GM office/ Atlasian Almanac-Gazette Community Portal

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Greetings Atlasia!

As your new Game Moderator, I'll be following the two-thread format established by former GM Marokai: The other thread (The Atlasian Almanac-Gazette) is for GM updates; this thread is for community discussion of those updates.

Additionally, I hope to receive ideas from Atlasians about what they hope to see in stories.  At some point I'll be asking Atlasians for help in collecting certain information, and solicit Atlasians' thoughts on various issues relevant to creating updates. Any questions for the GM can be posted here, and I'll do my best to answer them.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Thanks. Does Atlasia have a lotto?

Speaking of which . . . I'd like to have handy information about what the budgets and tax rates are of the various regions that have them. Right now I know what the Mideast's are. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Kudos to the IDS!


Haven't gotten any response from my first story besides a statement from SoIA. Was it a tl;dr?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I read it and it's good; not a lot to comment on though.

I actually thought there's room for potential policy responses to some things in there, if people were interested.

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well, then I hope you enjoy the employment figures I just posted.

I would certainly like to see more for something my office can do. I mean, if I'm not going to be able to respond or truly do anything, I might as well leave.

Don't worry, I'll post more stories now that I'm back from being out of town, and I'll think of some things to help me with if you like. Hopefully the regions, the President, and the Senate can be interacting with you as well.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Numbers make me happy

One thing though; why is Imperial unemployment so high?

Basically, because the rate was already high, so it'll take a while for it to come down.  Why was it already high before last month?  Apart from loss of public employment reported in August, I'm not really sure, but I'm trying to keep some continuity with the numbers.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I'll be out for Tues through Friday.  I hope to be able to finish pulling together a budget estimate (revenues and expenses) the first week of the new year, and some interesting stories too.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Continuing from our discussion in ZuWo's thread, do you know what the federal government allocated to "regional health administrations" before the passage of the below bill?

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=145074.0

The Federal government didn't allocate a specific number. It just said it would be liable for all costs for services under the Atlasian National Healthcare Act - which is what makes the new bill especially confusing.

Here, though, is what the costs were in the September budget update.  Though I haven't been able to get the new budget update up yet, I'll just say now that you can assume the cost of each regional administration has increased by about 10% since then.

Atlasian National Healthcare ($1153.02 billion)
$277.97 billion ... IDS Community Health Partnership (22.4%)
$219.13 billion ... ME Community Health Partnership (17.3%)
$241.23 billion ... MW Community Health Partnership (19.2%)
$230.78 billion ... NE Community Health Partnership (18.3%)
$269.41 billion ... PA Community Health Partnership (21.6%)
$16.0 billion ..... Central Administration Costs (1.2%)

Really, without some sort of clarification on this bill from the Senate or the Administration, it makes the future cost estimation of the whole Healthcare program and any stories related to it impossible.
.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I'm putting a budget estimate together.  I'm introducing revenue figures into the budget, and from my data sources I can best calculate revenue as collected after deductions and exemptions.  Expenditures however will include tax credits.  This is a change from previous budgets where deductions, exemptions, and tax credits were all categorized as 'tax expenditures' and added to the spending side. With the introduction of revenue figures, this distinction is more important. We can still have total tax expenditure estimates listed separately.   
I think this accords with the spirit of the Budget Process Committee that met a year or so ago, and I won't change the format any more than I think is necessary.  However, please feel free to comment with any concerns about the change I am suggesting.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I put the revenue figures up.  I think these might be the first revenue figures in  . . . probably ever, so take a look at them and see what you think.  I'll be putting up the spending side in the next few days.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Great work on the budget!  Do you happen to have the public debt figure (or did I miss it)?

I knew I forgot something.   It's now posted.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

$12 trillion, ouch.

Didn't Atlasia avoid the Iraq War, Bush tax cuts, and other budget busters that affect the United States?

No, mostly, and we've had plenty of budget busters of our own.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Surely the National Insurance Program would be a large additional cost?

Yes, though it also has it's own taxes. My suspicion is that the program has its own deficit that our government is liable for, but I haven't done the calculations.  The program was established with  a very complicated bill. Looking at the bill again, I'm reading Section 2, clause 7:
"The Federal Government shall be responsible for providing the Functioning funds to the NSSA. The Department of Internal Affairs shall be able to decide the amount of those funds. The Functioning funds devolved to the NSSA shall be subject to a vote in the Senate."
So I guess the functioning funds should have technically been included in the budget I published, but there's a whole 'nother process involved that I don't quite get.
A committee is supposed to be convened at this Fall on the budget for the program. That seems like a while off, considering meanwhile we may be bleeding an unknown amount of red ink and/or taxing people more than we realize.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I was just going over the amount of money spent total and I think you had a mathematical error with the Transportation Spending. It's a bit over the 70-odd billion that you had written on the original post. Or did I do my math wrong? Thanks

Nice catch. I'm not sure how that happened. It's been corrected and all totals adjusted accordingly.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I just realized that ANSE is the Atlasian National Stock Exchange, and basically replaced the NYSE in 2009.  So, I may be going back and changing some posts to reflect this.   

To the folks who've been around longer than I have - if I seem to be ignorant of an important institution or event in Atlasia in my GM posts, please let me know.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I'm wondering if anyone knows if it's okay for the GM to put together a story for someone else to publish, or to give the GM approval to a post from another Atlasian media source.  There's something I'd like to do but I can't really do it on the "inside."

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I'm wondering if anyone knows if it's okay for the to give something for someone else to publish, or to give the GM approval to a post from a media source.  There's something I'd like to do but I can't really do it on the "inside."

As Marokai said, it's common practice.  Badger did it too.

That post wasn't clear about what I meant. I've edited it.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I just realized that ANSE is the Atlasian National Stock Exchange, and basically replaced the NYSE in 2009.  So, I may be going back and changing some posts to reflect this.   

This is done. I've also gone back in and added currency exchange information.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I'll be gone for a week starting tomorrow.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Gm Shua, might you have any valuable information for my region, especially concerning our budget? More specifically I am interested in seeing the public vs. Private breakdown for things like education, employment, healthcare and transportation in my region.

Do you know if the northeast has ever passed a budget?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

What legislation has the IDS passed that accounts for the low (relative to all the others) unionization rate?

The IDS's right to work law contributes some. A lot of the difference has to do with their being not as much historical importance of labor unions in the region and its industries, and less cultural emphasis on collective action.  The thrifty IDS budget suggests public sector labor unions are not a large factor in the region.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I'll be gone for about a week.   

Please encourage your representatives to pay close attention to recent updates, that our country may be prevented from ruin.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I'll be gone for the next week.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Could we get some data on which colleges have a student population where >5% of the population are receiving federal student loan assistance?

I'd imagine it's the vast majority of colleges apart from religious vocational schools, for-profit colleges, and a few institutions associated with political conservativism.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The GM's office would like to wish all Atlasians a wonderful Labor Day weekend.  For those who have some time off of work or school, enjoy your vacation.  For those who have to work, be thankful you have a job. For those without a job, enjoy your free time.

I'm off to play in the woods for a couple days.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

do you have a figure for the total mileage?