Empty homes tax:
-boost middle class opinion - affording a home is a common middle class problem, and the idea that housing supply is being hoarded by people who are treating it like a stock is really annoying, especially when there is enough hoarding going on to cause the price increases which the hoarders are hoping for.
-boost equality - unless a simulation is added for housing price, in which case this would decrease that.
-cut the connection to socialism - generally people develop socialist ideas when they feel that the economy isn’t working for them, and capitalist ideas when they feel that it is. Improving the affordability of housing would not cause people to feel like the economy isn’t working for them.
Frequent flyer tax:
-boost equality - for the same reason mansion and luxury goods taxes do.
Social care:
-boost equality - these services do exist whether the government funds them or not, it’s just a question of who can afford them.
Link poverty to equality
That’s probably good for today. For context, I tried to promise to both raise GDP and equality in my manifesto. I got one out of two. I did a lot to boost equality, but my goodness a topped out GDP hurts it.
Thoughts to add: Empty Home Tax
Agree that it could be nice if Empty Home Tax can improve Equality. However, I’m bit concerned since it has Equality,1.0-(0.4*x) in its income modifier. In short, its income could be smaller than predicted at implementation, which might be misleading. I’d also insist that this should boost socialism anyway. Hoarding is totally legit in capitalists’ eyes. Therefore, employing a measure that hurts free market and ending up successfully fixing the problem (housing bubble) will give an impression that it could be okay to put more socialistic ideas into policies.
Equality in general
Equality
There are many ways to measure equality. Conservatives talk of equality of opportunity, socialists talk of equality of outcome. This is just a simple measurement of the distribution of wealth (financial equality of outcome).
The description of Equality in D4 states that it is 'financial equality of outcome. There are few cases this doesn’t apply such as …
Single Adoption dilemma (unrelated to redistribution)
Public Land Law dilemma (just allowing people enter private properties not redistribution)
Public Library policy (it could provide equal access to info but redistribution??)
Diversity Quotas for Companies policy (would mean improved racial equality but I don’t think it’s going to improve equality unless the ethnic minorities are generally seen as poor)
Public Tax Return policy (it could prevent tax evasion but the policy itself isn’t inherently redistributing wealth imo)
However, I still think that Equality should remain strictly related to redistribution of wealth. (you can refer to my post Regarding the Poor Voters and Poverty Simulation) Therefore, I don’t think social care or poverty should impact equality. It might be okay to add equality boosts to Empty Home Tax & Frequent Flyer Tax but I don’t think the latter will have a significant redistribution effect.
+I’m not sure how high your pledge goal was but I think boosting equality as a capitalist government should be really hard or even painful. The game is already rather easy and there’s no reason to allow players to create an utopia with little efforts too.
+edit 2) Nonetheless, I think there are some policies that deserve equality boost such as Financial Transaction Tax, Rent Control (will wish more penalties for this though), Competition Law, Workers Dividends, and Punitive Wealth Tax.