the collapse of the construction markets?
scrabman
I'm going to take a break from campaigning to point out an important issue. Not that I've been campaigning too hard yet. I hope to name my Vice President later this week.
Anyway, today I have the sad task of sending a message to the 20 workers of my Q5 Defense System Company, [url=http://http://www.erepublik.com/en/company/faqs-defenses-inc--178873/]FAQS Defenses Inc.[/url] That message will tell them that it has become apparent, from the recent discussions in the Congress threads of the eUSA Forums, that many people feel that buying Defense Systems or Hospitals are a waste of money for the eUSA. Of course, the thing that these people are forgetting is that these companies employ highly skilled construction workers and all of their salaries go right back into the local economy in terms of their food, houses, guns, and other items. Not to mention the 10,000 units of wood that must be purchased to build a Q5 Hospital or DS.
Nevertheless, a small minority of Congress has joined forces with the Economic Council (who weren't elected by anybody) to decide to shout down any of the voices asking to support our constructions industry by buying high Quality Hospitals and Defense Systems. This does not mean that such constructions can't still be proposed by the Congress and then brought to a vote. However, I will not abuse my office in that way for my personal gain. Thus, without some members of Congress speaking up I will be forced to lay off the 20 highly skilled workers in FAQS upon the completion of our current Defense System.
This greatly pains me as an Executive Board member and recent President of the United States Workers' Party. However, I can't run a charity with my company as it costs about $20,000 to build a Q5 Hospital or Defense System. So what will happen to those workers? I don't know. There won't be any comparable industries for them to move to other than perhaps housing and there are only so many of those. They will likely move out of the country to a nationalized Hospital or DS company as many other countries subsidize such industries recognizing that they are a captive market as they can only sell to governments (assuming that one is buying).
I'm not sure why the consensus has been to follow this minority of Congress in leading this discussion of refusing to purchase such constructions. All that I know is that unless Congress acts we are going to lose this industry. Quite frankly, people seem to believe the game mechanics behind the Defense Systems are currently broken and they add only a small benefit to fights. While the usefulness of Defense Systems may be in question the effect of buying them is to trickle down to the other markets when the workers spend their wages on guns, food, gifts, etc. I will thank all of my employees for their work and wish them well. I finally had a great group of employees who worked everyday and didn't quit. They don't deserve to be laid off, but there really is no choice.
I know many of you will probably not care as I've gotten very few responses to this issue over the last month. The good news is your taxes are going up even though they are buying less, or so says the Economic Council. Makes sense, huh?
Feel free to read and comment:
http://eusforum.com/index.php/topic,22.0.html
http://eusforum.com/index.php/topic,364.0.html
http://eusforum.com/index.php/topic,440.0.html
Comments
Didn't One Eye and Jewitt propose a system of making purchases of this size and nature about once a month, so as to maintain the industry while reducing the overall amount of government expenditure on these constructions?
What about exporting these constructions to foreign nations?
Read it. Impeachment tiem pl0x?
As the person who runs Scrabs business i can tell you Hari
1) The EC proposes a 2500 per day expense account for these. However, unlike Uncle Sam's DS company, we can not hold onto 2-3 DS until it is our turn to sell. If they always bought from us once a month we would be ok. However, most of the fiscal conservatives are asking that the Budget be TOTALLY cut to zero dollars for constructions
2) Exporting..... All major countries already have inhouse construction companies. All countries know the decreasing usefullness of these as people's strength and the number of people grow. Thus, while we have asked the major countries who do not make their own, we have no buyer.
3) The cost to build is only actually 18k. I even asked if we could sell just above that (20k or so, 6k less then last time) and not one person responded on the forums.
4) HOSPTIALS! People seem to want hospitals, however, you wont be buying any q5's from the US. Justin has the only q5 hospital and looking at his employees, its gonna be a few months till they get done.
Congress needs their head out of their ass. If Hospital and DS companies go under, they won't come back any time soon. It's not like you can just ramp up production in a day and turn one out in a week.
Voted Scrab. We have to find some middle ground here Congress!
Thanks for the reply Hokie. I'm not well versed on the inner machinations of the large construction markets.
It seems like part of this is a response to the announcement that the eUS had spent ~80% of its budget on constructions. While that does seem...high, running from one extreme to the other does nobody any good.
How long does it take to build a DS? It can't be faster than several weeks. We have to keep at least two or three companies open.
21 days for faqs atm
hari: I agree. I agree that we dont need 4 ds's a month. but there is middleground somewhere
let the states buy it...
We need somebody to crunch the numbers and see if they can find that middle ground. I had assumed that One Eye and his bunch had done so.
Joe DaSmoe,
You are the kind of politician the eUSA needs. I respect you and applaud your efforts to get eUSA's economy and military back to what it should be.
OMG!!
-Hutch
Just as a reminder of what I said earlier: The admins will have to fix them sooner or later. The countries that keep producing/buying them may thus come up with the defensive advantage.
I agree with Joe find a middle ground and this will all just go away
"If we don't spend money on Constuctions, MPP's and Military funding, what the hell our we going to spend it on?"
Good question.
Good article, Scrab. But I do think we do need to find a middle ground until we can make up for our treasury losses. If that means one or two DS' a month, so be it. We need to find a middle ground for the sake of American business and the sake of fiscal responsibility. What is the problem with exporting to Atlantis nations, though and including the price of the export license in the cost?
I'm not against constructions (I work for a high quality Hospital company, although the company is closing soon as well), I'm against the 25% income tax that is being proposed, using the purchase of Hospitals and DS's as an excuse for the ridiculously high rate. I'm even more against the tax that the Econ council is proposing when I'm very dissapointed with some of the other stated goals.
I've already mothballed my DS company (and the DS that's been on the market for months now) and I did the same thing with my Housing company tonight. Fired everyone.
Congress is just a big circle jerk anyway, they'll never actually decide on anything meaningful because they all want to play the game their way - I should know. They refuse to buy these constructions, and they're gonna reap what they sow.
Short term thinking in Congress? What a shock!
1) We need to maintain at least one or two companies capable of making these constructions just in case. Maybe we don't need a bunch right now, but if the geopolitical situation changes, where will we be? We can't start these up overnight.
2) If we're not buying huge hospitals and defense systems, WHY ARE INCOME TAXES GOING UP TO 20-25%? Supposedly, it's to "help the military". But if newer citizens can't afford to buy food good enough to train every day, and keep their wellness above 40, what good is it? Does the money go to buy free weapons and wellness packs for tanks?
Could be a fun lark for those with exp. levels 15 and above, who want to go gunslinging around the world, but new citizens will either a) get frustrated and drop out of the game b) starve, or c) buy a ticket for Canada or Ireland.
people are going to run into this problem anyway if they own construction companies. Benn and I are considering firing all our employees after we finish our third DS, and here's the reason why.
The money has already been trickled down to through the economy since the workers have already made the construction. once the construction is bought, that's profit for the company owner. What we're missing in this equation is the fact that if you're going to go ahead and produce another one, then it's going to cost you more time, and we're going to go through this whole process again.
Now of course if pains me to lay off high skilled workers. However, wouldn't it be better if they were picked up by a Q5 hospital company?
The USA has way too many DS companies out there, and not enough companies to produce hospitals. There is a large demand for hospitals, especially Q5. On the other side, people are beginning to see how Defensive systems do not make as much sense in this game and are not cost effective. So lets get more hospital workers and go with the economic flow, even if some DS companies have to be shut down.
It's basically a no-win scenario. People want defense systems, hospitals, guns, and war, but they don't want to pay high taxes.
It sounds like it would be in the best interests of the country to move towards nationalizing (purchasing) a few Q5 defense companies in to congressionally regulated organizations so that in the event of war and/or a rules change production would be available.
Honestly, I wouldn't rank their purchase right now as top priorities for our fragile reserves, but to kill off the industry altogether would be very unwise.
Its going to be tough to figure out. Taxung heavily keeps your people poor. Which means they cant handle things without the government. On the other hand congress has to have its income. I want to know how Indo, Iran and such got all thos rich players because thats the other way that we havent looked at. Instead of trying to create a massive government bank we could try and create rich citizens. Not sure how you would go about doing it but Ive never even seen anyone look at it from this angle, or from the government power side. My just trying to find some kind of middle ground as I would be p*ssed if a company I owned and cost me 200+ gold collapsed.
Nationalizing the industry is an option. Most people reflexively cry 'Socialism' and want nothing to do with it.
Look, the only way to deal with idiot's is to show them how badly you're going to screw them over. Sell the DS to PEACE.
Ow. I feel bad for the workers. Good thing I'm a manufacturer!
This looks like it could be a problem.
On one hand this is a problem and a big one. On the other hand its not such a big problem.
I feel bad for those employees and for you also scrab, Im sure you have put a lot of time and resorces into this company and what ever your reasons are for doing that the fact is that your company does represent a national resorce. Defence systems even though they may not be averly cost affective right now have no real impact on our economy other then the fact that they provide a customer for our wood industry and obviously a rather large customer at that. they also provide up to 20 jobs each and I would hope that those jobs are going to the highest skilled people in the land if for no other reason then it is these types of companies that can pay them for there skill.
Im not one for government spending however, I do beleive that these defence systems represent a good buy for us as a nation simply because they are already a part of our nation and they do have a use. Along with this they have no other direct impact on our economy other then what I have just mentioned.
Hospitals do have a more direct impact on the economy. If every state has a Q5 then that will hurt not only the ticket industry but the oil industry. How many people are we talking about putting out of jobs here now? How many tax dollars will we loss from that?
I say buy the damn defence system and if we are going to nationalize any industry it should be hospitals. Health care should be a government run program simply because of the impact it has not only on health but what it can do to our economy if its let get out of hand. We should however only buy Q5 defence systems.
sorry about the spelling I was in a hurry.
hospitals make a difference, defence points can be bought with higher level weapons and the price for the amount of points gained vs. the number of higher quality weapons it would take are not pretty for a DS. Preferably BOTH would happen high lvl weapons and DS. But we can't do that right now and the DS market is too big...
Sorry Scrab.
I'd like to take the time, as a relatively new citizen, to say that this is a rather disturbing thing to behold in this game. I joined in part because of the opportunity to manage companies that could focus in many things, construction being one of them, and if the entire industry would collapse, what would happen to the future players who would want to expand their businesses? I think that the government should subsidize these construction industries so that the entire industry and its workers can get jobs, and therefore put more money back into the cash stream so that they themselves and others who work in Land or Manufacturing, can enjoy homes themselves.
Great article. Very good points.
why do we need more then one hospital? Are we really going to lose florida?
@mindflay -
"Defence systems...have no real impact on our economy other then the fact that they provide a customer for our wood industry and obviously a rather large customer at that. they also provide up to 20 jobs each and I would hope that those jobs are going to the highest skilled people in the land..."
LOL 😮)
Israel is independent! So what next...?
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/we-ve-won-the-first-battle-now-let-s-win-the-peace--738013/1/20
Read and vote!
FK
@ Scrabman: Thank you for posting this article. I now know not to vote for you.
@ Hokiehigh: It makes me wonder why I had to read through practically 1000 replies before I got to the sensible one. Florida is the only hospital we'll ever need unless we lose that state. The only people that benefit from hospitals in any other US region are the congressmen that live there and newbies who want to fight in wars without moving tickets.
If my math is right, spending $20k is the equivalent to 320 gold, which is the equivalent to buying 4 tanks with 80 gold who can collectively do over 40,000 damage in a fight. Granted, that is only one time and not every time. But, how much defense does a DS provide? Is it 40,000 per battle?
great article. with the collapse of the construction industry, I'll have no choice but to move on. Congress and the EC(whoever they are?) needs to find a middle ground and understand that this will implicate Economic growth for the entire country.
voted
i believe the time to kick some governmental asses it`s near.
(/ vault 101 - q5 houses)