[MoF] Economic Report
5n4keyes
Hello eIreland,
For the last few days ive been working on the following article, much of it is what people have been discussing on our forums, in articles, and also shouts.
Now, it was ment to be something rather simple, infact the first article I drafted was only about 5 paragraphs long, but, it just didnt seam enough. Thus, welcome to the eIreland Economic Report March.
Note: Before we begin, We will be comparing 4 countries in this article, Ireland, Canada, USA, and China. Canada and USA because they boarder us and are regarded as our allies, and China, because a fair amount of food and weapons are imported from here.
The State Of The Economy
Ireland is one of the lowest producing countrys of the eWorld, we get alot less boosters compared to the rest of the world. By boosters we mean resourced, most peices of land have something, such as cattle, grain, these have a boost effect on the productivity of your work.
Other countrys in the eWorld are getting some major boosters, which means for these countrys, they produce alot more per day. If we take grain, this means people are able to produce alot more grain per day, so can in theory make alot more profit per day, this also means they can produce more to export.
Now, with Ireland, we had alot of countrys importing to Ireland, China was one of the huge importers of Food, as you will see later in this article, China is able to produce massive amounts of food, at a very low cost, and were able to sell in Ireland under the cost of Irish producers.
Shiney Things!
OK, in an ideal world, the economy would be very simple, assuming people didnt compete, didnt fight, and always worked at max productivity, obviously we know this isnt always true, but hey.
Productivity
The above shows you what each level of skill produces in each country, note that the friend bonus isnt applied as this is impossible to track, however, the larger a country, the more likely it is that a player will have friends they have invited, thus they will get a 10% or 20% boost.
From the above, regardless of what bonus your country gets, you produce 10% more than the level before, so effectively you are producing what should be 10% more money for the company you work. This stands to reason, that wages should in an ideal world, go up by 10% per skill level, so as an example, if Skill 1 god 10IEP, then Skill 2 should get 11IEP, Skill 3 12.1IEP, etc.
Is this the case?
Wages
In short, No.
The Problem
OK, by looking at the above you can easily see some of the problems Ireland faces, firstly by looking at productivity you can see that we arent as good at producing products as say, China.
The next problem, is that your biggest boosted product, defines the market. By this I mean that whatever product you are getting the most boost, is where usually the higher wages exist, this pushes the wages up in all other areas. So this should mean that any companys with a low booster run at a higher loss, in theory.
Wages, are a huge problem, we for some reason in Ireland, majorly over pay our lower skilled citizens, this in turn rises first the raw materials costs, and secondly the end product costs. Now, because of this, our companies then want to sell the end products, but because of the competitive nature of the market, prices get lower and lower, so that there products sell, which means less and less profit, or even a loss.
Imports, these were a major issue, tho we have temp resolved this for the moment with 99% tax, basically people would dump products on the market, mostly people from China for Food, as you can see from wages and productivity, they can produce alot of food, alot cheaper than Ireland, so can easily undercut our companies.
And finally, one of the biggest problems, is people like myself, who we shall refer to as 'Lazy GMs', these are people who dont employ anyone, or work for a friend and a friend works for them, basically employing nobody. Whilst ill admit, these people need to be shot (yep even me), there is virtually no cost in running a company, other than the 10g and 1000IEP setup costs. This means... Lazy GMs can majorly undercut the market because there are no costs involved in producing the products.
The Solution
In short, there is no solution. Because if every country followed what comes next, we will just go around in circles, and our market will be dead. Ultimatly there needs to be a major fix by the admins.
That being said, we can do some things to effectivly survive and hopefully ride out this wave.
First and most importantly, wages, wages need to be restructured, Skill 1 wages need to come down, and wages need to adopt the 10% more than the skill below wage structure. Wages are the most important thing to change, changing this and bringing down wages will mean that the end products can compete better on the market.
Product prices, products need to be sold correctly, remember everything now is based off of the price of Q5, if Q5 is 5IEP, then Q4 will be 4IEP, Q3 will be 3IEP, etc, if Q5 products are dropping in price, then other Q products need to drop also.
Finally, Respect, as a GM you control the market, you set the wages, you set the product prices, now is not a good time to have a wage war, or a product price war, so respect each other, respect the market.
Conclusion
The market can only be fixed by the GMs, its upto you guys to lower wages, and sort your companies out. We are going to drop import tax within the next week, to what level will be discussed with the new Dail members.
Realistically, Ireland needs better boosters, which isnt likely to happen any time soon, Thus we really either need to invade and hold a bunch of regions, or be invaded. Or, we need to have one heck of a baby boom, having each worker with 2 friends playing is a massive boost of 20% to productivity.
Ultimately, we need to sit and wait on Plato, and hope that at some stage he does something that fixes things, and tbh the only real fix would be to lower productivity, and remove boosters.
Edit: For those who want to see how there company stands in the eWorld, theres a nice little site that works some stuff out for you, Clicky
Comments
Good article, 5n4eyes. 😉
Down with this sort of thing.
Snake is a good guy.
voted
voted
I'm a Lazy GM also... But I'll start hiring again ...
i was working on a article which highlighted basically the same main idea but what i might do now is link your one and throw in the small bit extra i have been working on . is that alright with you ?
Sure 🙂
Nice job, good to see people starting to think about the economy, I do (mostly) agree with your analysis, apart from the conclusion which I completely disagree with.
Stranger = Igor ? 😛
No, I'm definitely not Igor, whoever he is.
.link Igor Thunderbrow
Everyones favourite cappie
Never heard of him. Anyway, checking his account I found out that I had registered my char long before he went inactive. Shall I take your question as a cheating accusation then?
Btw, I'm not a 'cappy'. I do enjoy playing the money game, but I've always spent my play money on community goals. Ask the free Swiss.
Heh, back in the day, there was a guy who would be totally against me, I would put out articles, and he would agree 100% and disagree 100%, it was quite comical. So now every time I get a rival, its always Igor?
Just a running joke 😛
I'm not your rival, I'm not even 'against you' - see, my first words were actually about acknowledging your effort. I simply mean that you got the situation right, but drew the wrong conclusion. And that is because you look at the employment/productivity issue only, instead at looking at the economic module as a whole. There are solutions for improving the competitiveness of the Irish economy, it's only that they are more complex than pulling the wage-, price-, and tax-sliders here and there.
Btw, you are perfectly right in urging GMs to cut wages and to start adjusting to the realities of the now integrated global market.
Tax changes arent going to have the effect thats needed to fix our market, yes it does need to be looked at, and yes it would have an effect, but the biggest impacting solution.
To be fair, there is no WIN button, and no simple solution, its the game that is the problem, not the players, thats not to say the players arent adding to the problem.
Saying 'the game is the problem' is waving the white flag. Yes indeed, the game is poorly crafted in several aspects and admins at times appear to lack an insight to how their own game actually works. But the economic module itself is merely a framework, an environment in which players and countries compete. The issue is to get more out of it than others. Replace 'problem' with 'challenge' and your point of view will turn around.
How on Earth would 99% import tax resolve "the problem"? Import tax suppose to cover the difference between cheaper overseas prices and your home market prices. It suppose to bring that difference to your treassury. You also can use income tax and VAT to make irish producers more competative. So in perfect world importers fill up your treasury and irishmen arn`t paying any tax at all. Simples! 😉
By setting your import tax on basic need goods to 99% you are risking to leave Ireland with no supply when great battle time will come.
Best wishes. Russian ambasador