Re: Nominal Taxation Rates

Tom Barclay's points are **'d paragraphs, unstarred parts are
mine:

>** It struck me that the % of GDP is only a partial measure.
Does it
>correspond directly with nominal tax rate? That is to say, % of
GDP
>represents percentage of your whole economy (personal,
business, financial,
>other sectors). % of personal taxation is probably another
indicator,
>related but not directly correlated in all cases. I'm sure from
economy to
>economy, the % of GDP made up by different sectors varies, and
how much of
>the military budget comes from perosnal taxes does too - or at
least I
>suspect so.

I don't care what sector it comes from, since the objective is
to see how much money we have to buy ships with.  Whether we get
it by taxing personal income, corporate income, national sales
tax, or sales of vodka (the Czar financed the war against
Napoleon by a tax on vodka, which provided something like 30% of
the government's revenue.  I believe that figure is now down to
20%) is irrelevant.

>** But, % GDP is good enough for the purposes we probably care
about. You
>quoted most Western Block countries as around 5%. That was, I
assume,
>through the Cold War.

Correct

> However, these same countries (NAC, NSL, FSE) have
>been involved in several major shooting wars in the last
hundred years or so
>and one recently (by 2180's). I think they might actually be a
tad higher in
>their defence budgets (say 6-8%) especially given an unknown
potential alien
>threat.

Agree.	In a really desperate situation (eg 1944 for a number of
countries) you might perhaps get as high as 50%.  It is not
clear to me how much actual fighting is going on vs the Kra'Vak;
and if the NAC-ESU war has tapered off, a lower tempo of
operations may mean the navies actually have more money now to
build up ships.

>** I get the impression from relative equality of tech in FT/FB
that the
>ESU, IC, IF, etc have come up so there is at least a near
parity of
>technology.

One of my assumptions was that the IF has limited ability to
build FTL, and I see no reason to assume the IF, IC, PAU and
others have the same tech as the Big Four.   I grant you the PAU
has bought ESU ships including Rostov BC's, just as I postulate
the IF buys FSE-built FTL drives, but that doesn't mean they can
build it on their own.	A South American country and a
European--I'll say Argentina and Germany although that may not
be right--were going to build ships for Argentine Navy, building
the first in Germany, second in Argentina, third in Germany, and
alternating.  Only the German-built ships got completed and
passed trials.

>The size of the ESU fleet suggests they have probably increased
>their per capita GDP (relative to their position vis a vis the
NAC in
>1988-90) and the NSL are likely also to increase their GDP per
capita. (In
>fact, if the figures you originally used were 1988,

They were.

>you'd find their GDP has
>grown and will probably grow a lot more - Germany can be quite
a powerhouse
>once it gets rolling).

"Germany keeps taking on the rest of the world, and not quite
winning."