Zombie Apocalypse: Creation-Chapter 675: Bandits and Health of Economy

Chapter 675: Bandits and Health of Economy
"Xiaoyun, you okay? You looked a little tired today."
Leyan curiously asked as Xiaoyun came back from the garage doors, sitting down on the sofa before falling flat.
"I’m fine. Just didn’t sleep that well yesterday... Would you mind waking me up when it’s dinner time?"
"Sure... Come on, let’s not bother your daddy taking a nap."
As Leyan gathered the kids away from the living room, Xiaoyun finally couldn’t resist the drowsiness.
---
When a noise woke him up again, two hours had already gone by, and the sun outside the window had already set on the horizon.
"Honey, wakie-wakie, everyone is home already. It’s time to eat dinner now."
Slowly sitting back up from the sofa, he could see everyone already seated at the dining table, waiting for him to come over.
"Geez, Xiaoyun, what did you do to be this sleepy? I had never seen you take afternoon naps like this."
Yuqi curiously asked, with everyone looking towards Xiaoyun with curiosity, except for Tianci, who didn’t dare to look back at him.
"I just couldn’t sleep that well last night. I’m fine now though... Leyan, can you give me a pair of chopsticks?"
As Leyan handed him a bowl of rice and chopsticks, everyone else could finally start eating the food on the table.
"We didn’t bother with your sleep, though. How could you have had a bad rest yesterday? You look fine in the morning, too."
Nami’s comment exposed right through Xiaoyun’s reasoning, but he wasn’t about to confess what had happened.
"I just got tired in the afternoon to the point that I felt like I needed a little nap."
"Nothing wrong with him napping. Anyway, Anna, Kate, I thought you two were going to be late. How come you guys came home so early?"
Leyan asked, turning everyone’s attention over to the two of them, who had been mostly silent the whole time.
"I don’t even want to talk about it... You wouldn’t believe what we encountered on the way to Qingyuan."
Seeing Anna’s face getting a little angry, everyone’s attention was turned towards the two of them.
"What did you two encounter?" Yueyue curiously asked.
"Bandits. Road bandits. Ten bandits armed with muskets. Those flint-lock muskets straight out of a museum."
Kate answered this time as she didn’t look angry at all. Rather, she looked a little amused as she said it out loud.
"Musket? Who in their right mind thinks they can be road-side bandits with muskets? Robbing a gun manufacturer of all things."
Wuli questions in disbelief, with everyone holding the urge to laugh as the story just sounded way too ridiculous.
"That’s what I thought too when they tried to pull us over. When I first saw their guns, I thought it was just a joke..." Kate answered.
"Until they told us to step out and hand over the car," Anna murmured, her face still looking a little grumpy.
"What did you guys do after?" Lily curiously asked.
"We didn’t even need to do anything. One of our employees pulled out a gun, and they ran away like flies."
"That’s good," Leyan murmured, looking a little relieved as no blood was spilled in the end.
"Wait a moment, how did they even get their musket? And did you guys not call the police?" Yuqi questioned.
"It was in the middle of the highway, and the reception was not the greatest there. And they just flee into the woods." Kate explained.
"That’s not going to be safe... Let me call Li Zhen. This can’t be allowed to happen under my settlements."
As Yuqi quickly got up from the dining table and walked away to make a phone call, Shuli turned her attention over to Xiaoyun.
"Seems like the deputy governor cares more about security than the governor himself."
"Hey, I was about to call if it wasn’t for Yuqi taking the opportunity."
"Kate, where was the road located exactly?" Yuqi asked out loud as she yelled across the hallway.
"Between Qingyuan and Foshan, near the Qingcheng District."
After eating for a few minutes, Yuqi finally came back to the dining table as she put her phone back into her pocket.
"Okay, Li Zhen told me he had put it down for investigation... Anna, what’s wrong? Why do you look so unhappy still?"
"I don’t know. I just feel unhappy today."
Seeing her not wanting to elaborate further, no one pressured her to speak up again as everyone’s attention soon shifted back to the food.
---
As nighttime approached, everyone had already taken a shower as they sat right before the TV, which was displaying today’s news.
Although it was called ’news,’ it almost felt like they were watching a job search, as a third of the news segment was just employers advertising their company.
The only interesting thing they found was near the end of the news segment, as the news anchor began to talk about financial news.
"Today, we invited a financial expert to join us. The head of the central bank, Mr.Liu."
As Liuqian stepped into the camera, both Xiaoyun and Yuqi were a little surprised as they never expected to see him on the news.
"Nice to meet you, Mr.Wu," Liuqian murmured as the two of them shook hands.
"Nice to meet you too. Mr.Liu, let’s get right to our first topic. I’m sure you have seen that the stock market has reached a new high recently.
One of the biggest driving factors is the newly created Qingyuan Steel and Qingyuan Mineral, both breaking 10 million market caps.
Everyone in front of the TV is dying to know, is it still safe for them to invest their money in the stock market right now?"
"Investing always has risks and rewards. To be clear, I’m not a financial advisor. I can’t tell you if you’ll make a return on your investment or not."
Liuqian paused for a second, then continued.
"But I can tell you this, Mr.Wu, your bank account and everyone’s bank account are secure, regardless of how the stock market performs.
It’s just like the stock market before the outbreak. There’s always going to be winners and losers, so invest with that in mind."
"That is definitely true. Investment always has risks... Now, Mr.Liu, have you heard of the Governor’s interview from yesterday?"
"Of course."
"One thing the governor had promised was to lower inflation. Can I ask what exactly the policy will be in tackling inflation?"
"As the governor had mentioned before, we have heavily subsidized our manufacturing sector across all of our settlements.
Be it in QIngyuan or in Foshan or in Guangzhou. Every city has this problem implemented to help incentivize job creation.
On top of that, it will lower the inputs cost for many of these companies so they can set their goods at a lower price in the market."
"But consumers had mostly ed that the price of goods continued to go up while their wages had remained stagnant."
Liuqian fell into silence for a second, but he quickly spoke up again.
"As most of you know, the economy has recently been reforming towards a market competition rather than a restricted planned economy.
The prices of goods, I would say, are fluctuating, not inflating.. Here, as a better example, the price of a shirt at the end of June was ed to be 10 NRC on average.
But now in August, it costs 8 NRC... Next week, we might see the shirt cost 12 NRC. This fluctuation of prices should be more stabilized as stores buy more inventory."
"So in simpler terms, it’s just temporary price hikes?" The news anchor curiously asked.
"You could think it like that. Over time, though, the overall price of goods should drop as more factories find more efficient ways with better technology.
At a certain point, the subsidy the government is currently offering wouldn’t be needed when these new startup companies reach a more stable situation.
With less money in the market chasing more goods, then the price of goods will begin to drop drastically back to its normal average cost."
"I see... Let’s move on to the next topic, economic prosperity. Mr.Liu, have you seen the labor the government released for last month?"
"I did."
"For those who haven’t seen it, the labor statistic has shown an unemployment drop to historical lows of under 15% across all cities.
Now, Mr.Liu, how was this achieved? How likely is this trend of lowering unemployment going to continue?"
"Well, Mr.Wu, as we mentioned earlier, the subsidy has helped many companies in hiring more workers, especially in the manufacturing sector.
On top of that, we had expanded the hiring for both agricultural sectors and construction, with the aforementioned mining and steel making.
It alone has the potential to cut our unemployment even further to the goal of 7%... And we have no plans to cut the subsidy any time soon either."
"Thank you for answering the question... Now, one last question, one of our own economists had raised concerns about the harm of subsidies."