NationStates Jolt Archive

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
After the fall of @@NAME@@ Trade Centers the economy of @@NAME@@ took a big hit and citizens began to question what is money?

Validity: Everybody

[option] “Abolish the tyranny of money! Put the means of distribution in the Government’s hands,” Shouts @@RANDOMNAME@@, a prestigious grad student. “If the government gave out credits to everyone according to how much they worked we’d eliminate social inequality as well as avoiding the laziness that crops up in regular communism. The industry would have to be controlled by the government of course, but hey! That’s a plus right?”
[effect] the government distributes @@CURRENCY@@ according to one’s workload
[stats] Bigger government, social equality increases, welfare increases, less economic freedom, worse economy

[option] “Government needs to make @@CURRENCY@@ less dependant on things like the @@NAME@@ Trade Centers,” says @@RANDOMNAME@@, a noted economist and author of the Timer Market. “If the government could control the amount of money in the country without getting in the way of business we could stimulate growth for years to come. Obviously, when this happens the government would need to employ much more economists like myself but that's the price of success.”
[effect] the government is quick to print or incinerate @@CURRENCY@@ as to stimulate economic growth
[stats] Bigger government, increase commerce spending, better economy

[option] “Credits? Controlled currency? What ever happened to laissez faire?” asks @@RANDOMNAME@@, an immigrant from the 3rd world nation of Sepuku. “Money is just a way of government taking control. Without it we could value things with our minds and how much we need it. We might not be able to have these fancy ‘stock markets’ anymore but what use were they anyway?”
[effect] @@CURRENCY@@ has no real value any more as people prefer to “swap” for goods
[stats] Less commerce funding, worse economy, more economic freedoms, tax decreases


please tell me what you think of this. also my nation is too small by 143 million people to submit this so if somebody could do it for me I'd be so grateful.

One main problem I can see with it is the description - the fall of certain nation's trade centres will likely offend some people, as what happened on the last September 11th when users were criticised by other users for holding terrorist attacks on that day. Rather than that, why not try something like a Great Depression scenario? There are also a few grammatical errors should be addressed.

Other than that, the whole thing's sound. Nice job.

Would be nice to have a "laissez-faire" option, without simply dismissing the issue. "Let the economy fix itself. Of couse, this will mean massive layoffs as workers shift from one industry to another, but they will retrain eventually." You could even put in another option that affords retraining of laid-off workers at the government's expense. Speaking as someone who was laid off following the 9-11 attacks, believe me, there was a long wait until the economy picked up again and companies started hiring.

Some other ideas would be to introduce a gold- or silver-standard for the currency to help stabilize inflation and deflation. I'm no economist, but you might want to ask for advice on the effects of such an option.

Hope you find this helpful. Keep track of your issue ideas. You'll hit 500 million before too long.