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Bill: OOC: Discussion on economics and the Solentian budget and tax system
Details
Submitted by[?]: Conservative Party of Solentia
Status[?]: passed
Votes: This bill is a resolution. It requires more yes votes than no votes. This bill will not pass any sooner than the deadline.
Voting deadline: January 2952
Description[?]:
| Well. This is going to be a fun debate, I can already tell. Everyone, please fasten your seat belts, grab a drink, get comfy! *click* Good. Hang on and enjoy the ride. ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ With the recent discussion about budgets, I began to hold the uninformed opinion that Solentia's budget was too small relative to its budget to fit the way that I and most of Solentia's parties (in my interpretation) roleplay within them. I believe that the majority of players tend to RP Solentia as having more government involvement in everyday life than the United States, which I used as my benchmark. For the sake of this bill, I'm assuming 1 SOL = $1, I know it doesn't equal that because America doesn't exist, but we tend to compare ourselves to America, the FIP has done that explicitly at least once in the past, a pseudo-America if you will. Now, some facts about Solentia's economy as given http://classic.particracy.net/budget.php?nationid=42 (all as of June 2950) : ========== ========== ========== GDP: 17,863,389,029,284 SOL Budget: 1,877,640,283,775 SOL Proposed Olvan Budget: 1,755,360,000,000 SOL Budget as percentage of GDP: 10.511% ----- 1,877,640,283,775 / 17,863,389,029,284 * 100 = 10.511 Proposed Olvan Budget as percentage of GDP: 9.827% ----- 1,755,360,000,000 / 17,863,389,029,284 * 100 = 9.827 REAL LIFE US GDP: $14,624,000,000,000 REAL LIFE US BUDGET: $3,721,000,000,000 Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2011/assets/tables.pdf page 146 REAL LIFE US BUDGET AS PERCENTAGE OF GDP: 25.4% (from above source) ========== ========== ========== As you can see, Solentia's budget is less than half of America's as a percentage of GDP. This presents a significant problem when we are attempting, like we have been recently, to produce budgets that some of us feel are realistic. My feeling is that NONE of our budgets will be realistic until we address the root problem. The root problem is this: Our government does not have enough funds to be realistically RPed as the large government state that we RP it as. We need to do one of two things: 1). Agree to begin RPing Solentia as a far less government involved state, I really don't know how to do this, and support option 2. 2). Hike taxes. ICly I can't support it, but in the name of realism it's absolutely necessary. We have far too small a government budget. According to http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_bud_exp_pergdp-economy-budget-expenditures-per-gdp , our CURRENT budget as a percentage of GDP would be the RL world's smallest, not even to mention the new Olvan budget. The RL average according to that site is approximately 33% of GDP. I think we should shoot for around there. I know the US' is only 25%, but the US has a relatively small budget compared to some of the world's nations, and I said before that we tend to RP as a bigger government than the US. So what would 33% of Solentia's GDP look like for a budget? 17,863,389,029,284 / 3 = 5,954,463,009,761 SOL. For the sake of cleanliness, round this to 6,000,000,000,000 SOL. That's 33.588%, about tripling the current budget. I would never support it ICly, but let's be realistic. Now this will mean that taxes need to be hiked. I'll leave that open to suggestion cause that'll be the really political part of this debate. Once we've got the funds through taxes, we need to work on doling them out realistically which is another thing entirely, but let's do this one thing at a time. tl;dr version: We seriously need to address the unrealistic budget that we've been running forever. Propose tripling it for the sake of bringing it near to RL average as percentage of GDP. PLEASE COMMENT! |
Proposals
Debate
These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:
| Date | 00:02:49, June 08, 2010 CET | From | Conservative Party of Solentia | To | Debating the OOC: Discussion on economics and the Solentian budget and tax system |
| Message | Little debate bump for those of you who subscribe to all debates in our nation ;) |
| Date | 00:03:31, June 08, 2010 CET | From | Utilitarian Party of Solentia | To | Debating the OOC: Discussion on economics and the Solentian budget and tax system |
| Message | Well, I do not find that such a big problem. I have also been looking on the subject and have good reason to believe that as a RP Nation, Solentia has actually no problems concerning its budget: Solentia is the 19th most populated country, the 36th biggest country and I have always believed Solentia is a sort of elitist liberal country with no big poverty problems. Somewhere did I read Solentia's economy is the 3rd biggest in all of Terra according to its GDP. So, if we have so few people, you could argue that Solentia is based on third sector economic activities with strong investment in technology. The tax bracket is low and it attracts a lot of foreign investment already; it is politically stable and considered by many a neutral country... think of Switzerland; that is pretty much my idea of Solentia. However, we have recently managed to eliminate many aspects of the welfare-State, so for the moment, the taxes are just find. However, if you do want to reintroduce welfare, you must hike taxes. I suggest you calculate how many SOL per person; the GDP per capita. A rich country with not so much government intervention, low taxes and with economy based in research, technology and services could easily have a budget to GDP relation of 10%. Consider also that many things are managed directly form the national government and that regions do not need so much budget; Solentia is highly centralized. For comparison: Country budget/ GDP India 20% USA 26% Australia 30% ----- These 3 countries give lots of resources to its states.---- Uruguay 38% New Zealand 39% Canada 42% Germany 51% France 52% Norway 56% Belgium 58% But once again consider, that all this country give a high amount of welfare. Their income tax is above 50%, Solentia's highest is 32% So, according to the agenda of my party the amount is enough for the current situation. The re-installation of the welfare-State will nevertheless demand higher taxes which, needless to say, I will IC not support. |
| Date | 00:13:04, June 08, 2010 CET | From | Conservative Party of Solentia | To | Debating the OOC: Discussion on economics and the Solentian budget and tax system |
| Message | I don't know your source on those percentages, but they appear close to mine in most cases, so I'll use mine for this: Switzerland, which you use as an example, has approx. 37%. NO country has 10%, the lowest is 13%, Guatemala, Taiwan, and Turkmenistan. These are all from http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_bud_exp_pergdp-economy-budget-expenditures-per-gdp, the same place I used in my post. And I'm not even trying to compare to any specific country, it's just that the average is more than three times higher than ours, so there must be unrealism somewhere in our system, and I don't see any real life examples of a country where it's 10%, and I DEFINITELY don't see a country as successful as we RP Solentia anywhere near 10%. |
| Date | 10:40:41, June 10, 2010 CET | From | Utilitarian Party of Solentia | To | Debating the OOC: Discussion on economics and the Solentian budget and tax system |
| Message | Hey, take a look at the proposal I told you yesterday about. The system is eventually dynamic and we can consistently alter the budget if situations need it. |
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Voting
| Vote | Seats | ||||
| yes |
Total Seats: 62 | ||||
| no | Total Seats: 0 | ||||
| abstain | Total Seats: 35 |
| Random fact: Any RP law granting extraordinary "emergency powers" or dictator-like powers to a government must be passed by at least a 2/3rds majority, but (like all RP laws) may always be overturned by a simple majority vote of the legislature. |
| Random quote: "Those who expect to reap the blessing of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it. " - Thomas Paine |