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Greetings,

A couple months back I wrote an article on people's real income here on eRep, based on the Purchasing Power of their salary. A lot has changed in the economies worldwide since then, as I'm sure you've all noticed, so I think it's time for a take 2 on the issue. I choose to do it now, because I think the markets have somewhat adjusted to the changes in region productivities and citizenship bonus and they have discounted the upcoming disappearance of Orgs for the most part. Having said that, a better time to do such a study will be about a month after admins finalize their changes in the Economic Module. And the Military Module actually...

For some background information you can read my previous article, here. If you're bored to do that, which I bet you are, here's a brief description of what this "study" is about:

- I examine the 17 biggest eRep countries/economies.
- For each country I took sample salaries from the job markets for Experts, Masters and Gurus, over the last 2 days. Then I subtracted Income Taxes to get Net Salaries. Finally, I averaged the values, so I ended up with a representative net salary for each country.
- One way to estimate the real value of those salaries is to convert everything to Gold equivalent.

- The other way is to estimate how much those money can buy in the local market. How much of what, you may ask. Well, ideally food, weapons, houses and tickets... However, housing markets are broken in most countries, plus people often buy those from the black-market. Tickets are not so important for the average player. Weapons... I got a headache with those! I wanted to include them this time around, but in the middle of the headache I thought "f@ck it, next time". I would either have to spend too much time or not be confident enough on my results. So... I end up with food again, q2 food to be exact.

- The PPP column you see in the table below aims to evaluate what I have just describe😛 the purchasing power of your income. I made it an index which takes the value of 100 for Greece (the reference country).

Time for the results and interpretation!
The results are indicative of the present situation. As for the interpretation, I don't claim to be an expert on the markets around the world. So my take on things is debatable. Feel free to agree or disagree. Debate is healthy🙂



* I'll start from Spain; I think they deserve it by ranking first at PPP income! And they also rank very high in Gold income. Spain is a big economy and they were given 3/5 food resources, as well as iron (+ they found oil). They key, however, I believe is that they found ways to have continuous access to grain since the introduction of the new resources. They have a lot of resources and a very strong currency, so it's expected for them to rank high in G income. The high PPP income (despite the above average income tax) suggests that their economy kicks @$$ right now.

* Croatia: 4/5 original food resources, including grain, paired with one of the lowest income taxes and the awesomeness of the bros, brings them 2nd in PPP! In addition, despite their cheap currency, their salaries are high enough to have a good income in gold equivalent. The only country that has 5 rank difference between G and PPP income. I wouldn't be shy to predict an HRK appreciation.

* One of the very few countries high in everything (I'm talking about resources😛); relatively low taxation; healthy economy; it comes as no surprise that Poland ranks that high. Next step: increase G Income. I dunno, play with import tax a bit😉 Top in G, high in PPP -despite their expensive food due to import taxes I guess- Hungary is also doing very well. Looking at them I wonder whether they will top both ranks if they open up for trade a bit. (No I didn't put those two together by accident. Enjoy your alliance guys...)

* Romania's in the middle and I'm actually a bit surprised. Not sure what to say here really. uhm we have extra fruits and fish, as well as iron, here in Greece guys, in case you're interested!

* Oh Canada! I feel you guys... Grain + Oil + Titanium + Stone became Iron overnight. I didn't know what to expect of that. It seems to me that the -before strong- Canadian economy kinda collapsed. I haven't followed Canadian economy or Press for a while now, I confess, so I will refrain from further comments. I fear that my timing is bad; an expert getting paid like an apprentice? It doesn't make sense.

* South of the border, the USA isn't doing much better either. Personally I'm not surprised. The US ranked low in my previous study as well and they will not improve much, as long as they keep their patented tax policy. Even when they have all available resources! Sure they have the cheapest prices, due to the minimal VAT and Import tax on top of the resources. However, free trade forces prices down, so local companies cannot afford high wages. Now add to that the highest income tax and you get the picture. The effect of low net salaries proves higher than the effect of cheap products.

* Serbia the powerhouse! Quite protected economy, with an above average internal taxation, they rank below average in both G and PPP income.They have grain, they have iron, they are only missing 1 food resource currently, if they reduce taxation their real income will go up. Up to them what they wanna do really.

* Bulgaria is doing very good. I'm curious to see how their market will adjust now that they will be having WAR.

* Russia has always been a mystery for me in terms of what the real abilities and potential of this country are. Apologies but I also do not have any worthy comment for Argentina, Brazil, China and France. Regarding Indonesia, I will just say that they have dropped a ton since my previous research.

* eRep country, six letters, economy based on Grain, which the admins took away from their original regions and placed it southern. Which is it? Yeah it's Turkey alright. Did you miss Cyprus grain guys? I bet you did. And the more you're left without it, the more you'll drop. Unless you start considering diplomacy instead of an exhausting war and look for it elsewhere😉

* I left my own country for the end. Greece is doing much better than last time I checked. As a matter of fact, 5 days ago wages were considerably higher. Then a small appreciation of GRD came, which pushed them down a bit. Then again, 2 weeks ago the food prices were on the sky. Not a very stable economy, right? Well, the magic word here is grain! Greek economy is undergoing changes. And we are also undergoing a major war. With grain we can flourish. We just need a consistent supply of it. Let's see what the future brings.

PS: Geez that was TL;TR even for the editor!