FT 3-04: Commonwealth Budget for 2018

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Here's my very disorganized cost analysis. In most cases, rates were applied to existing numbers for federal revenues and then scaled down to represent Fremont's population.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tkU8HhHHNXrUgjtWUD9XQfOkhUuDY_paBUNQDAqhS4s

I haven't yet finished the Green Vehicle Promotion Act (honestly don't know where to start with that one), and the oil/nat.gas segment of the Royalties Act. Other than that, the estimates are finished, although I will probably go back and try to get more accurate numbers when I'm not so tired.

So far, total revenue from income tax is 85.9 billion, and total revenue with all of the other things added in is around 250 billion. The largest contributor is the Carbon tax, which specified 112.5 billion dollars in revenue for the first year and a 2% tax increase, putting this year's revenue at around 115 billion.

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Apologies for taking so long to finish this. Both this and the 3-06 analysis will be completed today.

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Finished the cost analysis. Total revenue is $285.467 billion

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Taking the source you provided at face value, then your numbers seem to be correct. The issue is probably due to the fact that the paper you cited is itself a cost analysis that uses a much more detailed methodology than I use.

Annoyingly, that source didn't provide the methodology used to calculate the ~90 billion dollar revenue for a $16.00 tax, but did cite the following paper

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/carbon-tax-mckibbin-morris-wilcoxen.pdf

as the source of the 90 billion figure.

The paper is quite long and makes use of what is referred to as the 'G-cubed' model to make the estimate, which is summarized here:

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/bdp118.pdf

This will take a while to work through, but perhaps it will give me some insight into economic simulation for my other GM duties. In any case, your numbers are correct.

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

I had a brief discussion with Yankee about the existence of NASA in-game; since all events prior to the reset are taken to be truth (unless the GM department says otherwise), then doesn't this mean that things that are not changed in-game (e.g. NASA) should be considered when crafting budgets?

Federally, this would be somewhat simple to do, as we could take the FY2016 budget and modify it to conform with the legislation crafted since the reset. Regionally, this would be quite a bit more difficult to do, but it's still an issue that needs to be addressed. For instance, what is the state of public education in Fremont? Are the UC schools now 'UFs,' and how much funding are they receiving?

All of the regions have had pretty enormous budget surpluses, and its clear that this is because new taxes are being introduced without factoring in expenditures that would transfer from RL.

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Thanks for the clarification on state vs regional governments. I was unsure of this because most legislation seems to allocate funds directly to local rather than state governments.

Does this mean that a potential regional sales tax would be an addition to existing state sales taxes that may exist in RL?