[WHPR] Taxes and Battles

Day 3,115, 20:16 Published in USA USA by James S. Brady Press Room

Dateline: 31 May, 2016 (Day 3,115), 11:07PM EST

Location: James S. Brady Press Room, The White House

Today’s WHPR Contents:
1. The Great Tax Debate
2. An Interview With our Battle Coordinator

Credits: J.A. Lake

Breaking News:

Breaking after the original publishing of this WHPR article, the Presidential candidates (Derphoof, Yui MCHP001, and James Schubert) have all agreed to a live debate. We at the White House Press Release encourage our readers to join our Presidential Candidates for a debate. You can listen on Beam or better yet on Discord Thursday at 9PM EST or 21:00 Game Time.

The Great Tax Debate
J.A. Lake



It is fun to mock taxes, but impossible to mock their necessity. Tax revenue funds many of the government programs we depend on, as you may well know. They also help to fund Combat Orders (COs) in times of war. Over the course of months tax revenue is accrued into our national reserves, to help fund the war effort should an invasion of our shores occur.

Work Taxes are rightfully the hot topic in the 102nd Congress. The most expansive Public Congress thread shows little debate that taxes will be lowered, though some discussion has erupted around how low. Some Congress members advocate a drop to the absolute lowest tax rate, 1%. Others wish to keep it around 5%. Still others seek to raise it to 8% or as high as 10%.

The original discussion on tax decrease (as well as the pursuant proposal and vote), launched by longtime Congress Member Henry Pfeiffer Arundel, sets the target at 1%. In Congress he state😛

“I am proposing the tax cut so that we can establish what our new baseline is. I did 1%, it could just as easily have been 5%. The purpose is to see where we stand with the changes, especially pollution.”

The purposes for this motion are many. It should serve to attract business interests to the eUnited States when the option becomes available to permanently locate your business in a region. It will help to provide a baseline against which to weigh the costs and benefits of potential tax increases or decreases in the future. Finally and most importantly for a large portion of the voting public, it will help to ease the tax burden on the average eAmerican.

The average eAmerican, post tax decrease.

There are opponents to this idea, however. Several Congress Members, in particular Evry have pointed out:

“I am not proposing that we should remain in the 15-20% range, but, that if we wanted to rest in the 5-10% tax bracket, we would probably be fine. Plus, we would essentially be protecting American company owners from "pollution" (since foreign company owners won't want to move here due to the tax) and thus increasing their productivity which in turn is good for the company owners due to more stuff being produced, good for the country due to lower commodity prices, and good for consumers. ”

The discussion boils down to one of the irresponsibility of lowering taxes below a point where we can sustain our government programs and the irresponsibility of keeping them high at a point where we could lose attractiveness as a base of operations for foreign business despite our impressive collection of resources coming out of the Resource Wars. Both sides have very reasonable arguments, though the Five Percenters are notably outnumbered by the One Percenters and the work tax was lowered to one percent.

With the vote concluded and taxes dropped to the floor, we must look forward to the impending debate on exactly how high they should be raised.


An Interview with our Battle Coordinator
J.A. Lake


Yui MCHP0001 has invested an incredible amount of time in the eUnited States’ performance in the Resource Wars, and given their dominance of the news over the past month it seemed a natural place to go to get an insider view on the Government’s effort to secure for us the best resources possible.

“How would you describe your role in the Resource Wars?” I asked.

With exceptional promptness, Yui responded. “My role in Resource Wars 2.0 is to balance each of the battles to control our Domination Point gain. It's a time consuming job (I spend 2-3 hours on each resource), but it's fun, in a way.”

Domination points are what we fight for in wars, and for every 30,000 we receive a Resource Token. For reference, a division wins an individual battle with 1,800 domination points. At a time where multiple wars are being fought on many different fronts, balancing that many battles is extraordinarily time consuming. Perplexed by how it might be fun, I asked Yui to provide an example of a “fun” story of the Resource Wars.

“So we were going for our 2nd Granite on the morning of Day 3113, and it looked like no one else close to us was going for it. Resource Drops, and we hit 30k Domination Points at the same time.

But we didn't get it.

Turned out that New York, where we originally had our 2nd House industry planned, got blocked by Canada, but it was still showing up a a priority. So I reassign the 2nd House Industry to North Carolina. We decided to still go for it, going from 0 to 30k before someone else could.

We were successful (there are only 4 others that have it prioritized so we weren't too worried), and we hit the 30k mark again, but we STILL DIDN'T GET IT. For whatever reason, it refused to place itself in North Carolina even though it was prioritized there, and the Resource Wars map said that the region wasn't blocked.

Obviously at this point I'm super salty so I get into contact with eRepLabs, and they say they'll look into it. I'm way too tired by now to do anything else (It was 5AM), so I leave it to ubuntu21 and crew to go for it a 3RD TIME, except now it's prioritized both in North Carolina and Florida.

We hit the mark successfully for the 3rd god dang time, and it places in Florida. In the end, we're told that the problem won't be looked into further since we got it in Florida anyway.

It was a roller coaster of a night/morning.”
Celebrations outside of Naples, Florida.

That did seem entertaining in a strange sort of way. Back on task, I followed my original question with the following: “How would you rate the eUSA’s performance so far in the Resource Wars?”

“Right now I'd rate the performance of the eUSA a solid 18/20.”

I had to respect that response. I’d walked right into it. Marshalling what remained of my belief that I was the wittiest one in the conversation, I moved on. “What do you see our role being in a post-Resource Wars world?”

“Hopefully, we'll come out of these Resource Wars with a stronger economic base, and maybe be a center for general resource production.”

My final question, if it could be called that, was the ever-popular, “Anything else you want to add?”

Yui responded with thanks for the people who helped bring off this successful performance. “My thanks to Tyler Bubblar, for giving me the opportunity to help in these Resource Wars.

Thanks to Melissa Rose, for setting up most of the Training Wars that have helped us get 18/20 resources thus far.

Thanks to Resoula and KalosHoenn, for managing what battles we're supposed to Win or Lose overall, and keeping the NSC/PMU thread updated.

Thanks to Gnilraps, for making the spreadsheet that helped me not get headaches while doing the Battle Managing, and for mass messaging the country.

And last but certainly not least, all the fighters who have come to help the eUSA secure the resources. I know I don't use all of you each time (especially for getting Titanium, I asked for help maybe 2 times), but I truly do appreciate you taking the time to come into IRC and being ready to help. None of this would have been possible without you all!”

We at the White House Press Release would in turn like to thank Yui MCHP0001 for the time granted us for the interview. Best of luck coordinating the final weeks’ battles!




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