Hi there, just wanting to report that the brain drain that showed up in my game is most likely bugged.
It’s been there through about four elections, and three years of technological superiority and mass productivity.
The lines have also been the same for about three years too, as in the stop trigger and the current line, nothing changes the current line not even pulling tax to 0.
Not sure if it is bugged or if its impact is too small to be felt, either way i breezed through a good 4+ elections with, mansion/luxury/corp tax all sky high and it didn’t really harm me. Incidentally my population was 100% socialist, but i was still getting the same amount of luxury and mansion tax. Apparently my socialist population was a-ok with some of them being more equal than others…
I made some fairly large changes; and it was high to begin with but then just stopped moving. I made several more changes after that including minimizing corporate tax etc. Yeah, I’m very socialist in how I run things, usually the only people annoyed at me are capitalists & the wealthy, but yes it doesn’t appear to actually be harming anything, it’s almost like the red bubble is just sitting there even though the affect is long gone.
Game shows Brain Drain as affecting productivity, and as a result GDP, which should drastically affect finances but taxes easily cover the loss so that’s probably why aren’t feeling much hurt. The implicit correlation of rich to smart here is a little odd however, the game is directly implying that without the big rich smart guys to run everything for us we’d be far too stupid to effectively produce the requisite goods? I’m not sure the correlation holds up in real life. Every CEO job could be removed with no replacement overnight and i’m fairly confident that factory machinery can still be operated, calls can still be answered, people can still be served, etc. I’m not sure that the intelligentsia would all just up and move country because yachts got taxed a bit either…
From the file: situations.csv, in Democracy3/data/simulation
Line or row#23 Brain Drain:
Factors:
IncomeTax,0.35+(x^6)
LuxuryGoodsTax,0.3+(0.4x),4
TaxShelters,-0.2-(0.3x),4 <- reducing factor
MansionTax,0.1+(0.1*x),4
Lower income taxes until you see no further effect on Brain Drain, for me it was about 30%, then do the same for Luxury Goods Tax and Mansion Tax if you have them. Institute Tax Shelters at a high. Then check the start / stop trigger graph of Brain Drain. Once it ends ramp up taxes a bit, don’t go back up to what it was. Give yourself enough time to compensate for tax revenue loss if you have a surplus.
Brain drain is the hardest thing for me to recover from, especially if I don’t want to cut taxes. It doesn’t seem like there is enough to positively effect it besides cutting taxes. Maybe If we had more taxes breaks, and if the existing ones effected it better I think It would help a lot. I wish there were incentives geared to curbing brain drain like conditional loans/grants where interest would be very low on the condition that they signed some sort of contract guaranteeing they’d stay in the country or something.
I had this same problem. I had all the major problems dealt with, was almost through with debt… then got Brain Drain. I looked at all the causes and got rid of them completely. As in I nixed all the causes associated with it, including income tax. I drove the economy face-first into the ground, and the line just hovered barely above the end line.