Wage Study Sim-Citizen and Economic Data

I thought it would be interesting to look at data that most presidents often don't consider and many might not know exists. I got the idea when a player posted how he believed the LU economy worked better than other worlds. I think there are a few reasons for it and started to collect data.

I will share some data on wages here. Players may not know that increased wages actually does increase consumer demand for goods. Citizens with more money spend more on cars, computers, services, construction, and so on. That said, here is data I collected on two countries of similar size with different wage policies for workers.

Country 1

Population 257,897,629
Total Workforce: 119,177,952
Employed Workers: 113,381,757
Unemployed Workers: 5,396,195

Income
431,030.14M SC$ Wages
33,426.16M SC$ Social Security
35,982.00M SC$ Investment Fund Payout
67.00M SC$ Pensions
------------
500,505.30M SC$ Total Income

Spending
8,579.31M SC$ Housing (Construction)
198,300.10M SC$ Goods and Services
104,790.89M SC$ Taxes
28,882.56M SC$ Health Contributions
12,498.90M SC$ Education Contributions
10,369.00M SC$ Investments
------------
363,420.76M SC$ Total Spending

Misc Data
Total Home Value: 22,980.27B SC$
Average House Value: 249,111


Country 2


Population 262,334,674
Total Workforce: 124,302,685
Employed Workers: 115,819,462
Unemployed Workers: 8,483,223

Income
290,514.17M SC$ Wages
31,845.80M SC$ Social Security
59,981.00M SC$ Investment Fund Payout
67.00M SC$ Pensions
------------
382,407.97M SC$ Total Income

Spending
8,029.53M SC$ Housing (Construction)
134,551.37M SC$ Goods and Services
60,498.43M SC$ Taxes
19,251.04M SC$ Health Contributions
7,784.62M SC$ Education Contributions
4,415.00M SC$ Investments
------------
234,489.99M SC$ Total Spending

Misc Data
Total Home Value: 13,172.64B SC$
Average House Value: 140,597


I hope this stimulates some discussion with regards to wages and effect on your country and LU in general.

I will start. I will pick out a few things I see here.

Country 1: 198,300.10M SC$ Goods and Services Spending
Country 2: 134,551.37M SC$ Goods and Services Spending


Both of these countries are large and the citizens demand a lot of consumer goods. To try to get my mind around this I think of the economy of a c3. A c3 generally has around 16 corps and production of about $30-40B. It takes the entire output of about 4 c3s to produce the goods and services that citizens demand in country 2. For country 1, it takes the entire output of about 6. This means that country 1 requires the output of nearly 2 more c3s.

Why is this significant? This is where it gets interesting. The additional wages country 1 paid not only creates a demand for the additional c3s but all those corps, around 30, need stuff too. This means other corps are needed to produce things like oil, industrial equipment, building materials, and others that the population does not purchase directly but creates demand for as they pay for things like gasoline and construction. This effect balloons through the LU economy.

What do you guys think?

Fascinating

yes Toecutter, fascinating

Aries, i've been aware of this for quite some time, not specifically the number crunching part, i play more "by ear," than spread sheets.

in country number 2, currently state and government salaries are 160. i've found that 100 for salaries, works the best for me, but i've interested in higher peaceful game levels, so i'll flirt with higher sal levels to see how they work.

most the time, once i start going over 200, i start seeing certain changes that aren't worth the benefits, that works for me.

here is the significant reason of the difference of wages.

Total Country cost
Candinnalm (country #1)
Total Income and Cost 525,610.16M SC$ Total Income 228,086.08M SC$ Total cost
Profit / Shortage 297,524.08M SC$

Dream Land (country #2)
Total Income and Cost 465,117.76M SC$ Total Income 166,187.66M SC$ Total cost
Profit / Shortage 298,930.10M SC$

so you can see, that the higher salaries, raise the running costs. but does not necessarily increase income. if you consider that salaries, are only one of a variety of factors involved country welfare, and corp production, you realize that if you can decrease cost more than revenue, it means increased profit.

thats how things work in real life.

one other thing to point out with the bottom line profits, my country is far from max profit potential, i'm going through a long term restructuring/experiment. before i began it, i was making 1.3-1.5B per million population. as my indexes return to the ideal range, my country profit continues to rapidly incline.

I expect to reach 350-400B range of monthly profit. Given my current size. How ever, the growth of the last few days, given than i've still got a large chunk to go, it might turn out even better

something else that i'll offer you for study, playing by ear, its not something i've been able to nail down, but seems true.

not to drag it out, but "seems true," i'm like 75% sure it works this way. and 100% sure i'm part right

building certain corporations, effect the country supplies, some things seem to decrease demand of specific items.

for instance, the more Interceptors a country has, also increases the demand for aircraft fuel. and is "seems," that part of that demand can be met by build Air Transport Corps, which use Aircraft fuel as a raw material. it "seems," that much of the demand for AF that I-wings create, can be funneled through the normal costs of an AT corp?

perhaps you can narrow this down. i've seen it seem to work that way, but been inconsistent enough to cause me to doubt.

and a second part of that, certain corps create demand. that is, a HTS is more likely to purchase luxury goods, than a LLW. if you build corps, like space corps, that use huge amounts of HTS, it seems that it increases the demand for high end country supplies. again, with out access to an exotic spread sheet program, i'm unable to really narrow that down.

their is another potential factor involved in population consumption.

Country 1, Consumption Quality Index 212.13
Country 2, Consumption Quality Index 309.53

The quality of goods in my country are 50% higher. its been mentioned, that increased quality decreases amount used, thats been implimented with weapons and ammo, HQ weapons increase monthly ammo usage, but HQ ammo decreases the monthly usage.

for pop and government supplies, i'm not sure that has been implemented. but its another factor to check out. that is, if my HQ supplies, end up canceling themselves out, while increasing country welfare?

and before i'm out the door. a parallel point, in the documentation, and in every department you'll see something like this

Number of Hospitals needed for good quality

thats number needed for a 100 index. it says every where, 100 is "good,"

Orbiter, if you have the skill that I believe you to have, you are better then this. There is much more behind the numbers of the entire government expenses of a nation than linking directly to wages. If you have additional data to share that shows that somehow the wages I pay, and not that I currently have 5 times as many soldiers deployed as you, as the reason to be my expenses are higher, please present the data beyond posting the entirety of government expenses.

Additionally, the merits of additional government costs of higher education, health, and transportation indexes must be weighed against the benefits to welfare index affecting overall economic production. Again, this is an analysis we can have but we must understand that we are simply not looking at wages relative to overall government costs and reaching conclusions without additional considerations.

As far as certain corporations creating their own additional demand for products. I have seen no data to this effect.

Please keep this thread on topic as to the effect of wages to the overall economy on LU and I will also debate wages as to the benefit of a country. You obviously have left out corporate wages in your analysis as these have no effect on government costs. A more valid discussion could possibly be found here to see if the additional corporate wages benefit the country in addition to the benefits I described to the economic health of LU I described in the original few posts.

as far as wages for the economic health of the planet? mehh,

who cares? and i can safely say this, in this regard. my low wages, are clearly not holding you back, or any one else. so what does it matter to you, if i run low or high wages, other than another pointless pissing contest?

as far as the rest of it goes, i saw the possibility of another aries ego trip, with the theme of "which country is better for LU," but i had hoped for a discussion, rather than another series of hurdles to make any point at all.

i really don't have time for this, what i do works, and works well, what you do, works, and works well.

Who cares? You, like two days ago when you were anguishing that an argument about returning the war world to be somewhat war-like would damage its economy. You then compared it to how well the economy works on LU saying you thought it was because there just happened to be more players on it.

I challenge that. There is more to it. If you wish to drop out of the discussion that is fine but I will have the discussion and educate willing players how the economy really works on LU. Your diverting a very valid analysis on how wages create demand for goods and contribute to the economy of LU to an unrelated look at government costs was just lazy.

and i see it as lazy to just casually dismiss what i said. Its based on years of experience.

i think that you need to reread what i actually wrote about the FB thing. i said i see both points, and offered an opposing view, and left it at that.

so here you are, offering a very narrow concept.

I tried to have a discussion, i offered my experience of low wages, that most the time, my countries are considerably more profitable, do to lower costs. its worked this way for me, before you where playing.

the actual point to this discussion, isn't really about wages, or their effect on LU, now is it?

if was, then the benefits/flaws of the opposite way, would also be discussed

I asked to present evidence that the entirety of government costs is related to wages. There is no dismissal. If you access the finance page there is a breakdown of costs under "profit & loss" and "spending". There you will see things like:

Under Profit and Loss:

Country 1

Total Defense Cost 31,748.14M SC$

Country 2

Total Defense Cost 8,784.62M SC$

and

Under "Spending"

Country 1

Airforce Maintenance 7,517.56M SC$ 300
Def Weapons Maintenance 5,421.77M SC$ 198
Aircraft Fuel 1,714.88M SC$ 197
Fighter Missiles 7,840.49M SC$ 376
Precision Bombs 10,210.53M SC$ 380


Country 2


Airforce Maintenance 125.25M SC$ 315
Def Weapons Maintenance 3,658.69M SC$ 232
Aircraft Fuel 3.87M SC$ 325
Fighter Missiles � � 0.0
Precision Bombs � � 0.0


Then you would think, hmmmm is this related to salaries? You would look further:

You would see

Country 1

Officers and Soldiers 1,161,142

Country 2

Officers and Soldiers 213,558


You would then have to demonstrate if wages is the key difference here or if that country 1 just happens to have a pile of 20 divisions, 145 air units, 30 mobile units, and a few other things out there.

We can talk profitability too but we would be looking at their effect on corporate profitability and ultimately their contributions to country income but you have not done this. Right now, you have to explain why wages have anything to do with Country 1 government costs including more more airforce maintenance, fighter missiles, and aircraft fuel. The lack of this additional data to your "costs" argument is indeed lazy.

Getting off topic, the answer is, yes, this was actually a thread about wages and their effect on LU economy. That said, looking at country income we see this.

Profit & Loss - Year To Date

Country 1

Income 4,139,944.98M SC$
Costs 1,814,581.19M SC$
(Profit) 2,325,360.00M SC$

Country 2

Income 3,513,486.03M SC$
Costs 1,316,720.23M SC$
(Profit) 2,196,770.00M SC$


This is despite the aforementioned disparity in deployed military. You have vastly more profits? I don't think so.

Please bear with me on my rant below, i'm tired and this is something of a sloppy 'write as I think' piece. I thus refuse to be held accountable for what is essentially theoretical, and almost certainly nonsense. I doubt anyone will read it anyway ;)

I don't really see what this topic has to do with LU having a 'better functioning economy' (whatever that means) than any of the other worlds, unless someone provides compelling data that LU players pay higher (or different) wages on average than their alien counterparts, alongside noticeable differences in how the wider economy functions?

That said, the question at its heart is an interesting one. It's naive to think that increased consumer spending is in itself a bonus to the overall economy, bearing in mind the economy is to some extent 'sealed' and what you commit in higher wages could easily have been returned to 'the machine' in a different manner. We are thus essentially [or ought to be] debating which is the most efficient game mechanism for moving capital through systems and into the 'right' areas. A 'proof' would occur if it were found that 1SC$ in additional human-paid salary corresponds to a greater volume of SC$ being returned to the economy - through worker's consumer spending - than the alternatives. This is in itself problematic because the 'net benefit' in the first link in the chain may not correspond fully with further links of the chain e.g. buying a weapon for 1SC$ may seem to yield a lower 'net benefit' than spending 1SC$ on higher wages, but the weapons company that received that SC$ (or its suppliers/hosting tax country) may use it more efficiently than the luxury goods corp benefiting from a boom in consumerism. That is to say, how far along the economic trail do we analyse?

Either way, I do not think the data that has been presented so far is anywhere near complete enough to begin testing high wages vs other methods of moving capital such as direct product purchase, upgrades, creating new corporations, investments, loans etc etc. Not to mention that the cart has been placed firmly in front of the horse when players are discussing country output without even considering the wider economic model. I have neither the will nor time to commence such a study. In relation to the original stipulation, however, I have listed some musings/stats below which might go some way to disproving the idea that the LU economy 'runs well because of high presidential spending.' This has nothing to do with the more interesting inquiry i mentioned before. Commence rant 2:

Bearing in mind the economy features both human and non-human entities of production it seems we should actually begin by asking: Is it possible for human player salary levels to noticeably affect the overall world economy at all, and if so, to what extent and what barriers are there? Some numbers:

C3 Salaries: Gov workers: 200. Corporate workers: 297.
PA10 Salaries: Gov workers: 238. Corporate workers: 270.(PA10 represents an average of the top 10 presidents on LU. Imperfect calculation, but time-efficient).

So it would seem that players generally pay more to their government workers than the AI, yet comparatively less to their corporate minions. Next:

There are 1,142 human countries on LU, with an average population of 28.45M. There are 2,326 AI controlled countries, with an average population of 11.2M. Human players thus control 55.5% of the population, resulting in a comparative weighting of 1.25 per human salary "point."

Therefore:

Government Wages: Human salary levels are an adjusted 95 salary points above AI level, on average.
Corporate State Wages: Human salary levels are an adjusted 33.75 salary points below AI level, on average.

You may have noticed that this is where things become rather sketchy, if they have not already been considerably so to this point. We are not factoring in CEO corps which feature in both human and AI countries, and exist in an a ratio to country owned state corps that people such as me (who lack time) could never calculate. This is where one would have to come up with some 'best approximation' formula that describes the number of CEO corp employees to state run corp employees and gov worker across LU, and apply it to the above figures to redact down the comparative spending figures. Once that is complete, a basic model of corp salary structures should give rough numbers on how much net difference there is between total consumer spending as initiated by AI or human players.

I do not have that data or the patience to gain it, but I would hazard a guess that due to the low average figure of presidential corporate wages as compared to the AI - along with 'inertial' resistance to overall movement due to the high number of workers in CEO corporations - the overall consumer spend of gov/corp employees in human controlled countries is well counterbalanced by that of the higher paid C3 workers, despite their being lesser number. It thus seems to me (very very roughly) that increasing salary levels could well be an efficient way of returning money to the economy (we simply don't know), but it is probably not the biggest or greatest factor in doing so overall.

TLDR.

That is a lot of text. I will try to respond the best way I can.

As to whether all the data is collected and we have completed our study of the LU economy, we have not. This was an attempt to start a discussion on how the LU economy works with a look at the consumer demand generated by sim-citizens. I started by demonstrating how increased wages indeed corresponds with increased spending on consumer goods.

As to your data, looking at the proportion of human-controlled countries, the average population of player countries, and then average salaries in human countries and reaching a conclusion as to the average salary of a sim-citizen in a human-controlled country does not work. Mainly, since larger empires have much more influence than you give them credit for.

For example, you count my empire 10 times for my 10 countries, count my average wages 10 times, and conclude those wages must account for approximately 10 times 28.45 million = 285 million citizens. I, in fact, have 1.87 billion or 1870 million citizens. My wages in each country are about 6.5 times more important than anywhere else. My empire should count for nearly 66 of your human-controlled countries or 167 c3 countries. Other large empires will likely wield somewhat similar influence.

I believe consumer spending is a large piece of a world economy. For ease of examination, I figure world commerce must meet essentially 3 kinds of customers. Everything is either consumer spending, passive government spending, and active government spending. I will separate government spending into the last two categories under the possibility of examining them separately at some point. In reality, either the government or consumers ultimately demand the good or service.

I am interested what you believe to be the biggest factors that affect the economy.

Interesting, where do supplies for corporations, both private and state, factor into that model?

By nature you have to look at the entirety of the economy to judge its strength, right? From the ground up, and in all cases not just a countries case.

Your empire has considerable pull vs the average human/c3, but what kind of influence could a CEO have overall on the market at large? Sure there is spending limits, but they vastly produce the goods that everyone buys up, so they can limit it.

The ease of running an enterprise on LU is a certainty, there is plenty of money fueled into corporations owned by ceo's from consumers, and much more from other corporations, which can also be both state or enterprise run.

The point is all the money changing hands, those workers collect a salary, and from what I looked into many of the top CEOs have some absurdly high salaries (600 range) but they cannot sufficiently concentrate in a country normall to effect enough workers (max CEO corps in each of your 10 slaves wouldnt dent the population you have, with IPOs it can get there) to change it sufficiently. But there is consideration as to how these CEOs effect the c3s which they can effect more readily with the current limits in place (6 corps per country outside of IPOs). the fact almost 38% of a countries corporations can be private in a c3 might skew data received, but yo uwont find c3s without private investment such as that