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Make it 4% !!!

as an importer I dont like this lol

Seeing as there was no effort to bring this up on the forum I'll be voting no and advising the Congressmen from Rylde's Whorehouse to vote no as well.

I would do that, but for some reason my access to the forum is gone.
So, if whoever is running the forum is going to be petty like that, I will not pander to that. Also, that's a silly reason to not support the proposal. I'm playing the game, but because I don't play it the way you want me to, you don't support me. Whatever. This sort of silliness and over-administration bores me. But doesn't discourage me.

If you aren't willing to put in the effort to have your proposal brought forward legally then I will not put in the effort to supporting your bill.

As to the forum it has switched controllers hands so maybe instead of giving up, investigate.

Rylde proposing in-game is not illegal.
http://ecan.forumotion.com/t736-amendment-to-the-charter
It clearly states that the proposal can be in game OR in the forum

http://ecan.forumotion.com/memberlist?mode=lastvisit&order=DESC&submit=Ok&username=natster

Try resetting your password. The Admins tend to not give a shit so I doubt they're being petty.

Raising import tax raises prices and kills our market activity. It will be a firm no from me.

Highest Price : 18
http://www.erepublik.com/en/economy/market/36/2/7/citizen/0/price_asc/1
Best Price : 7.30
http://erepubliktools.com/compare-market-prices/2/7/

Canada Price : 7.89
That's almost a 10% difference in price
This won't kill our market activity anymore than not having it there....

But DMV3 you don't buy from eCanadians anyways...your on record stating that. So what does the import taxes matter to your scheme of purchasing? Are you against generating war money from outsiders and not eCanadians?

I buy on our market when it's competitive. I have been buying a lot on our market lately.

i would just like to point out that this argument is total BS. when rylde was dictator and he bumped import tax up a bunch chicken little ran around crying about how prices would go up, not only did they not go up, they went down.

and i watched the market for weeks.

Prices ONLY go up when tournaments are announced... which coincidentally is the only time smart people sell....

You realize our prices were like 10% higher than the international market before we lowered import tax, right?

i dont remember seeing prices 75 cents higher here then say the usa or serbia at any time in the past 4 months other then tournament surges, but i will admit i only check the market 2 -3 times a week at most.

From what I've seen (here's some salt), most world markets tend to fall within a +/- 5% band of the world average. We tended to be closer to the +5% when we had high import taxes. I don't think we've ever really gone below the average, though.

But I guess that makes sense. I don't know what pushes some countries below the average - a glut caused by extra regions maybe? - but a low import tax should, at best, only bring us to the average.

It's time to pass this http://ecan.forumotion.com/t736-amendment-to-the-charter and do away with in game proposals

If there's one thing Canada needs less of its transparency. Srsly, if you're gonna eliminate anything, eliminate the stupid forum.

The forum is a great system being poorly promoted. Increase forum activity before cutting in-game proposals.

Of course, I doubt that will be accomplished...in which case, Brian may have a point.

I have been notified that it needs to be 48 hours. So, I will wait 48 hours before bringing this to vote. Also, Mr. Smith, a player who is in congress should not be forced to only do "forum" proposals.
If one is to sign up for the forum, they may not trust the administrator enough to divulge personal information such as an email address. A congress member should have the right to propose in game. Additionally, I think all proposal should be converted to an article so all e-canadian citizens can see the proposals that are being debated on.
As for forcing one to use the forum...

Come to the forum and discuss this

i've always felt this way. but people just call you lazy when you talk like this sadly.

I support this.






Of course I'm not in Congress and have no say in the matter.





Also I don't care about it one way or the other. I'm just supporting to piss people off. You should propose to raise all taxes to 99%. In that way we could "see what the effect is".

I don't see the need to raise the import tax. Free trade, such as it is, keeps our businessmen slightly more honest than they would otherwise have to be. While for the most part prices are decided on a global level, if the market is small enough producers could sell their goods at a higher price than that to new players who don't know better or others who do not see it as being economical (or who are just to lazy) to move to another country where they can buy the exact same thing for less.

Hopefully the usual protocol dick measuring contest between parties won't torpedo a good piece of legislation (but we all know it will). It would be nice as a local producer to have more market support. Typically half of the players undercutting the price, and taking GDP out of our markets, is foreign sellers. The only argument I've seen to not raise the import tax, is that prices would rise to high. That would never be the case as any player can cross the border and buy in a foreign market if that should happen, thereby decreasing demand and pushing the prices down to what they should be locally.

Don't bring common sense into the arguement, you will baffle congress and DMV.

If there's room for foreigners to undercut the market then that would suggest that without them prices would rise higher than they otherwise be. So they are helping to keep prices down, no?

😁😁 No. There is the same "room" for domestic producers to undercut the market. The critical variable is velocity or turnover. Prices will be more volatile in a eCanadian market place that is very active... which is not the case, hence price is relatively stable no matter who is selling. The issue therefore is WHO will be permitted to sell, not the price at which product will be sold. True, with 1% import tax the government will receive more tax revenue --- which is so infinitesimally small that I call it "0" dollars --- than with a 10% import tax rate. The significant difference, however, is that with a protected market it is predominantly eCanadians who benefit from our market activity.

The situation would be completely different in a market with lots of activity/turnover/velocity.

If Canadian producers could undercut the market, why don't they do it more often? According to Foxfire, Canadians only make up about half of those undercutting. Sure, the surest way of bumping that number up to 100% is by imposing a high import tax but I'm not sure that should really by our goal.

I'm also not convinced that our turnover is as low as you suggest. The price of Q7 weapons is now approaching $8.00, up from the low $7s just days ago. Likewise it seems that our food prices have made the jump to $0.06 per Q of food through Q4 (I didn't check higher Qs because I consider them out of the ordinary).

Actually, taking a look at those food categories and Q7 weapons, there are currently very few foreign sellers at the moment (could it be because it's the middle of the night in Europe?) and they aren't undercutting the market.

I'm not terribly surprised. We've never seen them swamp our markets, just put some pressure on prices (Q7s down a dime or two, food down a cent per Q). I've never really seen foreigners as a great cash cow (that's either RWs or newbs, right?) and agree that their overall impact on tax revenue is minimal, maybe 1 dollar. 😃 So why are we worrying so much about this?

The markets have had a huge upswing due to the tournament. So regardless of price, everyone has sold their goods. In typical market conditions it is a mix of domestic and foreign sellers. What a higher import tax does is help domestic producers. Nothing more. If you wish to see a radical example of this, look at Ireland's 99% Import tax. It keeps foreign sellers out of Ireland's market to support their own very small local producers. It is impossible to have run away prices with a higher import tax, for as I have stated, buyers will simply buy from another countries market (much easier to do now with the return of travel tickets) and the domestic supply will grow (as people won't buy locally if the price is too high) until the price drops to the world average. The only question is whether you want to buy foreign or domestic, but this issue always gets mired in the bog of party politics.

i would just like to echo what foxfire has said (which feels dirty to be honest)

Using now as a template for normality is insane. we are mid tournament and prices always swing upwards during the early part of tournaments as people consume massive amounts of food/weapons and all the supply gets used up.

It baffles me that this continues to happen, everybody knows tournaments happen on a semi regular basis.... why not stock up in the off time when prices are cheap, and if anything sell some stock when prices are up to pay for some of your warring expense....

but i dont buy gold so what do i know...

I suppose the tournament has contributed to the higher prices but they were already on the rise, for whatever reason (stocking up, perhaps?), last week.

That said, we're back to having foreigners selling Q7s - prices are down by about 10 cents - and one undercutting Q2 food by a cent so time of day may have been a bit of a factor.

I do agree that if, with a high import tax, prices rise too high (or even just a little, it would seem) people will buy their goods elsewhere. (Is Ireland the example we want to emulate? They have less than 500 Q7s for sale at a reasonable price right now.) Less sales and more stocks will naturally lead to undercutting. But why should we make our citizens travel (even if it's with free tickets) in order to buy cheaper food and weapons?

Importers seem to be doing their job, when they're awake. They lower the prices that Canadian producers are offering, allowing Canadians to buy Canadian at the same price they'd be paying overseas. That, to me, is the more important question, not whether or not we're buying from foreigners are not - you're pretty much guaranteeing that that will happen.

I also disagree that this is a partisan issue. We're getting opinions from a lot of people - include independents - with very little mudslinging and none of it partisan in nature. I think it's great that we're having a mature conversation about something for once (actually, it's a bit of a trend. Quick! Where's the slinging mud?)

I'm waiting for admins to change up the economic module (lol).

The case for high Import taxes:

The total tax load for an importer is 2%.... that is a lot LESS than in many of their home markets, hence we should see outsiders happy to sell here IF product get purchased. Put differently, at such a low rate, the import tax is a positive attraction to sell here so long as there is reasonable product turnover. As many outsiders have lower production costs than our local production, they can afford to sell for less. However, price should generally be determined, not by production cost. Price is determined by what the market will bear.

In short, recognizing that I don't believe there is any dead-weight loss in such a small inactive market as ours, extremely heavy import taxes will not affect the volume available or sold on our market. Hence, extremely high import taxes are justified as generating the greatest government revenue with the least domestic detriment. My opinion would be different if there was reason to suspect that the velocity and/or volume sales would be affected. I tend to the view it isn't and that the only change is the nationality of the sellers. This is consistent with the common view that (low) import taxes do not decrease prices..... since the converse is that they don't increase prices either.

I see "protecting" a market as being a question of who enters the market, who benefits from the market and NOT what are the prices. In our special circumstances, extremely high import taxes are justifiable.

A 2% combined tax rate is also more than what importers have to pay in many of their home countries. According to eGov 33 countries have a 1% VAT rate for weapons - and 15 of them have a 1% import tax, too - with another 7 at 2%. In fact only 1 country has a VAT rate above 5% and doesn't appear to be under a hostile dictatorship so you're either stretching your definition of "a lot less in many" or you didn't do your research this time. Tsk tsk. 😛

I do agree that price is determined by what the market will bear. Even in eRep it appears that the reverse is true and the price determines production costs. A Canadian weapons producer would be nuts to offer the same wages as someone in a country with full weapons bonuses so they generally don't. If they pay the same per weapon produced then the difference in capital costs and profits that make the difference.

Moving away from food and weapons (and not even touching houses or HRM, both of which I've still barely looked into) to FRM and WRM. As you know there is no VAT paid here but foreigners do have to pay import tax if they choose to sell here. There's no profit paying market wages for these RM companies, only WAMing so production costs are based on a country's average wage and their Work Tax. I don't have numbers for average wages but Canada does have the highest Work Tax outside of those countries with hostile dictators.

Nice write up!

I'm not sure that you can come to the conclusion that heavy import taxes will generate the greatest government revenue. If importers pay twice the tax than Canadian producers and, as you suggest, the same amount of food and weapons are sold in Canada regardless of nationality at the same price then even if only a fraction of these goods are sold by foreigners then they would be contributing a slightly larger fraction of our tax revenue.

That said I - and others arguing for a higher import tax - are saying that prices are being reduced, even if slightly, by importers. I'll take it! As many are fond of saying, this is a war game: the lower the cost of the best weapons are, the more we can afford to buy and the better we can fight. This is especially true of newer, poorer players. They are the ones who benefit the most from a low import tax, in my opinion, even if this means that (rich) Canadian company owners have a slightly worse than the already abysmal return on investment.

Understood. The subtle point about government revenues and very high import tax is this: it is practically zero either way, hence irrelevant - an infinitissimal. The benefit of excluding foreigners is not negligible however. I need to give this more thought though and our chat helps. Thanks.

Glad to be of service.

I agree that the tax revenue aspect is a moot point so it comes down to a question of whether excluding foreigners is a benefit, a detriment, or perhaps a wash.

I love me a good read on in depth discussion of the benefit of an import tax increase for a dying imaginary world lol

Nice write up

consider my vote for this article as the endorsement of a lowly regular citizen for both your idea, and your attempt to do it outside the forums. I like that your playing the game, and not playing the forums. Last i checked this game was called erepublik, not external forums....

The name of the game hardly encompasses what is involved. It doesn't mention anything about articles either, for example. I can also assure you that we're mostly playing eRep on the forums, too. That and poker.

the only posts I've ever made on the forums were the two months i was in congress. and it was stupid and i hated having to log into two different sites.

A lot of the extra humdrum around here is just so people feel important. The same tasks could be accomplished in the game, particularly now with chat channels and these group messages i often find myself apart of.

I think we'd do more in game if the tools were there. Those PMs, for example, aren't open to the public and can't even fit a full Congress anyways.

We could have discussions in articles but there are times we want to keep things secret so our enemies don't know or otherwise keep the discussion to elected officials (although I am in favour of public consultations, generally).

There are game forums but they just plain suck and they won't let us moderate it to our liking (or at least didn't when we first asked).

Are forums ideal? No. There is no ideal system. But they are better than the alternative which is why basically every country has one.

Thank you screamingslave, I will try to keep citizens abreast of the goings on in parliament. I only do this game in my spare time, so I may not always be on top of things, but I will keep striving for transparent and open gov't.