reform:

• Top marginal income tax rate cut from 70% to 45%, and later to 28%.
• Intermediate rates compressed toward a flatter structure.
• Bracket indexation begins early.
• Capital gains rate cut sharply.
• Corporate income tax rate reduced.
• Accelerated depreciation for plant and equipment.
• Creation of Universal Personal Savings Accounts for households.
• Dividend and small-share ownership exclusions for retail investors.
• Major loopholes and special deductions abolished.
• Tax base broadened in exchange for lower rates.
• Stronger neutrality toward investment.
• Expanded tax support for household savings and retirement assets.
• Estate and gift tax burdens reduced for productive capital, plus relief for family firms and farms

Unions:

• Mandatory secret ballots before all strikes.
• Mandatory recertification votes every 4 years in NLRB-covered workplaces.
• Secondary boycotts banned more comprehensively.
• Mass picketing restrictions tightened.
• Employers explicitly protected when hiring permanent replacements during economic strikes.
• Union financial disclosure greatly expanded.
• Individual union members gain federal rights to sue leadership for misuse of dues.
• Permanent federal prohibition on strikes by government workers.
• Automatic decertification of federal unions engaging in unlawful strike action.
• Federal transit, education, and local-government aid conditioned on state adoption of strict no-strike laws for key public employees.
• Federal collective bargaining law standardized in a much more management-friendly way.
• Agency-shop fees are heavily curtailed.
• Nationwide right-to-work codified beyond sectoral limits.
• Union political spending requires periodic member consent.
• Restrictions on secondary action, solidarity strikes, and coercive picketing become even tighter.
• Strikes in transport, utilities, and sectors deemed economically strategic face cooling-off periods or binding arbitration rules.
• Public pension funds are restricted from explicitly political or industrial-policy investing.

Money and Credit:

• The Fed is required to publish target bands for money supply growth and inflation reduction.
• Treasury and Fed testimony must center on price stability rather than demand management.
• Federal credit programs are capped and reviewed.
• Ad hoc industrial bailouts become legally difficult.
• Housing, farm, and industrial credit subsidies are curtailed or made temporary.

Spending:

• Statutory spending caps on non-defense domestic discretionary growth.
• Consolidation of dozens of domestic grant programs into capped block grants.
• Real cuts to housing, urban development, manpower training, and social-service spending.
• Community Development Block Grants reduced and tied to private redevelopment benchmarks.
• Federal planning and anti-poverty offices merged or abolished.
• Medicaid growth formula tightened.
• Welfare programs shifted toward stricter state administration.
• Automatic spending sequesters for domestic discretionary growth above targets.

Regulation:

• Automatic sunset review for major economic regulations.
• Mandatory cost-benefit analysis.
• Accelerated deregulation in telecom, transport, banking, and energy.
• Federal barriers to market entry cut back.
• Agencies must justify rules as competition-enhancing or public-safety-critical.
• Large swaths of federal support functions opened to competitive tender.
• Senior civil service made easier to reassign or dismiss for poor performance.
• Agency sunset rules expanded.
• Federal contracting-out becomes routine in maintenance, procurement, data processing, and administrative services.
• Quasi-autonomous grant bodies and intermediary agencies are consolidated or abolished.

Welfare:

• AFDC converted into a capped federal-state block grant.
• States permitted to impose work requirements for able-bodied adults with children above a certain age threshold.
• Time limits begin in experimental form, later expanded.
• Child support enforcement is federalized more strongly.
• Mandatory cooperation with paternity and support enforcement becomes a condition of long-term aid.
• Fraud enforcement is strengthened.
• Food stamp eligibility tightened.
• Unemployment insurance duration is trimmed in expansion periods and stricter job-search rules imposed.
• Workfare pilots expanded nationally.
• Training and placement are channeled increasingly through private contractors and local nonprofits.
• Benefits are reduced for repeated noncompliance absent hardship exemptions.
• Teen pregnancy and single-parent poverty are addressed through a mix of moralizing rhetoric, child-support enforcement, and work-first rules.

Housing (Based on Right-to-Buy):

• Long-term public-housing tenants are granted the right to purchase units at steep discounts.
• Federal mortgage guarantees created for qualified tenant-purchasers.
• Public housing authorities are incentivized to convert projects into co-ops, condominiums, or tenant-owned associations.
• Failing public housing projects can be sold, demolished, or transferred to private redevelopment consortia.
• HUD is reoriented from a builder-manager to a voucher-and-ownership agency.
• Portable rent assistance replaces part of the old project subsidy model.

Local and State Governments:

• Large-scale urban enterprise zones with tax abatements, lighter labor rules, and streamlined zoning.
• Federal aid to cities is conditioned on fiscal restraint, anti-crime measures, and private investment partnerships.
• Cities in distress can receive aid only under fiscal control boards.
• Local services such as sanitation, maintenance, and some transit operations must be competitively tendered if cities seek federal rescue funds.
• Federal aid formulas penalize municipal overspending.
• Rescue funds require:
  • pension restructuring,
  • payroll limits,
  • contracting out,
  • property-tax and spending restraint plans.
• Federal incentives for state tax limitation amendments.
• New federal reporting rules expose city pension liabilities and long-term obligations.
• Transit and housing agencies must adopt private contracting benchmarks.

Privatizations:

• Conrail privatized earlier and more completely.
• Amtrak reorganized into regional corporations, with profitable corridors moved toward franchise or share-sale models.
• Selected federal energy assets sold or concessioned.
• Non-core federal land, storage, and logistics assets sold.
• TVA partially corporatized, with debate opened over broader privatization.
• USPS reorganized:
  • core postal obligations remain public,
  • parcel, logistics, and express arms opened to competition or partial corporatization.
• The federal government is given general authority to convert selected public enterprises into public corporations and sell shares to citizens.
• Small investors and employees receive priority tranches.
• Tax advantages reward purchase of privatization shares.
• Pension funds and retirement accounts can hold these assets.

Social Security and Healthcare:

• Retirement age rises faster than in OTL.
• Future benefit growth is moderated.
• Higher-income retirees face mild means-testing above high thresholds.
• Workers may divert a small part of payroll taxes into regulated personal retirement accounts.
• These accounts are tightly managed at first, with default investment into broad funds and federal bonds.
• Tax-preferred private pension expansion is encouraged.
• Medicaid turned into a capped allotment with broad state flexibility.
• States encouraged to use managed care and private contracting.
• Medicare competition broadened through private-plan options.
• More aggressive hospital payment reform.
• Tax treatment for individually purchased insurance improved.
• Certificate-of-need laws attacked through funding penalties.
• Expansion of private clinics, ambulatory centers, and competitive delivery systems.

Education:

• Federal tax credits for tuition and scholarship contributions.
• Charter-like demonstration schools authorized earlier than in OTL.
• Merit pay incentives for teachers.
• Easier dismissal standards for poor-performing teachers in states taking federal funds.
• Federal aid tied to standards, testing, graduation requirements, and school discipline reforms.
• States adopting teacher strike bans and stricter collective bargaining frameworks receive preference grants.

Social:

• Marriage tax relief for working families.
• Grants to churches and voluntary associations for addiction recovery, family support, and neighborhood stabilization.
• Federal support for anti-obscenity and anti-pornography enforcement.
• Tougher anti-vandalism, anti-graffiti, and transit-order grants to cities.
• Local governments receiving aid must show anti-crime benchmarks.
• Expanded prison construction.
• Tough sentencing laws.
• Federal-local narcotics coordination.
• Civil forfeiture broadened.
• Transit, housing, and school grants tied to policing and security plans.

Defense and Foreign Policy:

• Same as OTL.

****

EFFECTS:

Year	Nominal GDP ($T)	Real GDP Growth	CPI Inflation	Unemployment	Poverty Rate	Gini (household income)	Union Membership Rate	Homeownership Rate	Deficit % GDP	Debt/GDP
1981	3.17	1.2%	10.2%	7.8%	13.5%	0.404	21.0%	65.1%	-2.5%	31%
1982	3.24	-3.1%	6.4%	10.8%	15.2%	0.414	18.7%	64.5%	-3.7%	34%
1983	3.50	3.8%	3.9%	11.2%	16.0%	0.425	16.8%	64.2%	-3.4%	36%
1984	3.94	6.8%	3.2%	8.9%	14.8%	0.434	15.4%	64.9%	-2.5%	37%
1985	4.26	4.3%	2.9%	7.7%	14.0%	0.442	14.2%	65.8%	-2.0%	38%
1986	4.55	3.7%	2.1%	7.1%	13.6%	0.449	13.1%	66.7%	-1.4%	38%
1987	4.87	3.9%	2.8%	6.4%	13.2%	0.456	12.3%	67.6%	-0.8%	37%
1988	5.23	4.1%	3.1%	5.8%	12.8%	0.462	11.7%	68.5%	+0.1%	35%

Growth: This ATL has a more brutal 1982–1983, because this Reagan does not just tolerate Volcker: he adds labor-market shock, welfare retrenchment, fiscal discipline for cities, and industrial non-rescue on top of tight money. Very similar to Thatcher

Inflation: Falls faster and more cleanly than in OTL thanks to tighter wage pressure after labor reform, stronger anti-inflation credibility, less expectation of reflationary rescue, and less tolerance for subsidizing failing sectors.

Unemployment: This is where the pain shows. Rises above OTL in 1982, stays high in 1983, but comes down as the new nonunion, service, suburban, logistics, telecom, finance, and Sunbelt growth economy absorbs labor.

Poverty: Rises more than OTL in the early 1980s, later, poverty does fall again, but not dramatically, because the recovery is unequal.

Inequality: The Gini climbs faster than in real history.

Union membership: Historic fall compared to OTL

Homeownership: This ATL Reagan deliberately pushes an ownership democracy.

****

ELECTIONS AND CONGRESS

1980 (think of it like a 1994 Revolution but in 1980):

• Presidential: Reagan (53,7%/472 EV) - Carter (40,4%/66 EV)
• House: 239 R - 196 D
• Senate: 57 R - 43 D

1982:

• House: 231 R - 204 D
• Senate: 55 R - 45 D

1984:

• Presidential: Reagan (61,8%/525 EV) - Mondale (36.6%/13 EV)
• House: 252 R - 183 D
• Senate: 60 R - 40 D

1986:

• House: 244 R - 191 D
• Senate: 56 R - 44 D

****

I will make one about Bush 41 another time....

This is the next part of my Series of British Folklore through Pottermore-like articles like they were made by JK Rowling (It´s a fanwork)

- Fairy Rings

- The Wild Hunt

- Barrows and Cairns

- Changelings

- Herne the Hunter

- Knockers

- The Green Man

- Hag Stones and Witch Bottles

- The Cunning Folk

- Will-o´-the-Wisps

- The White Horses of Britain

****

Selkies

The selkies of Britain’s northern coasts are among the least understood shape-shifting magical beings in Europe.

Though often confused with merpeople by inexperienced wizards, selkies differ fundamentally in both biology and magical behavior. A selkie possesses two stable physical forms:

• a seal-like aquatic body,
• and a human form accessed through a magical skin-binding transformation.

The concealment and protection of a selkie’s seal-skin is central to selkie society. Historical attempts by wizards to steal or bind these skins produced several violent coastal conflicts during the seventeenth century, most of which ended poorly for the wizards involved.

Selkies maintain small hidden communities along remote Scottish and Irish coastlines and rarely interact with inland magical governments except through carefully negotiated treaties.

Among their known abilities are:

• exceptional weather prediction,
• underwater navigation,
• and unusually sophisticated sea-current magic.

The Department of International Magical Cooperation maintains standing agreements with several selkie clans concerning shipwreck salvage and North Sea magical hazards.

Gilderoy Lockhart once claimed to have “personally negotiated peace with the selkies.”

This was entirely false.

****

This the eleventh part of my Series of British Folklore through Pottermore-like articles like they were made by JK Rowling (It´s a fanwork)

- Fairy Rings

- The Wild Hunt

- Barrows and Cairns

- Changelings

- Herne the Hunter

- Knockers

- The Green Man

- Hag Stones and Witch Bottles

- The Cunning Folk

- Will-o´-the-Wisps

****

The White Horses of Britain

The enormous chalk horse figures carved into the hills of southern England have fascinated both magical and non-magical historians for centuries.

Muggles regard them as prehistoric artworks.

Wizarding scholars know they are considerably stranger than that.

Many magical archaeologists believe the white horses functioned as territorial enchantments created by early magical communities long before the founding of Hogwarts. The figures appear to subtly influence surrounding magical landscapes even today.

Areas surrounding intact horse figures exhibit:

• unusually stable weather magic,
• reduced magical creature aggression,
• and heightened effectiveness for protective enchantments.

Attempts to magically alter or damage the horses have historically ended badly. In 1811, a wizard attempting to “improve” one of the figures with animated topiary disappeared for six weeks and later refused to discuss the matter under Veritaserum.

Certain old wizarding families traditionally conducted aerial rituals above the horse figures during solstices. These practices were officially discouraged after several unfortunate broom collisions in the 1880s.

Luna Lovegood’s father once claimed the horses “remember things.”

Nobody entirely dismissed this possibility.

****

https://preview.redd.it/m91jj5tv8s0h1.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=977be66fde7f85d2b3f661a7e704b12967296b48

Some time ago, i make a post here asking what would have been if Reagan implemented similar economic policies to Thatcher. What was a little test turned into a idea for Alternate History Series.

All OTL presidencies in this series are the same until Obama, and all will stay the same in Foreign Policy, while all their Economic Policies will be based and inspired by Thatcherism, Blairism, Austerity, etc.

I will not summarize the economic policies, i will make legislation summaries instead for each presidency.

So, let´s begun:

****

REAGAN

LEGISLATION:

- Economic Recovery, Sound Money, and Tax Reform Act of 1981

• Top marginal income tax rate cut from 70% to 45% immediately.
• Intermediate rates compressed toward a flatter structure.
• Bracket indexation begins early.
• Capital gains rate cut sharply.
• Corporate income tax rate reduced.
• Accelerated depreciation for plant and equipment.
• Creation of Universal Personal Savings Accounts for households.
• Dividend and small-share ownership exclusions for retail investors.
• Estate tax relief for family firms and farms.
• Statutory spending caps on non-defense domestic discretionary growth.

- Monetary Stability and Federal Credit Reform Act of 1981

• The Fed is required to publish target bands for money supply growth and inflation reduction.
• Treasury and Fed testimony must center on price stability rather than demand management.
• Federal credit programs are capped and reviewed.
• Ad hoc industrial bailouts become legally difficult.
• Housing, farm, and industrial credit subsidies are curtailed or made temporary.
• A bipartisan-sounding but GOP-dominated Commission on Stable Money and Credit Discipline is created.

- Federal Expenditure Restraint and Block Grant Act of 1981

• Consolidation of dozens of domestic grant programs into capped block grants.
• Real cuts to housing, urban development, manpower training, and social-service spending.
• Community Development Block Grants reduced and tied to private redevelopment benchmarks.
• Federal planning and anti-poverty offices merged or abolished.
• Medicaid growth formula tightened.
• Welfare programs shifted toward stricter state administration.

- Regulatory Sunset and Competitive Enterprise Act of 1981

• Automatic sunset review for major economic regulations.
• Mandatory cost-benefit analysis.
• Accelerated deregulation in telecom, transport, banking, and energy.
• Federal barriers to market entry cut back.
• Agencies must justify rules as competition-enhancing or public-safety-critical.

- Labor Democracy and National Economic Security Act of 1982

Union power

• Mandatory secret ballots before all strikes.
• Mandatory recertification votes every 4 years in NLRB-covered workplaces.
• Secondary boycotts banned more comprehensively.
• Mass picketing restrictions tightened.
• Employers explicitly protected when hiring permanent replacements during economic strikes.
• Union financial disclosure greatly expanded.
• Individual union members gain federal rights to sue leadership for misuse of dues.

Public-sector unions

• Permanent federal prohibition on strikes by government workers.
• Automatic decertification of federal unions engaging in unlawful strike action.
• Federal transit, education, and local-government aid conditioned on state adoption of strict no-strike laws for key public employees.
• Federal collective bargaining law standardized in a much more management-friendly way.

Right-to-work

• A federal right-to-work standard is imposed nationwide in interstate-commerce sectors.
• Agency-shop fees are heavily curtailed.

- Welfare Responsibility and Family Support Act of 1982

• AFDC converted into a capped federal-state block grant.
• States permitted to impose work requirements for able-bodied adults with children above a certain age threshold.
• Time limits begin in experimental form, later expanded.
• Child support enforcement is federalized more strongly.
• Mandatory cooperation with paternity and support enforcement becomes a condition of long-term aid.
• Fraud enforcement is strengthened.
• Food stamp eligibility tightened.
• Unemployment insurance duration is trimmed in expansion periods and stricter job-search rules imposed.

- Housing Ownership and Urban Transition Act of 1982

• Long-term public-housing tenants are granted the right to purchase units at steep discounts.
• Federal mortgage guarantees created for qualified tenant-purchasers.
• Public housing authorities are incentivized to convert projects into co-ops, condominiums, or tenant-owned associations.
• Failing public housing projects can be sold, demolished, or transferred to private redevelopment consortia.
• HUD is reoriented from a builder-manager to a voucher-and-ownership agency.
• Portable rent assistance replaces part of the old project subsidy model.

- Urban Enterprise and Municipal Recovery Act of 1982

• Large-scale urban enterprise zones with tax abatements, lighter labor rules, and streamlined zoning.
• Federal aid to cities is conditioned on fiscal restraint, anti-crime measures, and private investment partnerships.
• Cities in distress can receive aid only under fiscal control boards.
• Local services such as sanitation, maintenance, and some transit operations must be competitively tendered if cities seek federal rescue funds.

- Public Enterprise Privatization and Share Ownership Act of 1983

• Conrail privatized earlier and more completely.
• Amtrak reorganized into regional corporations, with profitable corridors moved toward franchise or share-sale models.
• Selected federal energy assets sold or concessioned.
• Non-core federal land, storage, and logistics assets sold.
• TVA partially corporatized, with debate opened over broader privatization.
• USPS reorganized:
  • core postal obligations remain public,
  • parcel, logistics, and express arms opened to competition or partial corporatization.
• The federal government is given general authority to convert selected public enterprises into public corporations and sell shares to citizens.

Ownership design

• Small investors and employees receive priority tranches.
• Tax advantages reward purchase of privatization shares.
• Pension funds and retirement accounts can hold these assets.

- Local Government Accountability and Taxpayer Protection Act of 1983

• Federal aid formulas penalize municipal overspending.
• Rescue funds require:
  • pension restructuring,
  • payroll limits,
  • contracting out,
  • property-tax and spending restraint plans.
• Federal incentives for state tax limitation amendments.
• New federal reporting rules expose city pension liabilities and long-term obligations.
• Transit and housing agencies must adopt private contracting benchmarks.

- Social Security Security and Personal Retirement Act of 1984

• Retirement age rises faster than in OTL.
• Future benefit growth is moderated.
• Higher-income retirees face mild means-testing above high thresholds.
• Workers may divert a small part of payroll taxes into regulated personal retirement accounts.
• These accounts are tightly managed at first, with default investment into broad funds and federal bonds.
• Tax-preferred private pension expansion is encouraged.

- Education Excellence, Discipline, and Parental Choice Act of 1984

• Federal tax credits for tuition and scholarship contributions.
• Charter-like demonstration schools authorized earlier than in OTL.
• Merit pay incentives for teachers.
• Easier dismissal standards for poor-performing teachers in states taking federal funds.
• Federal aid tied to standards, testing, graduation requirements, and school discipline reforms.
• States adopting teacher strike bans and stricter collective bargaining frameworks receive preference grants.

- National Health Competition and Medicaid Reform Act of 1985

• Medicaid turned into a capped allotment with broad state flexibility.
• States encouraged to use managed care and private contracting.
• Medicare competition broadened through private-plan options.
• More aggressive hospital payment reform.
• Tax treatment for individually purchased insurance improved.
• Certificate-of-need laws attacked through funding penalties.
• Expansion of private clinics, ambulatory centers, and competitive delivery systems.

- Welfare to Work Expansion Act of 1985

• Workfare pilots expanded nationally.
• Time-limited welfare becomes more standard.
• Training and placement are channeled increasingly through private contractors and local nonprofits.
• Benefits are reduced for repeated noncompliance absent hardship exemptions.
• Teen pregnancy and single-parent poverty are addressed through a mix of moralizing rhetoric, child-support enforcement, and work-first rules.

- Civil Service Competition and Administrative Reform Act of 1985

• Large swaths of federal support functions opened to competitive tender.
• Senior civil service made easier to reassign or dismiss for poor performance.
• Agency sunset rules expanded.
• Federal contracting-out becomes routine in maintenance, procurement, data processing, and administrative services.
• Quasi-autonomous grant bodies and intermediary agencies are consolidated or abolished.

- National Right-to-Work and Union Accountability Act of 1986

• Nationwide right-to-work codified beyond sectoral limits.
• Mandatory recertification elections become a permanent feature.
• Union political spending requires periodic member consent.
• Restrictions on secondary action, solidarity strikes, and coercive picketing become even tighter.
• Strikes in transport, utilities, and sectors deemed economically strategic face cooling-off periods or binding arbitration rules.
• Public pension funds are restricted from explicitly political or industrial-policy investing.

- Tax Simplification and Enterprise Act of 1986

• Top individual tax rate reduced to roughly 28%.
• Corporate rate reduced sharply.
• Major loopholes and special deductions abolished.
• Tax base broadened in exchange for lower rates.
• Stronger neutrality toward investment.
• Expanded tax support for household savings and retirement assets.
• Estate and gift tax burdens reduced for productive capital.

- Family Responsibility and Community Order Act of 1987

• Stronger child-support enforcement machinery.
• Marriage tax relief for working families.
• Grants to churches and voluntary associations for addiction recovery, family support, and neighborhood stabilization.
• Federal support for anti-obscenity and anti-pornography enforcement.
• Tougher anti-vandalism, anti-graffiti, and transit-order grants to cities.
• Local governments receiving aid must show anti-crime benchmarks.

- Safe Streets and National Anti-Drug Act of 1987

• Expanded prison construction.
• Tough sentencing laws.
• Federal-local narcotics coordination.
• Civil forfeiture broadened.
• Transit, housing, and school grants tied to policing and security plans.

- American Ownership and Fiscal Permanence Act of 1988

• Permanent extension of lower tax structure.
• Constitutional amendment campaign for a balanced budget intensified.
• Automatic spending sequesters for domestic discretionary growth above targets.
• Broader use of personal retirement and savings accounts.
• Final rounds of public asset disposals.
• Permanent voucher-and-ownership tilt in housing assistance.

CONGRESS SEATS:

97th Congress (1981-1983)

House: 239 R - 196 D

Senate: 57 R - 43 D

98th Congress (1983-1985)

House: 231 R - 204 D

Senate: 55 R - 45 D

99th Congress (1985-1987)

House: 252 R - 183 D

Senate: 60 R - 40 D

100th Congress (1987-1989)

House: 244 R - 191 D

Senate: 56 R - 44 D

EFFECTS;

- Inflation falls decisively, faster and more durably than in OTL.

- The 1981–1983 slump is worse than in real life, but Reagan and his coalition maintain credibility

- Recovery after 1983 is stronger in profits, finance, and flexible labor markets

- Union decline becomes historic

- Inequality rises faster and earlier (Rises 5 or 7 points if we uses Gini)

- A real “property-owning democracy” emerges, but unevenly

- Public housing shrinks dramatically

- Crime and incarceration rise under a harsher order

- Deficits rises earlier, but are reduced and little surplus in 1988

- Debt remains in the 30s percent as GDP percentage

- Compared to OTL Reagan (which common folk love but historians are divided), ATL Reagan is more polarizing by common folk but more acclaimed by historians. While OTL Reagan is a C tier President, ATL Reagan is a B or B-

****

Next: BUSH 41....

This the ninth part of my Series of British Folklore through Pottermore-like articles like they were made by JK Rowling (It´s a fanwork)

- Fairy Rings

- The Wild Hunt

- Barrows and Cairns

- Changelings

- Herne the Hunter

- Knockers

- The Green Man

- Hag Stones and Witch Bottles

****

The Cunning Folk

Not all magical Britons learned magic at Hogwarts.

For centuries, remote magical communities relied upon practitioners known collectively as cunning folk: local healers, charmers, curse-lifters, and magical advisors who operated independently of formal institutions.

Cunning folk occupied an ambiguous social position. They were respected by rural communities yet viewed with suspicion by educated magical society, particularly after the Ministry’s centralization efforts during the eighteenth century.

Unlike formally trained witches and wizards, cunning practitioners specialized in:

• inherited oral charms,
• regional spirit lore,
• weather signs,
• healing traditions,
• and protective household magic.

Their methods often relied less upon wand precision and more upon:

• rhythm,
• repetition,
• symbolic exchange,
• and location-specific ritual.

Several modern magical disciplines likely originated from cunning traditions, including elements of:

• curse diagnosis,
• magical herbcraft,
• and beast-calming.

Professor Dumbledore reportedly maintained considerable respect for cunning magic and once remarked that “there are forms of wisdom not examined in O.W.L.s.”

This may explain why he consistently ignored Ministry advice.

****

This the eighth part of my Series of British Folklore through Pottermore-like articles like they were made by JK Rowling (It´s a fanwork)

- Fairy Rings

- The Wild Hunt

- Barrows and Cairns

- Changelings

- Herne the Hunter

- Knockers

- The Green Man

****

Hag Stones and Witch Bottles

Long before standardized defensive spells became common, magical Britons relied heavily upon protective folk objects.

Hag stones — naturally perforated stones usually worn on cords — were believed to permit partial perception through concealment charms and minor illusions. Many wizarding fishermen along Britain’s coasts still carry them today.

Witch bottles served a more aggressive purpose.

Traditionally buried beneath thresholds or fireplaces, these bottles contained combinations of:

• nails,
• hair,
• herbs,
• ash,
• and residual magical material.

Their purpose was to trap, redirect, or absorb hostile magic directed toward a household.

Though primitive by modern standards, well-crafted witch bottles proved surprisingly effective against low-level curses. Several pure-blood families continued using them well into the twentieth century despite publicly dismissing folk magic as unsophisticated.

Arthur Weasley once attempted to collect antique witch bottles for the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office.

Molly reportedly forbade him after one exploded in the kitchen.

****