To all Independent MUs and the Apolitical
Day 2,162, 19:51
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Published in USA 
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by
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by Tyler Bubblar
Many of you have given up on the political process. Your reasons no doubt vary, but likely along common themes. You disliked the bitter acrimonious cluster-youknowwhat that politics can degenerate into, you felt power was in the hands of the few so it was a pointless exercise, and/or you just find the whole thing dull. So you walked away from taking an active role in the governing process of the eUSA. After all if you don't like those in power you can just ignore them. They can't effect you if you stay away from them, right?
As recently as July we had the max income tax rate of 25 percent. Few other than the AFA cared much about it. The majority of us were communing. If I'm only making 1 USD a day then what difference does 25¢ make? Many of those I described above simply abandoned the meta gamers to role play amongst themselves. The arrangement seemed to at least be functional to both camps. Then Plato dropped a bombshell on the erep universe.
The work tax has completely changed the way the meta game can impact the in-game crowd. You cannot commune away from the work tax. It's been argued those holding Communes should be in countries with high bonuses. While this is absolutely correct at this moment in time that means a TWO nation. My own MU was completely unsuccessful in getting over there. Interestingly, those same people who urged Communes to evacuate subjected those who decided to leave when the work tax was doubled to open scorn and mockery. I hate to break this to the in game crowd that has up until now eschewed the meta game, but they can hurt you now. It's time to take control.
Early in this Congressional term the Fed and USWP Caucuses collaborated on cutting the tax rate to 7 percent. I'll get into how we reached that number in an article later this week. While the AMP remained largely silent on this discussion, WTP during the discussion and in the media module made their opposition to this rate cut very well known. Initially the opposition tried to kill this by quorum. When we reached quorum I was subjected to personal attacks and accusations of putting my own ambitions before country. Statistics were produced to prove the invalidity of the argument for lower taxes. Conveniently statistics in favor of the cut presented during and after the vote were ignored. I don't trust statistics very much because they can be twisted to make the case for just about anything. A look at the real life CBO would confirm my point on that. Ultimately the vote ended one yes shy of passing. This is where you come in.
Two Parties at this moment are in favor of lowering your taxes right now. The Federalist Party and the United States Workers Party. I cannot speak to the stance of our new 5th Party the Liberty Advancement Party, but WTP and to a lesser extent the AMP are on record of opposing lowering the work tax. If you want that tax lowered vote Fed or vote USWP. With enough seats we can make this happen. Recently Seppo published an article, in which he posed a question: Do you want to work on this together. Or do you prefer to put all the financial pressure on other people? I'd like to rephrase that. How is it that your definition of together is higher taxes? How is it fair that me, and my MU have to deal with a higher tax rate so that we can both fund government MUs and allow the government to sit on a bigger pile of loot?
Recently Dmjohnston published an article, touting the reduction in the average wage. While it has indeed reduced the amount we pay which is nice. However the average wage can be jacked right back up. Making the current rate every bit as painful as it once was. If you want to reduce the burden placed on you get involved. Vote for a party that is committed to allowing you and your MUs to keep more of your own money. I'll be publishing an article in the next day or two further illustrating my points. I strongly ask you to consider joining me on this issue. Take my hand, together we can do this.
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This article numbers among the ones I read.
well written Tyler
And also consider taking it to the next level, and getting yourselves involved in the process. As Political Director of the Feds, I am putting together the list of congressmen for the coming cycle. Almost 1/2 of that list is made up of newfriends. Contrary to the "Feds are elitists" BS others sometimes spout, we are firmly committed to recognizing and fostering new talent. Join the Feds, let us get to know you, then request a seat in Congress...it's that easy to become part of the solution.
"Feds are elitists"
lol, wut? who says that, RGR?
B**ches get involved, your way of life depends on it.
Just when I thought this was over.
As predicted by the WTP AMP delegations, the WT naturally lowered itself to a much lower rate very quickly. And given the current econ, lack of meaningful tournies...etc, I'd bet it going back up on hard knowledge; Not on debater's point. Bring me Kemal's numbers and we'll talk.
Like I said, lowering to 7% was simply irresponsible at the time. We thought we had to fight our way out of this. We knew we had to fight out way out of this. TWO knew we would fight our way out of this. And they knew that they honestly didn't care enough to fight a nation that took in 100k cc a day.
If we had lowered to 7%? Who knows. Outcomes may have been different.
Now, situations have changed greatly and I for one am welcome to looking at new perspectives on this debate.
What I am not welcome to are falsehoods on your part. Firstly, WTP did not go out of our way to attack you. You imply that strongly in the article. Hell, Talos *defended* you. Tyler, don't play the hurt and injured card. It does you and your party no favors.
Second, Feds were the only ones who voted for Lucky 7 consistently. Most of the USWP, when presented with solid knowledge, voted it down.
In this article you attempt to get people politically involved by...bashing parties, 3 of them really, that made the right choice at the time. You then go onto talk of your persecution, completely ignoring your implications and that the situation has changed greatly.
I made my article as non-partisan as possible. I wrote on points, not on my opponents. I wrote on facts, not implications.
....Then the Feds go around with this nicely wrapped, dangerously inaccurate hatchet job.
Some things just don't change, now do they? lol
Hale why make this personal? I long ago accepted that on policy you and I will never align. Yet I still like and respect you. I have publicly lauded your integrity and called you a friend because I consider you one.
As for this being partisan of course it is. I'm trying to lay it out for the voters. Simply put: give the Feds and USWP more seats and we'll cut your taxes. Vote for WTP and they won't. It's that simple.
Unfortunately, it's not that simple anymore. Last month, certainly. It's a different world today.
It's a wrong conclusion to say that about WTP. Many of us (and not all!) have advocated that back then, when you were calling for the 7% was not the right time: we were waiting for the average salaries to drop (and they did drop significantly) and we did not know what the next Potus would do regarding us being occupied by Poland. Meanwhile a deal was brokered, we will soon have way over 30 regions, so I am sure that nobody from the WTP has any objections about having a tax-discussion. Don't misslead the community by trying to present us as a party that wants high taxex - it simply isn't true!
And another thing: WTP leaves their Congressmembers a lot of space to decide how to vote on certain issues, we don't call for a patyline all the time.
This is one of the reasons why we are a great party!!
I'm not the type to favor hatchet jobs Tyler. And really here, referencing old voting records after the situation changed massively? C'mon mate. The goal of FSPA (10😵 was to fund the war. Now that we have no war...2 and 2 makes 4.
That being said, still ❤ you bro. But come on here...really? I get the debator's stance you may be pulling here. The counter for this is explaining to the public that TWO surrendered to a 10% nation, taxes of course will be lowered...etc. I'm not entirely sure why you'd want that brought up again.
I get what the Feds are trying to do here but...do you honestly think you can get away with spinning *this* many lies?
You keep saying I'm telling falsehoods and lies. Name one Hale. Everything done with this tax has been done in public where all could see. I have provided links to articles written in favor of this rather than put words in your mouths, and I've provided links to the discussion and vote. Where am I not telling the truth?
Thor only one Party didn't split in some way on this vote.... . Care to guess which one?
It seems to me you all had no trouble voting for the tax hike both to obtain and keep it, but for some reason no one wants to proudly own it.
Tyler, we passed the FSPA because we were in a war. A very, very seemingly hopeless war. I stressed this as the key point of WTP's backing it in my article.
So tell me...if the war ends, does our stance remain the same? Answer: No.
That being said, I'm happy we voted for it at the time. WTP, AMP and USWP didn't pander our voters; We told them the hard, straight up truth.
eAmericans are known for their independence. So...how exactly do you plan to get away with pandering this many people, eh?
You can keep trying to spin your "truths" all you want Tyler. We both know how this ends.
This is a great article!
Though you have just willingly walked into a minefield.
That's all right, I'm right behind you.
I knew that when I published this. I felt it was worth it.
To those interested in this was the discussion on reducing the work tax.
http://eusaforums.com/forum/index.php/topic,28500.0.html
This was the vote
http://eusaforums.com/forum/index.php/topic,28537.0.html
70% of the Fed caucus voted for the rate cut, about half of USWP voted for it, and 2 from the AMP voted in favor of the rate cut.
Hmm...
"Recently Dmjohnston published an article, touting the reduction in the average wage. While it has indeed reduced the amount we pay which is nice. However the average wage can be jacked right back up."
Your implication here seems to be that the exec can and will inflate the average wage. While I'm aware that it's possible and was done as experimentation in the past, you seem to be framing it like it will happen again. If you believe that, does it really matter what the tax rate is? The average wage is variable and can be manipulated upwards easily and downwards (with some effort). That's a fact, and if you look at it that way, then isn't lowering the actual tax rate little more than a psychological band-aid for people who Work as Manager (WaM)? In my mind, for there to be any concrete value to lowering the Work Tax, one has to have some faith that the average wage won't be jacked right back up by the exec.
So basically, my questions here are:
Do you have faith that the Average Wage won't be artificially inflated in the future?
If the exec will just jack up the average wage to revenue steady regardless of the actual tax rate, then does the tax rate really matter?
And finally, if the tax revenue can be artificially set by the exec regardless (which we both know it can be), isn't this article just a fairly well-written attempt to pander to less involved players and go, "Feds are good. Feds want to lower your taxes. WTP is bad. WTP wants you to have high taxes. Vote for Feds for lower taxes"?
Either way, nice work lol. I might not agree completely, but more people do need to get involved, and I did at least say it was a fairly well-written attempt at political pandering. 🙂
Feds want to lower your taxes. WTP wants you to have high taxes. That sums it up, except USWP was a big support in trying to get this through. As I've said if WTP and AMP believe they did the right thing let them tell their side of the story. To some extent as highlighted by the articles I've linked, they've done that. Now I'm telling my side of the issue. Let's see what the voters think.
The economic council can and has jacked the average rate up. Do I know if it will happen again? Not for certain no, but something that can and has happened before should not be thought outside the realm of possible.
Fair enough, but I think you're making a leap by concluded that certain parties' wartime positions won't change now that we presumably have three months of relative peace ahead of us. Considering the time of the month, it's pretty obvious that the sitting congress won't be doing much else, and people may come to the table with new propositions when the new Congress is convenes in a few days.
When that happens, I sincerely hope that your earlier authorship of a piece with such a strong political undercurrent won't make it that much harder for the parties to work together for the betterment of the country.
I as a fed congressman voted against lowering the tax at the time because of the evidence presented by Kemal but at this point I think we can compromise with a lower tax even if we don't get it to 1% or 5%.
This is a very well written article but it will piss off a lot of people.
Excellent Article; hopefully in time the eAmerican Metagov't will realize that it exists to serve the people and not their own self-motivated interests. The in-game community has shared a collective sigh of relief with the introduction of work taxes as now communing is no longer effective; prompting the iniquitous to flee to high bonus nations to not only dodge their tax Burden but also their social responsibility to the rest of the eAmerican Community from whom many of the eUSAF communers depend on their funding.
With the treaty going mostly smoothly no excuse remains for any eAmerican to hold foreign citizenship; instead the government favors former bedfellows above loyal eAmericans. Hopefully the instigators will hear your message which is echoed in the quote below as it is simply unreasonable to permit "some social animals are better than others" ala Orwell's Animal Farm.
"We must open our eyes and see that modern civilization has become so complex and the lives of civilized men so interwoven with the lives of other men in other countries as to make it impossible to be in this world and out of it."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945), U.S. president. From a campaign speech when FDR was running for Vice President in 1920.
With the war over, there's little reason to quickly rebuild the reserves.
A few weeks is a long time in eRepublik. As I said back then, things will change. They have.
Let's get some new numbers worked out and bring this tax down, if only by a percentage or two.
If the exec REALLY wanted higher taxes, they can just manipulate them up again anyways. Then we can all get angry.
I anticipate that we might not get enough revenue with the current wages and tax rate to cover budgetary needs.
You are such a hack.
Thanks for making no effort to actually contribute to the discussion.
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It would behoove you to wait until we have revenue projections or figures before we go toting lower taxes that could put us back in a deficit. Just saying.
All I want for Halloween is new citizenship.
Ok, first of all you've got to be kidding me.
You want to gain votes by trashing someone else? And I thought the FEDS had changed.
Thanks Tyler for proving to me that you guys have been the same all along.
kudos
How am I trashing you? Your party pushed for and got higher taxes. Your party successfully fought against a tax cut successfully. These are facts. It sounds to me like a light being shined on your voting record upsets you. I'm sorry, but it is what it is. Own your past actions bro.
I feel like I'm talking to RGR, seriously.
If you want to say something, do it with facts not with assumptions.
AND when you want to make propaganda in order to gain votes again do it with facts.
What did Kemal say back then? (Kemal is the one who knows more than the basics at economics)
People should know that with lower taxes we wouldn't have enough money to have a functional Goverment, USAF, MPP's, possible RW's and so on.
WE wanted to have enough money back when we had nothing, not now but back then. SO this is where YOU trash US.
And everything for the votes.
Have some decency and admit what you are doing.
Oh and by the way, it's me Anwnimos who is talking, just in case you want to throw my "foul" mouth at WTP's back.
Tyler, you conveniently disregard the situation our nation was in when blasting WTP. All our logic and arguments relate to the Lucky 7 times. Now, now of course they change. I mean...we openly supported it because of the war. Now we have no war. Do I really have to spell this out for you?
The Federalists are going to regret trying to pander and fool eAmerican players.
Until such a point in time that the CBO's USD and Gold reserves reach a value of 10Million USD (using market value for gold), congress hereby decides to raise the Work Tax up 5% to a total 10%. The CBO Directors will inform the SCI (and congress, at the Speaker's discretion) of the reserve's progress compared to the goal every month. Once the reserve target is reached, the Work tax shall be reverted in order to match the budgeted expenditures to ensure deficit spending does not ensue.
Congress is encouraged to resume this legislation if the reserves drop below the reserve target in the future.
I see nothing in here about war, Poland or CO for key battles. I see the powers that be wanting to sit on a bigger pile of loot. Higher taxes impede production of supplies. Raising taxes for the war effort is like bleeding a sick patient.
Hmm, Feds are in favor of lowering the tax to make it a tiny bit easier on the Average American
WTP and AMP are in favor of ensuring we have the funds to have a functioning government.
Oh yeah, WE'RE the bad guys
Be proud of your actions, campaign on it. Let's see what the voters think. Obviously I'm going to make the case for lower taxes. Good luck to you.
I'm not saying that low taxes are bad. All i'm saying is that either plan sacrifices something, whereas you make it out like EVERYTHING about the higher tax rate is bad. This is not the case, there are merits to each. Lower taxes obviously makes it easier on the players. However, higher taxes are better able to fund the things that our government needs the money for. MPPs, Interior stuff, USAF, etc. I wish we could have the lower taxes, I just honestly think its a bad idea for the nation in the long run
Before the war, when we were deficit spending on monthly expenditures....every time we (Feds) brought up the idea of making cuts, we were ridiculed and thwarted at every turn, told "we have enough reserves to last through years of deficit spending". So not having a functioning government wasn't something that kept you awake at night back then, but now it does?
Once upon a time those Draconian Feds objected too spending close to a half million dollars a month than we took in. We proposed a 250k a month deficit and we were the most evil party ever.
Independent mu Commander here
But i just cant be bothered
Its a wall of text
Computer says no
Hi taxes or lo taxes
Only death and taxes are certain in life bro
So push on thru
You are just making a bad advertisement for your party. Better delete the article.
: )
Figures that since you oppose the elitists you are compared to RGR lol! What you say makes sense and I for one never say anything positive from donating my higher taxes to the powers that be. The only thing that happened with the higher taxes is my bank account went to almost nothing and I could no longer fight for eUSA as I had in the past. To try and get some currency I had to stop production, sell what I made and do no attacks ! Really don't see how that helped eUSA free itself.
Vote sensible, vote USWP or Fed.
>>> http://i.imm.io/1jbe8.jpeg
Really in my side i recommend you to not get involved ;p you will regret getting into politics and especially with these guys but it's your choice go ahead. i won't be there to say i told you when your disappointed but you will remember some random people saying that ;p
This is going to be a fun month to be in congress.
The purpose of a high tax has always been to lessen the effect of money hording, as much as it has been to fund the military. I don't understand why the government doesn't give no-strings rebates to the civilian MUs, based on damage done. That way the money hoarders, people who log in and play, but don't fight or spend, and then die with thousands of dollars and gold in their accounts, will be contributing, like it, know it, or not, while the MUs will be rewarded based on their own contribution of damage. Has this approach been debated?
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"Vote Feds or USWP if you want our tax to be decided by people that do not present facts or statistics to support their law changes."
That's pretty much what this article sums up to.
Anyhow, this whole thing is silly. The lucky7 proposal came at a time where we were unsure of how the wage and our income would look like a week from then. We were just coming out of a tournament that spiked prices of goods up to insane prices, which means that wages and income both skyrocketed and you were told of this but still pushed it. We can't just change taxes without looking into statistics and do the math, that'd be irresponsible. That you "don't trust statistics" is just silly. You really don't trust math? If you don't trust math you shouldn't touch the taxes and let other people do it for you. Because in the end it all comes down to math.
As we predicted the income and wage went down after the proposal which is why we pushed to get it voted down. You presented 1 argument in the whole thread and that was punctured. Your counter argument is that you don't trust statistics. That's not a very good counter argument.
Statistics can be twisted to support just about any argument Seppo. You want a fact? Here's one: Fact when you were still in an anti Unity phase (in other words pre work tax) we spent twice what we took in. The very people who are now claiming we must raise and keep taxes high to keep the government functioning are the same ones who killed any attempt to cut the deficit. The response was always the reserves will last for years.
Now thanks to the work tax that's especially true. Now that we can drain more from our citizens and MUs to increase revenue that same crowd is all for fiscal responsibility. Seems legit.
There was also no possible way to increase the income at that time. They simply decided to run on deficit in the hopes that it one day would be possible again to actually have an income in countries. We have paid these taxes before. Hell we probably even paid more in taxes then. But we didn't complain because for some reason there is a difference in paying for working, than to pay for selling the product. Back then there was a higher V.A.T due to the bot eating the market and producing fake taxes for awhile.
The VAT hasn't changed since the work tax was implemented. Revenues have shot up, and you are making the argument people have seen their taxes drop?
I am talking loooooong back. Before there was a bot that bought production. This meant that countries could bring in millions on overpriced goods. People had to pay higher taxes to sell goods then. Essentially it's the same, except then people paid for selling, not for working.