What should eCanada do?
OLloyd
First off, I want to ask that everyone that reads this make some comment, i want to finish this mission to get comments from 25 different players. Thanks!
Back onto topic:
What should eCanada do... Economically we need to lower the work tax to 7%, right now we have 10% work tax and a number of players have stopped working and many have lowered the pay for employees to help lower the overall work tax for themselves. Why is this a good and right number 7%? Well, at 5% we were collecting about $10k CAD a day, with 10% you would think we would collect double that...well, no we started out collecting around $16k now we are around $14k and players are not as productive. We need to generate tax dollars to pay for Combat Orders when we are in wars. Why? Because this game is a war game and Combat Orders (CO) are an easy way to get outsiders or allies to fight for you.
How is the work tax system broken? Well, if you just have a job, you pay currently 10% of your daily wage to the eGov. If your working companies then that dollar amount is a calculated number based on the Average Salary. Before the current work tax increase, the average salary was upwards of $38, now it's in the $35 neighborhood and dropping. How have people gottin around the work tax, Lower salaries and pay employees in items (Food & Weapons) or just pay them cash directly. Does this help eCanada continue to play the game of war, no...does it show the serious problem in the way our eGovernment functions, YES. If congress and the CP would pay attention to numbers we could have collected more CAD in less time. At 7% we would have been still allowing our eCitizens a chance to make some profit on the things they make and we would collect some taxes. As it stands now, players are still looking for ways to "cheat the eGov" out of taxes. That only happens when they think the tax is not fair.
The lion share of the tax burden is on the older players who already have been dumping lots of their own REAL MONEY into these wars. If congress and the CP got their heads together they would find a more pleasing balance that could help offset the amount of REAL MONEY that is needed to fund wars. Wars that don't work like they once did. The military module has changed a great deal over the last couple years.
Next we need to raise the Import Taxes. There are a number of friends, allies and enemies who sell in our market, which drives prices down in most cases. How can they do that and make money, many other eNations have much lower work taxes but high VATs so it is more economical for them to sell here since we don't have much of either. The current CP has stated that he doesn't buy eCanadian goods, but he wants a low Import tax. He doesn't really explain the reason clearly enough. But from my experiance in the economic module we need an Import Tax of no higher than 4%. Why? 3 great reasons. Reason 1. Most of the foreigners selling in our market are undercutting our market by only a few cents, give them an import tax of 4% and that will close that margin. 2. If we are collecting taxes from foreigners then it's less likely that our market will get flooded with cheap goods during wars making it difficult for eCanadians to liquidate their inventories properly. I have experienced this with raw materials more than the higher ql goods. 3. Why should foreigners sell here for essentially for free? That makes no sense to me. Most of the eNations out there have an import tax of 2-4% some higher. And I know now it cost's 20 gold to get a license to sell in another eNation, but in the past it wasn't. And we have had a lot of players move here and then move away and if you move here you have to buy a License in order to sell here (since you only get one license to sell in a market, your original country citizenship license is free). And in the past that license was only 10 Gold.
Do we really need a VAT? Not really, if our work tax is more than 5% the VAT really isn't needed. We know for a fact each player has a limit to how much tax they are willing to pay before they change the way they play and then the tax collected will be noticably lower, the last 2 weeks of data has proven that. And if we would raise a VAT Tax we should NEVER have a VAT Tax on weapons! They are already not worth producing in most cases because the system has broken the weapons companies to the point where you pay more for work taxes (when its at 10😵
to make the raw materials than the weapons are worth on the open market.
Whenever raising taxes always remember who your collecting from and why we need it. This is a war game and we will always need money for war. Raising taxes only isn't the best strategy to fund wars.
What else can we do?
Congress and the CP should always be working with the eCanada MU's to get them to either provide weapons or damage to the wars we are in. At one time we had a national MU where congress paid for the creation of companies that would make the MUs more self sufficient. If eCanadian gov had slave pits that produced q6 or q7 weapons we could offset (not eliminate) the amount of CAD needed to pay for Merks. Now congress doesn't really need to build new weapons companies, there are a lot out there, They could broker deals with players who have those weapons companies by renting or contracting quantities of weapons for a fair exchange of some sort. It's not rocket science. we have plenty of players selling Q7 weapons on the market, start talking with those players. MU's could also recruit those players into their MUs as well. The MU slave pit's have always been successful as long as they have reasonable compensation. A good cheap option to lower the overall costs of weapons manufacturing is for congress to fund wRm companies that would in turn give the produced goods to an assigned company for it to be turned into weapons. But those players involved with the wRm and weapons manufacturing for the eGov should get a work tax offset. As a few players can attest to, Q6 weapons are more cost effective to produce than Q7's, but all in all weapons are a huge broken part of the economic Module of the game. We need to find ways to find a balance to offset the brokeness of the game and the need for lower costs to war.
Come on guys we all need to start working together and find ways to make the game fun for everyone. A good first step is for our CP and Congress and old players to listen more to ideas, instead of "trolling those ideas". Squashing the ideas of eCanadians from leadership has got to stop. We all know this is a war game and we need to work together to find what will make us most successful as an eNation.
Now lets all goto the Parks of Vancouver and talk about some of those great ideas we all have.
Comments
We should write poetry.
First off we were only making about 8500 per day at 5% and our projections accounted for this drop we're seeing. We're making 6000 per day more in tax revenue than we were at 5%. The drop was anticipated and lowering taxes at this rate would not cause greatee participation in the economy.
With that said I would like to conclude by saying
Didn't read; ate rice!
There you go again...Trolling valid points of view. Nice work Troll.
I didn't troll valid points. I'm still waiting on your CP campaign to kick off.
I too recall taxes being at about 8.5k a day. We only ever rose to 10k when we occupied Germany. Very rarely would be have a 10k day. Revenues have increased significantly, but there is indeed a drop in people WAM'ing. Congress should consider 8%.
hkl.kjlm
The actual tax revenue before the tax change was closer to 9,000 a day, not 10,000.
Lowering the tax rate back to 5% at this point, however, would not get you 9,000 anymore. Too many people have already either sold off companies or changed citizenship in response to the tax.
During peace we should have a 1% across the board tax rate once a predetermined amount sits in our org for defensive and offensive ventures. 1% helps our players grow and makes eCanada a more attractive place to come to and stay.
During a war we can always raise it
We will have a TW this week and if all works out as planned an actual war after the contest.
The idea that people selling into our market lowers prices I don't agree with at all. There is one market and one currency. The market decides the price. People go to where products are cheapest to buy. You cannot protect your market like you live in a vacuum. Prices will look high but only a fool would pay them.
If importers don't lower prices, then having fewer of them won't raise prices either, right? (or does it work one way but not the other?)
Perhaps the benefit of higher import taxes would be that eCanadian producers get a better chance to sell their products ahead of importers. Or, if importers want to pay the higher taxes anyhow, then the government gets a little more money.
If prices don't change and the supply remains stable, that sounds like a good formula for higher import taxes to me.
My point is people look at, at least 3 markets before buying. At least I do. There is one market. If you artificially inflate your prices no one will buy from you. If you look at really protected markets in this game you will notice they have very few people selling and then only at very high prices and no one buying.
Thanks for clarifying.
Perhaps there is a sweet-spot between 'overly protected' and 'under protected.' That would take some math and market comparisons to figure out. I think I'll go enjoy some Netflix instead. : )
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, expressed above by ExaltedDruid, that import taxes do not decrease prices..... since the converse is that they don't increase prices either. Unlike him, 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.
😁^
But that is what you said already in a more economic way...
BTW.... a week ago we donated 100 thousand dollars to the Ministry of Finance. Appears to be 20 thousand left. Anyone know where the other 80 thousand is? or who is in control of the organization now? We are donating another 100,000 again, so might be good to start keeping track. I liked AzariusTheron's idea: to keep everyone informed ... that could be eCanada's new mission.
The money is a state secret that congress was made aware of and will disclosed to everyone soon enough.
High import tax's produce zero income for the government because importers will not bother.
I would not mind trying to find that sweet spot that actually produces the most income but we always seem to be at either ends of the scale.
Nice article..., unfortunately VAT tax has to be min. 1% and I agree it should be as low as possible.
I really dislike Exalted Druid's argument like import tax will ruin our market. It won't. The reality is, it takes a minimum of 20 CAD, so if one does buy off another market, they have to save a lot of money. For instance, they would have to "buy" 100 tanks to save the move cost to buy off another market.
a 1 or 2 % increase wouldn't hurt us at all.
I have more tickets then I could possibly use so I don't factor in travel costs but maybe I'm the exception?
I buy local when they are at or about market norms. I don't move for a few cc.
That could be the case, but a q5 ticket is approx. 20 cc
I get free Q5 moving tickets every week. Moving is free if you fight
It's nice to see a good discussion. Obviously all taxes have a base of 1% due to Plato. We will never find the sweet spot for work taxes and import taxes if congress doesn't have a healthy discussion to make a change and find that balance. I think you have to ignore projections, because they are not very accurate. Obviously players vote with their feet and their mouse button. If they think that the tax is too high they move or don't click to make products they don't need to use. or they move to another eNation that has lower taxes. If we want to afford to keep waging wars we need to find balance. Low enough taxes to keep people but yet high enough to pay for some of the CO's for our wars. But when congress and the CP have too much of tunnel vision where they are only seeing high work tax = CAD for war, we all lose. We lose strong characters, productive characters, active characters and when we lose them it means we lose tax revenue...And I don't know about everyone else, but this "Secret" that will be revealed later business is a bunch of garbage. What is the administration planning to do with your game play everyone? And what's the purpose for keeping your people in the dark...Are you afraid that we will not agree with another of your decisions?
complete agreement on the state SECRET buloney. If it turns out I am mistaken you can expect me to admit my error. Will be on the lookout for explanation.
It's a secret because we don't want our enemies knowing what we're doing. Do you not understand OPSEC? Congress is aware of what going on with the money. If you want to know maybe you should have ran for Congress.
There are many of us out here in eCanada whom are unelectable because of the trolls like yourself DMV3.
I have no problem with you being in Congress. Did you even try to run?
Last time i ran for congress was before the change in the election module. When you actually ran as an individual. Since I have been in political parties that were too small to get representation in congress. My time in congress was not very good, it was the era when Wally Cleaver and Simon (both now dead toon) were speakers.
Is it time for cookies and milk yet?
Nope, it is however time for beer and pizza...
Some of these ideas aren't half bad. But half of these ideas are somewhat bad. It's too late for me to figure out which one is which.
Maybe I'll try again tomorrow. For now I'll just try to help get you to 25 comments.
What should eCanada do? Surrender. Seriously, we are a failed state led by lunatics at this point.
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I'm here for you....comment!
~hyuu~