Okay, here's how I do it. It usually nets me a nice and healthy surplus wih good DAR and money left over for military building. Lock every setting you change, otherwise the ministers will stuff it up (like in real life
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1. Stop auto-building units and missiles. I like choosing my own strategy for building units, and I focus on them once I've got the economy going.
2. Set taxes as you please, but I recommend a total rate at around 50-60%. May vary from scenario to scenario, but you shouldn't need more than this.
3. Set all your social spending to recommended levels. Infrastructure is critical for the economy, but all the others help create jobs and drive up domestic approval. I also set research spending to recommended level, although that may or may not be important, depending on your strategy.
4. Upgrade your industries. It'll be expensive at first, but you'll get a better cost/benefit than you would from building new ones and leaving your old ones incomplete. Make sure that you have enough power to run your factories.
5. Run your power plants at 'produce to demand' rather than 'produce to capacity'. It's inefficient producing more for export, because you can't store it and export it the next month.
6. Cut your production costs, by making sure you're not spending too much on efficiency. Basically, put a little bit in, but not too much. Sometimes ministers by default will spend way too much, which ends up costing you more than the return you get. I generally pick the same slider position for all my industries, and lock all my production efficiencies to it - I think it usually ends up being a total cost of a bit under 10% of my expenditure, but I've never actually added it up.
7. Micro-manage your domestic sales prices. Choose a value, and lock it in. What I do is look at the world market price, and adjust the slider so that my consumers pay a premium of 10%, or 20%, or anything else that tickles my fancy - but usually in that ballpark. When your GDP/c is growing, your prices will creep up - so come back from time to time and adjust them back to the level you want. Your consumers will thank you for it, and your profits won't drop because you're making more than you're paying for the imported goods anyway.
8. If your unemployment's high and your GDP/C is still dropping, build more things. I like consumer goods factories, but it can vary - in some scenarios, there's a surplus of consumer goods produced by all countries, in those cases industrial goods can be better to export. Basically, choose an export market that the other countries aren't selling (if you can). It doesn't really have to all that profitable, just something that other countries will buy and will give you jobs.
9. If unemployment's dropping below 5% and you're getting worried about inflation, start getting rid of industries, focusing on the ones that aren't profitable. You'll have to use your judgement as this varies from map to map, but I generally look for industries that aren't fully built or are in low-supply areas. Keep an eye on your GDP/c as you do this - you want it to flatten out or maybe even drop, but if it starts dropping too fast, you've done a Detroit. If you are really short of ideas and only have factories or other high-empoyment facilities left, then you can actually scrap a factory, then reactivate it after one day. This has the effect of cutting a few jobs - it's not the most efficient way to go, but can be a useful balancing tool.
You should hit a level at about 5% unemployment where inflation's relatively tame and you're making plenty of money. If you micro-manage your domestic prices, you'll find your consumers are pretty bullish about your economy and you'll see excellent immigration levels.
