Really enjoy the game so far, but there are a few strange things with the economy. First of all, it appears that if at any point you manage to max out your relative GDP, it’s no longer impacted at all by the global economy (see image).
I just don’t think this is realistic for the domestic economy of any country to be this unimpacted while the global economy is fluctuating so wildly. I think it makes sense that if you have a strong economy that you will be less impacted by global fluctuations potentially, but something is off here.
Similarly, there are some situational effects that in combination seem to make no sense. While my economy was this high, I simultaneously had the “High Productivity” and “Technological Advantage” active (both make sense) but also somehow had the “Uncompetitive Economy” condition active. If I’m high on tech, productivity, and GDP, it’s hard to understand how the economy could be considered “uncompetitive” maybe a rename to this policy would make sense to help better convey the intent behind the negative condition would help, otherwise some balance issues that allow the other benefits of the economy to more easily cancel out this condition would make sense.
Im open to ideas about renaming that situation. Its basically saying that your labour costs too much, or has high administrative burden with stuff like health&safety regulations, maternity leave and workers rights. Of course, if you are so high tech that 1 software engineer is doing the work of 10 people, its still highly productive, but its a sign that the software engineer is still costing way more than they do in less regulated countries
I think the only way this makes sense is to re-frame it in terms of low-skill jobs. The economy isn’t uncompetitive, only certain parts of it- specifically the low-skill labour market, where productivity doesn’t outstrip the overhead from regulation and price floors like the minimum wage. Your software engineer has his job because he’s more profitable to employ than one of the ones from a developing country- a call centre jockey, not so much.
The think is, comparative advantage where it doesn’t make sense for your population to being doing sweatshop work is a good thing to have. The fact that it’s a waste of time to have Americans sewing t-shirts isn’t a bad thing for the United States.
Also, to add to this, it’s in fact possible to have no uncompetitive economy despite basically maxed wages and other protections. It’s fairly hard - you need a LOT of stuff that increases productivity - but it’s not impossible.
And if that modifier is supposed to be about sweatshops and ultra cheap labor, then I don’t see how that’s plausible.
The only thing that actually should maybe affect this, if you aren’t gonna compromise on strong labor laws and the like, would be industrial automation. Because at least some of the cheap jobs abroad could potentially be replaced by cheap robots locally.
Just because I produce a crap ton of stuff doesn’t mean I’m suddenly not outsourcing all those call centers which would be harder to robotify (though Google is certainly trying)
I’m wondering if a negative condition could appear but be in a “mitigated” status based on other active positive conditions. In that case, it can serve as a warning sign “this would be causing issues if not for these other positive conditions” to provide a broader understanding of how the various conditions interact with each other. Similar to the way that hospital overcrowding, obesity, respiratory disease, and doctor’s strike all seem to interact with each other.
