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BUDGET DISCUSSION

Proposed budget: https://www.erepublik.com/en/article/-mof-budget-179th-congress-of-the-euk--2771784

The above budget has been proposed by the Government for this months Congress to look at. Some concerns have been raised by Mr Woldy, so as per the rules we will be having a full discussion and vote.

Woldys concerns: https://www.erepublik.com/en/article/congressman-woldy-s-alternative-budget-2771807

Please post responses as a reply to this comment.

Discussion starting: Day 5759 11pm GMT

As stated in the article I don't think the MoHA needs 400k, it can use MoEnt funds and should seek to economise in giveaways which, when they are not targeted and limited become very expensive without really meeting their objectives of incentivising activity amongst people who wouldn't typically comment / vote etc.

Pending the query I've commented separately the BoE may need more funds to cover its obligations.

Lastly I suggest an eUK defence fund is set up and on org nominated for Congress to donate remaining donations too (which I estimate to be about two unless Egypt and seasonal events increase income)

I disagree on stopping funding for MoHa, rather we should insist it is actually used in some form to educate, entertain, and retain eUK citizenry.

They can use the 400k in the MoEnt org for that 🙂

Then the budget line should be left with a note of the usual amount to be resumed once the usual monthly amount that has not been used up is used. I do NOT want to lose it from the budget for a temporary aberration where it may never get added back 🙂

Presumably the budgets can be discussed at least monthly so there's every opportunity to throw more funds at whatever activities Congress sees fit month by month. As it stands I don't think domestic activities stand to be under resourced over the next four weeks and definitely think the giveaways can be ran more economically

I agree
If the budget is voted on monthly I don’t see the point in funding them this month if we don’t need to. If they need a top up next month, surely it can be proposed into next months budget?

Might I suggest that until the following is confirmed by gov we can't really adequately discuss an appropriate budget:

What are our obligations for returning income to tw partners whose regions we occupy, as this doesn't appear to be the same arrangement for each partner and some don't look like they get full returns.

Also, which of our occupiers return money to us and what payments schedules are there to determine when we get it (and where does it go?)

It occurred to me in the wee hours of the night that a monthly average income from MM trading would also help complete the income picture

Tax Revenue for all TWs (both UK hosted and UK hosted abroad) run on the informal agreement that all tax revenue collected from the occupation is returned.

Tax Revenue returns are waived for those who occupy Scotland as payment for the use of their bonuses, the airstrike required to land and if defense of RWs is required

Tax Revenue requests are usually “on request” however sometimes on a schedule, it depends on the Minister in charge of the Tax Revenue for the country in question

I tend to rely “on request” as it provides me a current Government contact to make a return to. I make revenue return requests fairly frequently however I tend to be relaxed if it takes a little bit of chasing as we all have busy lives amounts owed from some TWs can mount up on occasion. Hence why I haven't budgeted it too well and just place it on the Monetary Market.

It’s all tracked however can be difficult to report as the values owed changes daily however I agree my reporting in the budget could have been better

I’ve attempted to improve transparency on the MoF - Government Spending Review Log
Term Budget Layout Tab - Col Z to AC and Col AE to AF

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uhVIGio3-ST9AEZfbjvcpbsNNhPsJiOVE_ahmXRpmeQ/edit#gid=0

I hope this is helpful however let me know if this is useful or if more is required. It's been nice to be questioned on it, it's been nice motivation to tidying up some of the tools I used to track it all and double-check figures and returns. On reflection we probably could improve processes in this area, which I will give some thought to. o/

It is useful - if I understand your sheet correctly we owe just over 3.8 Million to partner nations and are owed ourselves just over 1.8 Million.

I suppose I am curious as to why we dont just return tax income in full at the end of each month and why the budget suggests paying back far less to nations such as Egypt from whom we get a fair chunk. Is this down to informal ad hoc arrangements (i.e. have Egypt asked for a specific amount short of what is owed)?

Otherwise I just have some broader thoughts/suggestions:

Could we not be more actively pursuing the money we are owed (though appreciate the point on it not being a time sink), in particular from Croatia as we are no longer an active TW partner with them and it feels risky that the outstanding balance could be lost with time.

I also wonder if it wouldn't be possible for monies to be returned to an org or even the country accounts so its receipt was more visible/could be validated by a wider pool of people.

would love to hear something on woldy's query as to why so much is owed to us and why we owe so much- what's the plan to bring these numbers down to 0?

Whilst I was pulling together the budget, I was minded to request UK tax revenue returns from all TW partners who had not returned our tax revenue for more than 30 days. So the amount owed should reduce in the next week or so.

Australia, Egypt and Italy all make return requests on a fairly regular basis so I expect these to come in over the next 30 days again.

I've contacted both North Korea and Spain to confirm the process to return owed amounts (i.e. where or who).

How I wrote it in the budget was not great for clarity on this matter, the amounts really just reflected the amount of days since we last returned revenue, so the smaller amount, the less time since the last return. I had forgotten to update the forecasts in was just in my template. I will improve on this matter in future reporting and show more diligence.

It's most efficient for our TW partners to make returns directly to a citizen account. Citizen accounts get a specific notification, say what has been donated and by who. You don't get a notification from an Org as you'd need to place a specific amount of FRM or WRM to donate into an Org and whilst Treasury donations are recorded the source of the treasury donation isn't. Citizen account notifications also seem to be retained for at least an 8th month period so can be reviewed if we need to reconfirm what is owed between countries.

makes sense. are you having them send it to you and then you will donate to bank of england, or what?

Just for clarity, I opposed the change to the budget by congress as it complicates things. So if someone could explain what’s actually going to happen that would be great.

Clearly we have two budgets that have been presented (so we will have to vote on it) and its worth noting I said in debate there would always be an alternative budget.

So eventually Congress will have to have a vote on a budget how will this take place, what will these budgets be called etc


Also we did agree to use comments AND Congress thread so I presume that will be set up shortly.

I think we'll see what compromise Woldys and Huey can come to given the amount of work both have done here and then discuss/vote on any outliers specifically

Why are we going to complicate matter with both this paper and a mass message thread? There are quite a few people I have blocked, and this makes it all easier, it seems.

Personally I’d prefer the message threads for the same reason, not seeing people we’ve blocked

Yes, was waiting for friend requests to be accepted to make the PM

As with any budget before the rules changed, if someone has something to raise they can do. We'll discuss and then vote. The new budget changes only really applies those months nobody has questions and it's unanimously going to pass anyway.

Thanks DM, every month there will always be an alternative budget many congress members said they’d always propose one because not voting was such a regressive step.

So the process needs to be thought of, SHA has made a suggestion but if woldy and Huey can’t agree we have two budgets being proposed. Before any vote (the first of this kind) we need to carefully consider wording.

And regarding the PM as Speaker I found out that not everyone will accept as they wilfully want to be left put of the Congress Chat.

You say that, but we had 3 months where no questions were raised. If alternatives are being raised now the rules changed, it just shows that Congress is doing more and I am never against that!

viewed. subscribed.

Will making the changes proposed by Congressman Woldy (striking 400k from MoHA) make eUK players lose access to the awesome, regular giveaways we have by the government?

Why are we sending money to MoEnt?

Woldy suggests rather than sending MoHA 400k this month it is used elsewhere and we use the 400k already sat in the MoEnt org. That was we dont have 400k laying around not being used and the newly freed up extra donate can be used for another means.

Why are we regularly sending money to MoEnt?

Afaik there has only ever been one lot of money sent to MoEnt.

I can answer that one I think. Because there was supposed to be a few games being played nationwide which stopped with the disappearance of the person who was going to be running said games.

I still think national games are a great idea as they encourage people to stay active and engaged in eUK, and it redistributes money and tanks/food while making people be active to receive them (there are already programs that just give stuff for no effort).

My point is made then... if no one is running the games, should it be getting a budget line at all?

My point is that yes there should be a budget... AND it should be being used - someone in MoHA/MoEnt needs to get their finger out and organize it is all 😛

There isn't anyone in the MoHA or MoEnt unless that's changed in the past week

OK, observational comment here on this new process (feedback to the Speaker team).

There are two problems so far with using article comments for congress discussions.

1. We do not get notified that there are new items in here so we have to come and check the comments daily just on the off-chance someone said something.

2. In order to stay up to date we have to check every single comment thread in case anything was added.

All in all, so far, I prefer the PM method as it notifies when updated, and comments are read in the order received (not scattered through and under lots of different comments. Due to these problems putting this as a duplicate into the PM to ensure people can see it and add comments)

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Agreed. But we have to consider the ability for the public to be involved. It's *their* taxes we're spending for example.

Using the public feed was giving a place where the public could have some input too, and the budget article will still be published whether or not we use an article like this for follow up.

I miss forums 🙁
So much simpler 🙁

There is an eRepublik forum still, always an option.

I don't mind not getting notified, its easy to find or bookmark the article. My only comments would be whether a sweep of what people want to discuss could be done ahead of publishing and that listed in the contents, to structure it a bit more, and perhaps the speaker org could put in a comment saying 'discuss topic 1 here' and so on. Also the link to this could be posted in cong chat and on threads to get more coverage, perhaps some people need reminding what the format is now.

The erep forum is weak sauce I dont think many would venture over there.

Sorry, it doesn't matter how you spin this - this method is less favourable to use as a congressman than the method we used last month. We already lost one congressperson due to complexity!

Just my two cents, soz if it isn't welcome

I do have to concede the logic here, but we ought to have as much info in the public as possible and there's only so much you can get away with on feeds

Perhaps if there are clear vote/discussion notifications on the thread/feed we can rely on - this would be more for discussion anyone can join in with a regular weekly refresh

Let's treat this as we did forums back in the good ole days... one article for a discussion thread... one article for a Vote thread.

I think that would be better than a weekly article to cover everything. One article per issue, just like the forums used to be. We will still have to rely on the congress coming and checking what's been said daily though, as still no notifications from here if anything new is added.

Commenting to say I agree with every point raised here in favour of PMs over article comments

I’ve been away a weekend and wasn’t even aware this article was being used this heavily

Ok we need to decide what to do re: budget.

Woldy - do you want to write up a new budget with your changes in? Do we vote for which we want, or do you want to get Gov agreement first and vote just for the changed one?

I move that we pass the existing budget. Maybe we can get something done with a new budget for the next term... maybe.

Right now, we have failed in our most primary duty and aren't even really talking about it anymore.

I think we might be waiting for CP elections now, but with BOE donations still happening in meantime.

As a side note this system is so difficult because I can’t remember how far in a thread I’ve read when coming back to it days later. At least it’s chronological in the PMs and on the feed

I currently posses the viewpoint of Jo, the man in the street. Lots of wannabe politicians want to come and hold a pint whilst pretending to talk to me. Every couple of mins they pour some pint in a flower pot behind me and continue nodding and laughing heartily whilst the cameras snap away.

Anyway, Jo says this is both indicative of a curiously unbelievable amount of congress activity - go you. And really f.boring and I've completely lost my place, I've read lots of stuff, and kinda agreed with most people on all sides and don't really know much of what is going on and even worse by the time I got to writing this, I'm about ready to fall asleep.

annnnnndddddd.... speaking as a previous spanker...

It's really difficult, everyone has different levels of engagement, some want left some want right and some want the middle and you can be guaranteed there are people who hate left, right and middle in such equal measure that only one very narrow group is going to be happy.

External forums would be the obvious vehicle for complicated threads of discussion over time, but waaaaaa you have to use something outside of of eRep - like you spend your entire life online in eRep... Because of activity levels it's reasonable to say that it can be done in a message thread.

Whilst I laud the attempts at reform by the current speaker, I'd suggest that the problem is getting people into congress. If you're in any way motivated, you're already in congress and thus are part of the discussion.

Who remembers my external website voting, with its pretty interface and attractive graphics such as pie charts to show the results. A lot of this comes from the fact that many people don't actually politic in eRep, but use it as a chance to eTeaBag other people to relieve the STD itch that is rl. Generally the lower the status of the individual in rl, the greater the itching here.

Yours Ironically
Lord Speaker

Thanks for this contribution.