Pound coins don't have vaginas
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by Jamie2721
When I say tax, i always mean both income tax and VAT
I'd like to start this article by saying why we do need taxes.
We need taxes for MPP's. Everyone mutually benefits from having regions. There is not one group of players who do and some who don't. And as congress is the only people who can vote for these they need to have the funds at their disposal. It's up to the government to try and make these MPP's as beneficial and as efficient as possible.
What else do we need taxes for?
some crazy lib i found on google
This is where it's time to differentiate between real life and eRepublic. Some people (lets say roughly half) believe generally that socialism is a good idea. They want taxes for roads, schools, a poor 4 year year old waiting in a hospital in South East London waiting for an organ donation to save her life. I don't know if people have noticed, but we don't actually have these things here. So even if you are for taxes in real life, that doesn't mean you should be for them on here.
What are taxes spent on?
They are spent on a lot of things. MPP's for a start. But we have a whole list of others. One third of our spending went on our 'Call to Arms' project. This is a gigantic waste. Just like real life, i've seen government make ridiculous calculations. I've seen people on the forum actually say "Well, we supplied 70 people with 4Q7 so that's x million of damage for x amount of GBP". This really is absurd. I would and so would many others, fight just the same without these supplies. In fact, if there was less tax, even more people could afford their own weapons. Self reliance. They are also spent on an NHS system for newer players and military strikes. Again this is uncalled for. You can not take money off of players and give it to others without asking for their help. It doesn't mean we should get rid of these systems (i'll come to that later though).
POUND COINS DON'T HAVE VAGINAS
There may have been a better picture to choose from
There is an argument about income tax. "it's only one pound roughly per day, can you really not give it up to help the country?" Well you can collect all these pounds together if you like, but just because it's in a big pile doesn't mean we have more money. It's still just one pound per person worked. I have checked, and it is true, pound coins don't have reproductive systems that we could exploit to make lots of baby pound coins.
It is true, some people benefit. The active people. Some will read this and think Great, lets help the most beneficial to our community. This is wrong. eRepublik is a game that thrives on activity. Every aspect of the game rewards activity. There are already substantial motivation to be active. What eRepublik does not care for is the 2 clickers who don't spend money. They don't go on irc, they don't read the news, they don't use the forums. But what they do do is, they work and they fight. A lot of damage and productivity is produced by 2 clickers. Taxing them takes away their ability to operate. We talk about retention. We don't need to worry about our active players. They will continue to play. What we do need to worry about is the 2 clickers who hover on the edge of logging in each day. We need to keep them coming back. Taking away their finance does not help.Taking money away from these players to give to people you chat to on irc and the forums is just not fair.
We had a baby boom recently. We taxed people, we flourished the new players with gifts from these taxes. What was the result? A disaster, we actually struggled to get the population back to where it was pre baby boom just one month after the boom was over. Taxes did not work. In fact, some highly productive people might look at our VAT rate and think twice about getting eUK citizenship.
Does this mean we just don't try to help new players?
Of course not!
I personally give more money than i give in taxes to people i see asking for food or even weapons. What i want to do is help people, not give the players in government an ego boost about how they can pretend they're getting all this damage for the country.
We can still even create voluntary schemes. We could keep the NHS going through donations (which contribute already). If the laws didn't already take my money i would be willing to help such schemes a little more.
For things like military strikes that costs a lot more. And if government wants to finance that then there are ways to do that. An example i heard was create an eUK voters club. Personally i don't like the idea, but ideas like this are exactly the kind players in government should be discussing. Taxes should not even be an option.
I hope this can change some people's minds, but i doubt it will....
Thanks for reading,
Jamie2721
Extended reading,
If you happen to be interested in sexual activities with money, Helpmeslack has kindly informed me that if you are of similar size to him, you can knock out the middle part of a £2 coin and away you go.
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Comments
Taxes are necessary. There isn't much left of Government that can be cut anymore.
If you can't get enough money from people to finance something without forcing them to give you it, then it's obviously not wanted very much.
Again, you do not need to cut. But you do need to find another way of financing it
MoD have given out a crap tonne of supplies during this war - by using money from the treasury stockpile.
Each individual fighter couldn't produce that - and our allies, while they are told to fight for us in times of great need they may be swayed by a CoT battle that is being supplied at the same time. Each individual player does not have the cash to keep themselves in tanks.
Money doesn't grow on trees as you so correctly pointed out, but where should the MoD supplies come from?
Government can't afford to sit around and wait for people to give money to act. As well as that, a reserve is important because sometimes things like war require immediate attention and funding.
Taxes being questioned in principle is just completely counter to the point of the game: to recreate and operate as a community. And you're also ignoring the rest of the eWorl😛 if they continue to tax, we'll fall behind them in terms of the damage that they can get: especially countries that neighbour us.
If everyone didn't have to contribute but everyone was able to benefit from those who did the system would collapse. If 100 people gave £100 and 100 people gave nothing, those giving would only be getting £1 for every £2 they put in, which would discourage some of the sharers. Discouraged sharers would stop contributing, resulting in those who remain getting an even worse deal, and so on and so on until the system collapsed.
Forcing everyone to contribute through taxes stops this collapse, and keeps systems that are beneficial to the UK as a whole going. I think this is related to something known as the prisoner's dilemma, in which co-operation is good for the group but not for the individual. Forcing cooperation through taxes solves this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma#Multiplayer_dilemmas
This is a better example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_goods_game#Iterated_public_goods_games
"once it is realized that others are receiving a bigger share for a smaller contribution the sharing members react against the perceived injustice"
High taxes is fine if the Gov't could properly explain the need for its high rates.
Although when deciding VAT rates, one still needs to consider the Laffer curve.
i like how you linked my profile and all ¬¬
^ so people can contact you for details/ video tutorials.
Feel free to leave your Skype
not sure how 5% is high....
With respect to the Laffer curve, I'd be hesitant to go over 15% VAT.
In general though over the course of our history, the eUK has had (and maintained) substantially lower levels of taxation than nations of similar strength and size.
No one likes taxes.
@ Emergy
Did we not manage to build up quite an impressive reserve with a lower VAT than 15%? Would it not be sensible to lower it again? Especially after our wars finish
CtA helps redistribute money from the rich to the poor. High vat is a tax on the rich whilst the NHS and CtA uses this "stolen" money as you call it to help D1 and D2.
The only stolen money is that which is stolen from the country.
we don't need to go overboard on taxes but we do need at least moderate tax rates to keep everyone properly supplied. Players who are generous to those who need help are very good to have but I do not think there are enough generous players out there to cover all those who need supplies.
I'm not sure if the 'two clicker' even notices the small fraction taken off there wage. The income tax rate is the most visible tax to the 'two clicker' so if it does become a problem then we could lower it and raise the VAT.
I'd just like to point out that the NHS has been run on donations for quite some time as there simply isn't enough government revenue to do anything else.
Thankfully people like the program and want to be able to use their spare food production and earnings to help new players. Which is brilliant as the MoH is perfectly placed to provide a good place for unwanted food to help people free up storage whilst using that to give our younger players a foot up.
Some countries have it so that only one person runs a ministry of health, such as in Canada were Doctor of Souls pretty much runs a one man show with no government involvement.
Has there been an attempt at a NWS were they supply tanks? it would probably not last long since people are not as willing to give weapons as they are food, and that is were the government needs to step in and fill the gap
Let's not disrespect vaginas