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I'm playing as Southern California in the US California scenario. I'm a bit bedeviled about inflation and unemployment. Try as I might I can't seem to get inflation to rise, or unemployment to decrease. I'm running the economy on manual control to get a feel for how that works.

I decided to get rid of the coal power plants to drop my need for importing it and to help balance my negative trade budget. I knew that should cause some unemployment early. To create more jobs I've been busy building 3 water plants, 6 timber plants, and 2 each of consumer goods and industrial goods. As a water or timber plant gets finished I build another new one. Despite having new plants coming on line I'm still seeing unemployment rising. I've even tried to keep the screws tight on immigration by keeping the fee up to only allow about 16,000 to 20,000 immigrants per year in. I may have made a mistake going to the recomended social payments for health and family subsidies as that keeps my internal growth higher. I'm still puzzled that creating lots of new job opportunities doesn't seem to be giving me lower or stable unemployment. Shouldn't there be job increases for the fact that there is new construction going on?

As for inflation I found I'd messed up the first go around by investing more in industry efficiency to drive manufacturing costs down. So the second time I left that investment alone and still inflation goes down, down, down. I'm sure Greenspan would drool over this economic model that tames the mighty inflation monster. So I figure to counter lowering inflation I just need to lessen my investment in industry efficiency and start increasing domestic markup. I've exported a lot of product below world market prices just to bring in cash but I would not think that should have a negative impact on domestic inflation. Despite making my costs and sale prices rise I'm still seeing inflation drop below 3% and keep dropping. If decreasing industry efficiency and increasing domestic markup doesn't help inflation rise then what the heck does?
Thanks,

Eric Larsen

The game's economic model automaticly returns to 6% unemployment and the related inflation that comes with 6% unemployment. Actual productivity per person is not moddelled in the game directly cause that would be near impossible without making it extremely difficult. The game automaticly resolves unemployment above 6% as that quickly droppes to 6%, so if u really got to get economic growth of about 10% to 25% for ur unemployment to drop and inflation to rise. Sort of a shame though cause it makes the economy so much more easy, it just stabilised itself and chronic unemployment issues are unheared off. I hope this still gets fixed. I'd love to see that

The_Blind_One,
I guess I've found a way to break that automatic return to 6% unemployment. I've yet to figure out the magic touch that raises inflation and lowers unemployment. Any helpful hints would be greatly appreciated as I would like to see what The_Blind_One sees as regards the economics. So far lots of trial and error has gotten me some insights but clearly I have far more research and trials and errors to go before I stop being the-blind-one.
Thanks,

Eric Larsen

Oddly enough, I seem to be having the opposite problem in Virginia. I do not research, and I bulldoze half my industries and run up the efficiency. The only way I have found to cut down inflation and drive up my unemployment is to go to war. If only it was closer to the border.

Richmonder,
Yeah it sure seems that building more industries seems to be deleterious to profit margin. It seems that all it does is add prodcution and maintenance costs without adding to domestic sales. Then as production and maintenance costs rise there goes the corporate profit that seems to drive employment. It really seems that adding industries hurt the economy instead of helping it through added employment and the generation of goodies for sale. While they may help reduce trade imbalances they seem to hurt domestic sales and profits. I'm still wondering if trade sales get added to corporate profits, or if it's only based upon that domestic sales screen?

I've run up efficiency and it sure helps get nice trade profit margins as well as quantities but it seems to kill domestic profits. It does help get domestic prices lower so you can raise demand to raise inflation to raise employment if you have the treasury to support such deficit financing.
Thanks,

Eric Larsen

Actually ur wrong and correct at the same time...u see, ur economy slowly adapts to its new enviroment. It can only do this about 3.5%+- gdp/c per year extra without increasing/decreasing unemployment and inflation.

So while u may start to PRODUCE more than 50% (wich should mean that ur people get 50% more pay and can spend 50% more, but that's not how it works) ur wages are still behind alot. So unless ur able of getting rid of excess goods that ur own pop don't use because they haven't reached that income level yet then it's best to just scrap those buildings...so always export while ur making a good surplus on it or just put it on demand.

If ur totally self-sufficient u can totally control how u want to work ur economy, ofcourse ur bounded to the growth inflation/unemployment rate %.

This is why the communist system in this game doesn't work properly. Somehow the communist plan system is using the same rules as the free-market economy of democratic regions in the game (how free-market that ever maybe will stay a discussion), in a communist nation u have a region wich produces X amount of resources and it redistributes them directly, aka ''production = income'' wich is only loosely followed in this game.

Interesting. Why do we still have inflation eventhough there are job increases for the fact that there is new job openings to combat unemployment?is t because of the weak dollar?

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“Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.”-- Ronald Reagan
http://www.viritix.com <===click and track inflation

http://www.bls.gov/

Stuff changes in price that it is sold for, that is inflation, that site will tell you how much everything changed in price from one month to the next. You can break down foodstuff to different types of apples if you want to, and it's all weighted differently.

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- Dave
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Will mod for food!