SC4's economic model?

[biguc]

What do you guys know about it?

Lately, I've been tinkering with fiscal policy in my cities in order to boost growth. Has anyone else tried this before, and noticed an effect? I usually end up running really large surpluses and then have millions of dollars sitting around, sucked out of the economy. Presumably my economy would do better with that money in it, rather than stored up by my government. Then again, does the game model investment of savings? If so, then I don't have much to worry about. On the other hand, if I gutted my taxes and ran a deficit to burn up my savings, would that spur growth, erasing the deficit?

I'm curious how realistic you guys think it is.

[Goody]

I dont think its at that level. I mean granted the more you spend on your sims and or the less you tax them that happier they will be and the more sims will want to move there but I dont think the growth caused by decreased taxes is enough to spur your economy to make up for that lost income.

I find flat taxes a good middle ground... I only go up or down when either my city is large and stable or when I want to weed out a sector in order to better control my city.

[biguc]

I'm focusing on increasing the wealth of my sims as much as I'm trying to get more. At least in my main city.

I usually keep my taxes flat too. The biggest exception is industrial taxes, where, in my largest cities, I jack up dirty industry tax, raise manufacturing taxes, and cut high tech taxes.


My latest city I've actually taken a somewhat regressive tax system--taxing the middle class and rich people less than the poor--in order to get poor people to move to the suburbs. I've got middle class taxes the lowest because rich people are annoyingly fickle and tend to abandon buildings for no good reason.


I'm curious about something: could I eliminate commercial and HT industry taxes, but increase personal income taxes to compensate? Has anyone tried this?

[Double L]

I'm surprised nobody mentioned this yet.

There is a demand cap. In every city you build you will have to build a good amount of things like parks, landmarks and rewards in order to increase your demand cap. If you don't do anything about your demand cap your city will level out at a determined number of jobs and residents, then go into a recession unless you do something about your demand cap. You can download mods on simptropolis.com to help you read what the numbers are for your current demand cap.



As far as lowering taxes go, I've found that they do wonders for my cities. I once took a city that my friend played and it was in horrible condition, relying on industry and agriculture while having clogged traffic. I lowered taxes and created a booming commercial district, developed over the agriculture and had the money to completely change the road infrastructure. Granted, he had not spent much money and I had about $400,000 in the bank when I started.

My experience is that in the games engine, lowering taxes is not as effective for bringing new jobs as it is for bringing richer jobs, so if you want to increase wealith in your city, lowering taxes, weeding out industry, increasing land values and improving the demand cap should be the thing to do, IMO.

[Goody]

^ I find starting with a large low wealth base best. Once you get the city to about the size you want then you can work on the wealth of the sims that live and work there.

[America 117]

ive tried tacking awey taxes from high tech and commercail and it dident really do anything to the demand.
if you want to get better demand for high tech i know that you have to have lots of schools.
ive seen that if you have alot of high tech that demand for commercail goes up a little.
and you need a good pop of sims.
but building schools also gets demand up for high wealth sims and you need parks and good health and safety too.
oh and they need water.
sorry if you already know all of this. just trying to help.