SimCity feels like the realisation of an American ideal that has never happened. I'm not sure if my interpretation of this is largely due to my exposure to American culture through The Daily Show and Colbert Report, but some of SimCity's elements seemed intensely counter intuitive to me, at least at first.

The first and most obvious realisation of an American dream is what taxation the city's businesses and residents will accept. I've found, in my experience that low income residents will be OK between 9% and 10% tax. Middle class 10-11% and upper class 12-13%. This is a pretty clear far cry from the ~33% tax on the lower to middle class I'm used to in Australia and the ~25% it looks like is levied on Americans.

Additionally, when Australian and American hard industries have failed in recent decades, they generally don't reopen. They fail for good. The easy examples for both nations are our auto industries. Although Australia doesn't have a whole city as monument to that failure, there are plenty of auto plants that have been closed for decades and have no prospect for recovery.

However, heavy industries are still at the core of almost every SimCity's economy, at least in their opening hours, which certainly aren't meant to represent the roaring industries of the wartime, what with most SimCities initially powering themselves with wind power.

However, despite the profits and success these industries can find, individual factories are constantly failing, even to the point of the city needing to bulldoze the entire building to encourage new businesses to move in. As opposed to say, Anno 2070, produced by two German studios where well managed economies will never fail, in SimCity commercial ventures and factories are constantly going under and being replaced by others.

Extremely low tax rates as well as successful American heavy industries forming a keystone of the economy are a true American Fantasy from the conservative side. Businesses constantly failing and being replaced by more efficient ones. It's a capitalist paradise of an America and many things, the tax rate in particular, feel intensively counter intuitive to me. Probably to most Americans too and that's a shame, because I think the game might be more interesting if it played into real dynamics more and this odd fantasy less.

Essentially what I'm asking for is to be able to bail out failing factories. Simulate the American I've come to know and love, SimCity. Too big to fail worked for Obama, let it work for me.

This seems like a good place to say what my biggest grip about sim city games is. When you zone for industrial, a shit ton of buildings will pop up. So you have this city half filled with houses and the other half is a million weird pollution emitting giant monsters. They should have done it with less buildings and higher taxes. That way the higher (and pretty much more realistic) taxes make up for less buildings. It the amount of heavy industrial buildings in one area seems totally insane.

@jams: The weirdest thing about it is I've found in the late game, you only need like one high density industrial building and even then, it produces more freight than you need. Not sure if this is a bug or what, but I feel freight isn't produced at a high enough rate to warrant a lot of industry.

I agree with everything excpt for the free health care. And the fact that no one complains about forign sims taking their job.

@dagbiker: It's not "free" when it's payed for with taxes.

Also, holy shit Australians are taxed out the ass. What the fuck?

Actually those taxes are insanely high considering that they are municipal.

Welcome to the Netherlands.

This. These are CITY taxes people. The 33% you pay is general to the federal government. City income taxes, where they even exist, are usually well below 10%.

The whole weird feeling of the industrial demand is probably (because I don't know how you guys play) due to the way it's calculated. The 'I' bar of the RCI is based only on how much unfulfilled freight orders you have and even a small amount of commercial zoning produces an insanely high freight demand. But building anywhere near enough industry to fill those freight orders (which don't actually need to be filled, by the way. That's a whole other problem...) will make more jobs probably faster than you might be able to keep up, especially in the early game.

I've mostly been ignoring the RCI indicators and playing based only on the actual numbers of jobs needed in the population window, which works to some extent... though those numbers have several other problems and factors that make them steadily less accurate as well.

Thats true, but I was talking about Sim City.

So what you're saying is that we need SimCountry?

Yes, I visited your Country, on one of my many company paid cruses through the fords and let me tell you this. I paid 200Kr for a mass produced troll, that looks like I got it from a craft store. And all this, is actually true.

Exactly. I pay ~2% in the city I live in and I find it outrageous.

While I suppose this is technically true and my local taxes are tiny compared to whopping 13% I try and levy in the Darkroot Basin, the Mayor's Office of SimCity, seems to provide services closer to a State or even Federal government than a local one, at least by Australian standards.

Most local governments here do not fund local schools, hospitals and emergency services. They do not subsidise nearby public transport. They certainly don't pay for desalination plants or the city's power grid.

These costs, at least over here, are distributed all the way up to our federal government. Looking at it from that angle, perhaps the ~10% tax rate is designed to simulate that while you do a lot of state and federal jobs, you don't deserve all their tax rate, as you don't pay for military services and the like.

Aside from how buggy the system is, I'm surprised the Sims don't actually get annoyed by all the Sims commuting in from the region to take their jobs. Not that they even apparently have their own jobs. The AI in this game sounds so odd.

What's a city tax?

@jams said:

I live and work within the city limits of Lansing, MI. The city government taxes my income in the same way that the state and federal governments do.

Exactly. For example New York City has four tax brackets with rates ranging from 2.907% to 3.648%.

Are you serious? I live in California and we don't have any city income tax. Unless it's hidden away somewhere? Or I'm confusing myself?

Does it change based on your income level?

It depends on the city you live in. Not all cities in MI tax your income, so it might be the same in CA. It's not hidden away at all though, you would know about it. When I file my taxes it's a separate thing, just like state and federal.

The percentage does not change based on income, but I just looked it up and I got my numbers wrong. I pay 1% because I live and work in the city. If I were to work in the city but live elsewhere, I would only pay .5%. In Michigan, Detroit residents have it the worst, paying 2.5% (a premium for the privilege of living in such a wonderful city, I suppose).

Ah okay. I just checked a pay stub and I just have state and federal only.

That would be Norway you visited, not the Netherlands.

@nictel: Fuckin' perfect.

@nictel: Fuckin' perfect.

@nictel: heh

also The trick is to be broke as fuck like me, that way you get everything except sales tax back.