[KQ4CP] What's In Our Wallets

Day 1,164, 21:06 • Published in Canada Canada • by Kronos Q
Action/Reaction - Us vs. The Economy

When I asked everyone what they thought was important, as part of my campaign for Country President on February 5th, the economy was mentioned a fair amount. Whether it was taxes, resource bonuses, wars for the economy, or the value of CAD, everyone wanted to know what could be done. When we look at our options for these things, the truth is that there isn't all that much. Now, not having a lot of options doesn't mean there isn't something we can do, just that the answer is fairly straightforward. So straightforward in fact, that a number of them have already been "solved". The economy isn't one of my larger focuses, since there's only so much we can do to combat the Admin changes, but it is nonetheless an important topic.


Our economy has changed much over the past month or so, the most recent cause being the "working-manager" change. This change isn't something that we can fix, but we can make the best of our situation. Being a working-manager has allowed managers to make huge profits. In fact, many managers don't have any expenses anymore, only revenue, meaning that they can make 100% profit from their work. This has created a scenario where managers don't need to worry as much about the price of their products, just that they are sold. This of course leads to under-cutting, which has caused price drops on the market. Not entirely a bad thing, but it makes it more difficult to employ other players in companies.

While we can't force working-managers to stop a price-war, what we can do is use their extra production to our benefit. Working-managers don't pay income tax, so value-added-tax (VAT) is the only tax that is paid on these products. Forever, eCanada has had a VAT of 1% on every product. By increasing VAT on products, the Government can benefit from working-managers. To balance this out, income taxes can be lowered, which benefits all employees in eCanada. VAT has increased in importance because of the working-manager change, and we should be using it to our benefit.

The idea has already been presented to Congress, who have already changed taxes to represent this concept (tax change proposals can be seen on the the country administration page. So this problem has been dealt with, though this isn't the end of it. I'll expand on this after I talked about the next subject.


A citizen's productivity is very important. So important that a country's capability, in terms of game-mechanics, is sometimes calculated by the total of their citizens' productivity. This leads to a very simple statement, "to strengthen a country, you need to increase their productivity." With the change in resources awhile back, one of the big ways to do this is by owning as many resources as possible. Looking at our resources list, you can notice that we have 5 origianl resources, and are in need of getting the other resources from other countries.

Started, at least. eIreland approached us last month and offered to rent a region to us. We've just finished following through with that, which you can read about here. We now have a fruit region. Great. But there were also two other offers that were discussed last month. Needless to say, these are opportunities that should be followed-up on. I don't know how much I should be talking about this subject, since this isn't the 'Foreign Affairs' portion of my campaign, but we have a potentially great opportunity that involves more than just another resource. I would really like to see us start to act on this, so I've already begun preparations.


Though we've already acted on taxes and started on resources bonuses, it is far from "solved". We need to monitor our changes, to ensure they are acting the way we intended them to. We'll need an attention to detail when it comes to tracking all of the factors involved in our economy. Tracking our changes will give us a better idea on what actually changed, which will help us to make decisions in the future. It shouldn't be a surprise that I believe Etemenanki, our Minister of Finance for the past few months, is the best person to help keep track of this. He has agreed to continue with his position as our Minister of Finance during my term. If you've ever seen one of his budgets, you'll know why I place my full confidence in him; organization, fluidity, and thorough.

Etemenanki won't be alone, though. We need to be better prepared when it comes to our economy, which is why I would like to see more communication and discussion. Though not yet concrete, the idea is to invite economic minds to examine, analyze, and [more buzzwords] different possible scenarios surrounding eCanada's economic situation. These discussions will help everyone understand the economic module better, as well as help prepare us for times when we encounter these scenarios for real. If we discuss possibilities now, we'll be able to make faster decisions more easily down the road when we need to.

And last, but not least,

The working-manager change has also greatly affected the value of CAD. This isn't just us, though. Every country has had their currency devalue. Fact is, currencies are worth less now. Owning (and working in) a company is a very safe investment now, as it can always generate profit. This has increased the value of companies, which led to the mad rush of converting CAD into gold, so that everyone could buy one. In days of yore, the Government was able to help control the value of CAD with a peg, though I don't quite remember the details abou this. Though we may not have the resources for this quite yet, this is still something that should be looked into. Something that would make a nice discussion topic for the economic minds.


These are the larger economic topics that we are facing this month, and we're already heading in the right direction for the most part. A thanks should go out to Aeriala and last month's Congress-members for starting to act on these topics, but we still need to follow-up with them. With careful tracking, and educated discussion, we can prepare for the future today.

Thank you for reading,
I hope that when February comes around, we can prepare ourselves for the future.