THE ARGUMENT AGAINST CALCULATORS
READ THE ENTIRE POST BEFORE REPLYING
What's wrong with calculators?
NS Calculators are webpages that take your NS feed -- the information stored on your NS page, like tax and population, and format it into purportedly usable numbers. Since the dawn of time people have come on NS and said that they have a gigantic military budget because the calculator said so. They claim gigantic economies and prosperous populations because the calculator says so. I intend to prove here that the calculator has always been a nefarious influence on NS RP and that there are key flaws with using calculators in many instances. Firstly, we should look at the NS tax rate, as this is the single most important reason why calculators cannot function.
NS has, built into it, the concept of a "income 100% tax rate", hereby referred to as the the 100% ITR. Many nations have a 100% ITR and the reason for this is simple: they get NS issues which offer on the one hand, not doing anything against a problem -- it might be undereducation, bad roads, whatever -- and the other option which is doing something. NS issues however, although they may say more spending is required, rarely say more taxation will be required. Nations choose the options of "improving" something and then receive an IRT increase. At some point or another, they will have 100% IRT.
What this means is that according to the calculators, the Government collects in income tax 100% of the economy. All private wealth is redistributed. What it means in the context of "the game" though, is that you have a higher budget, and in II, especially important is the military budget, than other players. For the purpose of this calculator we will use The World Soviet Party (referred to as TWSP, although he goes by the ingame name of Osthafen) to demonstrate the problems of a 100% IRT, why it is infeasible, and why, ultimately, using it is a godmod.
http://nseconomy.thirdgeek.com/nseconom ... viet+Party
Notice that in the top right corner, there is a figure called "Consumption." This is Private Consumption. It is the amount that is consumed that is not consumed by the Government. In economics, Consumption -- i.e., Private Spending is seperated from Government Spending by being labelled C and Government Spending being labelled G. And with a 100% IRT, the Consumption rate of the economy is 0$. There is literally no private spending whatsoever. Let me get the magnitude of this across to you:
If I go to the shops to buy a packet of cigarettes, that is consumption. If I buy a book off amazon, that is consumption. If I buy a car from a dealership, that is consumption. When you, as a private citizen, buy anything, you are adding to the nominal value of national consumption, i.e. the amount of money spent by consumers every year. So we've established that in 100% IRT economies, nothing is spent by private citizens.
This means that everything is spent by the Government. G is 100% and C is 0%.
For a real life, example, in the United States, G is 36.7% and C is 63.3%.
Notice how the budget in the bottom left corner always adds up to 100. It never exceeds that amount but more importantly it's never lower than that amount (unless everything is 0 because G is 0. Even if G is 1%, the percentages of the budget still total to 100%.) So in TWSP's case, 12% of the entire spending of the economy is spent on law and order. Now, this might seem fine to many people. But let's think a little harder.
No capital spending in a 100% IRT economy
The NS Feed's Government budgets, unlike real states where G was enormously high (although never 100%), do not include spending on capital goods and consumer goods. This means that if you have a G of 100%, the Government is not spending any money on the production of capital or consumer goods. Look around you. Everything in your house is either a consumer or a capital good. Money has been spent on its production, i.e. costs of labour, raw materials, R&D, so on and so forth. Let's say you live in a country with 50% IRT. Look around you and that is what you have. Then let's say you live in a country with 100% IRT. Everything disappears.
There are no factories because nothing is spent on their production. There is no furniture, electricity, computers, books, cars. Nothing is spent on their production. In a 100% IRT they do not exist.
But! You cry. But, but, I am spending alot on social welfare!
So? You're giving people money, sure, but what can they buy? Nothing is being produced. They are totally reliant on foreign goods. But nothing is being spent on capital goods in docks, in airports, and in railways. Even if foreign goods arrive, they could not be unloaded.
But I have great hospitals!
No you don't. A hospital bed is a capital good. You aren't spending any money on producing capital goods. You have no hospital beds.
Aha! But I have commerce!
TWSP spends 1% on Commerce. Even if we were to accept that this includes capital and consumer goods, 1% is a tiny amount. Yet, it doesn't! Commerce is the sale of goods, or in this case the money received from the sale of goods. It isn't the production of goods.
Now, the argument against this is that although what I say might be true, you still have monetary values beside your percentages. You still have $ of imports and you still have $ of spending. This doesn't really matter. These are nominal values. I can print off $500 trillion Fantasty Dollars from my printer and claim I'm rich. I'm not. Money was created by humans to make barter easier. It doesn't have an intrinsic value. Unless it's backed by something, it has no intrinsic value. And you can't back your currency with something: you aren't producing any consumer or capital goods to back it with! And even if I was wrong there, all it proves is that the calculators are contradictory to realistic, real world economic theories.
To sum up, with a 100% IRT the calculators report that you have 0% consumption. This means no capital goods or consumer goods. It means you are living in the dark ages. Your people must personally labour to create things. You do not have a modern economy. Even East Germany, according to this source, had private consumption.
Now, this doesn't mean calculators are useless if you have a realistic tax rate. You should look though, at Government spending and Private spending %s in real life countries to see how realistic a calculator is. 30% IRT? Go ahead and use a calculator, by all means. 90% IRT? Don't even bother...
Thus ends my argument against calculators.
What's the alternative?
Of course, I'm not saying that TWSP should RP his people living in the dark ages! Quite the opposite! What he should do is look at a real life country and look at their Gross Domestic Product Per Capita. Here is not the place for me to argue my political beliefs and say what level of GDP/PC nations should and shouldn't have. But the way to find your realistic Gross Domestic Product is as follows:
- Find a realistic Gross Domestic Product Per Capita.
- Multiply by your population.
Then to find out how much your Government is spending, take a % of the end result, which is your GDP. Then simply take % out of that for Military, Education, etc. Anyone with a basic education in Mathematics ought to do this. I learnt in the British education system how to do multiplication and percentages before I was 12, prolly even earlier, can't remember that far back tbh.
Questions:
Can't I just say the Government takes 100% and gives some back at the end?
Sorry, no, because Consumption is still $ and Capital/Consumer spending, and therefore production is still $.
Can't I just say that production is factored into Military, Social Welfare, etc etc
Yeah, sure, you can purposefully misread "Social Welfare" to mean "Building coal mines" if I can purposefully misread my population to be 400 billion...
What do you think?
Are all calculators bad?
If you have to use one, use Sunset's.
Why should I trust you?
Well, unless you can logically refute what I'm saying... doesn't matter if you can trust me or not. If the most dishonest person says to me "1+1 is 2" or "America has a border with Canada" it doesn't matter how trustworthy they are, their statements are still correct.
But aren't calculators required otherwise you're godmodding?
No sticky or RP authority has ever said that.
But I'm a Socialist and I say...
This isn't an economics argument against Socialism. You would know that if you actually read my post. This is a logical argument. When you have a 100% IRT, the calculator calculates 0% private consumption. The only money being spent is being spent by the Government. Then we look at the Government categories and see that actually nothing is spent on production.
The government just wants to break a Guinness World Record.