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As far as I remember (SimCity 3000), you start out with taxes at like 7%, and you can get away with 9% when your city is small, but when you grow, you have to /

by srl 13y ago

As far as I remember (SimCity 3000), you start out with taxes at like 7%, and you can get away with 9% when your city is small, but when you grow, you have to /lower/ taxes (down to 1-2%, eventually) to keep things stable. Which makes sense from a game design perspective (there are enough hard things when you're starting out, without having to deal with obscenely low taxes), but doesn't have much to do with real life.

jtbigwoo 13y ago
I always thought that was funny, too. In real life, large cities can actually charge much higher taxes than smaller cities (think New York).
tolmasky 13y ago
This just seems like a (lazy) way to make the game harder as you progress. Instead of bosses you have to do more with less. I don't think it necessarily reflects any sort of deep political/economic reasoning.
- Evbn 13y ago
  And an easy way to prevent massive revenue from unbalancing the game. Remember that simcity is a socialist fantasy world: all development is directly purchased by central government. In the real world, zoning doesn't cost money, and stadiums are sometimes owner financed.
  - vidarh 13y ago
    This is amusing, as not even any social democratic countries have systems where funding of development is so decentralized as it is in Sim City - usually a substantial amount of infrastructure development is done by central government, rather than the municipal government which you control in the game. Even in the US, neither the state or federal government has so little impact at the municipal level.
vidarh 13y ago
The realistic way of handling this in Europe would be grants from national government. E.g. Norway sees massive grants go to smaller regions (and actually preferential income tax levels for the northernmost regions, to get more people to live there), as certain services are expected to be available even if the local tax base could not support it directly. Subsidizing maintenance of regional settlement has been a key part of Norwegian government policies for many decades, and is a generally accepted principle by parties ranging from the various communist parties (none of which have been in government for a very long time) to the conservatives. The only exceptions you find to this is far right libertarians. This is a similar situation to many other European countries. It is seen as a key way to maintain the heritage of the country. We talk of "cultural landscape" - very little of Norway is actually untouched nature. Rather most other than parts of the mountain-regions, including forests, have been tended to for centuries, in various ways, whether logging, agriculture or herding animals.
Houshalter 13y ago
Well there is some truth to that. There are economies of scale. Infrastructure becomes more expensive as you have to expand it, but it can also get cheaper per individual.

by srl 13y ago

jtbigwoo 13y ago

I always thought that was funny, too. In real life, large cities can actually charge much higher taxes than smaller cities (think New York).

tolmasky 13y ago

This just seems like a (lazy) way to make the game harder as you progress. Instead of bosses you have to do more with less. I don't think it necessarily reflects any sort of deep political/economic reasoning.

Evbn 13y ago
And an easy way to prevent massive revenue from unbalancing the game. Remember that simcity is a socialist fantasy world: all development is directly purchased by central government. In the real world, zoning doesn't cost money, and stadiums are sometimes owner financed.
- vidarh 13y ago
  This is amusing, as not even any social democratic countries have systems where funding of development is so decentralized as it is in Sim City - usually a substantial amount of infrastructure development is done by central government, rather than the municipal government which you control in the game. Even in the US, neither the state or federal government has so little impact at the municipal level.

vidarh 13y ago

The realistic way of handling this in Europe would be grants from national government. E.g. Norway sees massive grants go to smaller regions (and actually preferential income tax levels for the northernmost regions, to get more people to live there), as certain services are expected to be available even if the local tax base could not support it directly. Subsidizing maintenance of regional settlement has been a key part of Norwegian government policies for many decades, and is a generally accepted principle by parties ranging from the various communist parties (none of which have been in government for a very long time) to the conservatives. The only exceptions you find to this is far right libertarians. This is a similar situation to many other European countries. It is seen as a key way to maintain the heritage of the country. We talk of "cultural landscape" - very little of Norway is actually untouched nature. Rather most other than parts of the mountain-regions, including forests, have been tended to for centuries, in various ways, whether logging, agriculture or herding animals.

Houshalter 13y ago

Well there is some truth to that. There are economies of scale. Infrastructure becomes more expensive as you have to expand it, but it can also get cheaper per individual.