Suggestion: "Prime the Pump" decision for Laissez-Faire Countries

[Xylephony]

It can be extremely difficult, nigh impossible even, to industrialize your nation if you’re a republic with a strong laissez-faire party in power and no industrial base at the game start. If you don’t manipulate calling constant elections or don’t use NVs to encourage party loyalty, you can’t switch to a party that can construct or invest in factories, and therefore have no base of industry from which capitalists can profit to invest in other projects. That can prevent any project from ever being constructed to begin with, and woe to you if what few capitalists you have decide to spend all their money investing in a dead-end project like a clipper shipyard, and spend a decade on a doomed project that stalls your industrialization for that entire time.

This isn’t a structural problem: there are tools for getting around it through NVs, even if that takes time, and being stuck with your ruling party is one of the costs of playing as a republic. I do think, however, that for those who don’t want to game elections and want to try (at cost) to encourage industrialization within the confines of their ruling party, there should be an option to try to encourage industry in a way that doesn’t violate laissez-faire policies, a sort of soft encouragement.

I suggest that there should be a decision you can take which reduces the maximum rich tax to 5% for 5 years – this would be the main cost of the decision, and also a way to ensure that capitalists have some extra money in their pockets for investment. The decision would then reduce factory cost by 10% (not by subsidization, this is representing the removal of governmental oversight and regulations to reduce costs, hence the small reduction) and increase rich strata savings by 200%. In all it would be an extremely minor boost to the chances that your capitalists could scrounge together enough money to invest in something, but I think even if the chances of it leading to industrialization is low, it would be nice to include it as a flavor option if nothing else.

[ujtcelvn]

reduces the maximum rich tax to 5%

It is not possible for the max tax rate to be different between different strata. Also I'm not sure what the pop savings increase modifiers actually do - where do the pops get the savings from? Do they actually get more money?

[Xylephony]

Also I'm not sure what the pop savings increase modifiers actually do - where do the pops get the savings from? Do they actually get more money?

HPM would know more than I do, but based on what I remember from his past posts savings is just the amount of income which the POPs are permitted to accumulate personally before being forced to reinvest. Whatever sources they get income from (be it factories, RGOs, goods sales, etc.), savings percentages just increases how much they can bank temporarily.

[ujtcelvn]

savings percentages just increases how much they can bank temporarily.

Then wouldn't this not really do anything to increase capitalist investment?

[Xylephony]

Then wouldn't this not really do anything to increase capitalist investment?

Possibly, I haven't tested it directly. It does tend to make POPs richer which does seem to make them want to invest more, because they have more funds to buy desired goods over time due to having savings, rather than limited savings which causes them to revert all their funds to buying needs whenever there are shortfalls.