America, I Promise I'm Not Slacking...

Day 905, 19:44 • Published in USA USA • by Chocolate McSkittles

Now, with my recent articles about how awesome China and Croatia are, folks stateside might feel like I'm ignoring you...

Well its totally not true! I was just doing what any rational person would do and following my fortune cookie's advice!

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Sent love to Croatia and China...ever notice how all the good things in life start with C?

So yeah, this articles dedicated to one of the many big changes in the works!

Taking the Skill 0 Job Market:

As much as it conflicts with my RL ideology, I've spent a good portion of the day working on getting things prepared for a larger government role in the Skill 0 Job Market.

While taking many factors into consideration, we have decided to take a more aggressive role with our skill 0 job hub, using it to set an artificial minimum wage and (hopefully) driving out competitors.

The benefits of doing so are numerous:

- There has been an increasing issue with higher quality companies finding it profitable to dip into the skill 0 market. While it's fine that they are making a profit, there is the problem that these workers cannot afford a house or higher Quality food. The end result is these players getting trapped into a job that causes their wellness to drop, discouraging players and decreasing retention rates.

- We would have the ability to ensure that the higher skill labor markets are at equilibrium, maximizing the efficiency of the American labor force. This is often a problem for mechanical reasons. One example is that Raw Material companies are useless at low quality levels, meaning they often go for higher qualities and target higher skill workers. This means there is no-one training new workers, causing discrepancies in higher skill markets. We can help alleviate this, and other, market inefficiencies.


Lets get this citizen trained to work in the Karnatakan iron mines immediately!

- I am sure everyone has read the new rules regarding new players using the Monetary market. Since new players may be slightly strapped for cash until level 12, there will be a bit of pressure, and a legitimate reason, to help out newer players. By going about it this route, we would not have to raise the new citizens fee. Instead, you can think of it as us giving them an increased New Citizens Fee over a multiple day period, so they don't just get it all on day 1...and then possibly quit.

- The goods created could be used for other programs, such as Arm America, decreasing costs in other segments of government.

- We would only be using USD, much of it (unfortunately) would leave the system as players quit the game. We also receive much of the funding back via taxes. Between these two points, that means from a government cost standpoint, the wages we would be paying would be less than 1/5th that of the gold value most people would consider them.

Q&A

Why not just raise the Minimum Wage via Kongress?

There's really no point in doing this, because all it would do is limit our flexibility to adjust according to market changes.

One of the challenges we will face is keeping wages at levels that provide new players purchasing power, but not overpaying them. It would not be acceptable to have to get a kongressional mandate every time market conditions changed or there was a change in the USD gold peg.

I see three job hubs, how will you determine which is open?

All three will be open at any given time, however only one will be our "primary" job hub at any given time. The secondary hubs will be open open, with wages lower than the primary hub, but higher than the market rate.

The "Primary" hub will be chosen based on quantitative analysis of market labor prices in higher skill ranges.

The reason the other two will remain open for the purpose of catching people who specify which field they want when searching (either accidentally or on purpose)

What about current companies running offers in the skill 0 market?

They will all be sent a PM informing them of this rule and the reasoning. We ask that all companies avoid posting skill 0 jobs so that the eUS government is better able to improve new player gameplay and thus increase retention.

Have any other questions? Just ask in this eUS forum thread, and I will add the answer to this section!

-Choc
Vice President, eUSA


UPDATE: The father of eMerican economics has decided to leave eRepublik. Seeing as this is an economics related article...I feel its important to inform everyone that now is the time to say goodbye ;__;

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