Progressive Tiered Taxation

[Cyrilix 0]

Let me explain. I don't mean taxing rich people more than the poor. Here is what I do when I start a city:

I-D = Dirty

I-M = Manufacturing

I-HT = High Tech

CS-x = Commercial Services (x can be $, $$, or $$$)

CO-x = Commercial Offices (x can be $$ or $$$)

#1: Start slowly and build I-D every with CS-$ and a tiny mix of CS-$$.

#2: Enhance city amenities and raise education over time.

#3: Raise I-D tax to 14% to heavily discourage this type of industry and wait for some manufacturing to settle in.

#4: Raise I-D tax to 20% and bulldoze the rest of the I-D buildings and wait for manufacturing to fully settle in.

#5: Enhance city amenities and raise education even further. Now the city should have a mix of all CS types and some CO-$$.

#6: Raise I-M tax to 14% and then 20%, eventually having I-HT settle in. Now we've gotten rid of most of the pollution.

#7: Zone a lot of commercial and get a good mix of CS and CO of all types.

#8: CS-$ only employs R-$, so let's get rid of these guys and tax them to hell like we did with I-D and I-M. They'll complain but can be safely ignored. Wait and aid (with the help of a bulldozer) until CS-$ has been chased out of the city.

#9: This is my current city, with a population of ~105K of which 55-65K are R-$$, 30K are R-$, and 10K are R-$$$. Education level varies between 120-160 for the various age groups. My goal is to reduce the poor people in this city to an absolute minimum and not to create a multimillion population city (but if that's what happens as a result of what I do, then I'm happy for it). What should I do?

I'm thinking of doing the same with CS-$$ as with my other progressive taxation schemes. Really, CS-$$ and CS-$$$ are all pretty bad when it comes to poor sims, so ideally, I'd do away with all of them, but I'm still unsure if it's possible to get rid of all CS and have only CO or I-HT. Opinions? Has anyone tried doing this as well? A side question I'd like to ask is... if I make a fully HT city, will the cities connected to it suffer from a massive HT demand decline, or is it possible for the side cities to follow the same path AND still help each other promote HT?

[Livin in Sim 83]

Interesting...so your main goal is to have only CO, and I-HT for employers region wide?  This may unbalance the simulator a bit.  You will need some R$.  CO$$ especially uses a fair amount of highly eductated R$, 67%.  You can take a look at this link if you haven't already to see the percentages for everything.  I think you need to register for SC4Devotion to see this section.

I've found that demand is susceptible to plummet if enough R$ aren't present in the region.  But I believe it is CS demand that is most affected by low numbers of R$.  So if you want to get rid of CS, this may actually help.  I just doubt if CO will have enough demand to flourish without some R$.  This will affect R$$ and R$$$ as well.

And I'm afraid I don't know for sure if the neighboring cities of all I-HT will have low demand as well, but it is a good possibility, since demand affects next door neighbors the most.  Perhaps someone who has done this can tell us.

[SC4BOY 20]

It isn't necessary really to restrict low ($) levels.. they are self-limiting as they are rapidly replaced by $$ and $$$ levels.. in fact that element can be quite annoying.. maintaining adequate levels of $ is critical to proper function of a region.

[Cyrilix 0]

Well, let's just put it this way. There is some "hidden element" which seems to dislike what I'm doing. Theoretically, if it were as simple as "these are the jobs, now fill in my population", then it would be possible to do what I'm doing. For instance, tax all the industries you don't like, then allocate people as desired towards whatever industries exist. BUT, what ends up happening is the R$$$ and R$$ come in too quickly and then they don't have a job, so they leave, then they come back and don't have a job, so leave. This fluctuation is very intense, and will leave a big part of your city in "degradation" state, what I call the effect of a R$$$ property losing value to a R$$ or R$ property. Also, your RCI meter for all residential types will fluctuate back and forth massively as huge buildings with 1000-3000 populating buildings switch from being populated to unpopulated. It's almost as if commercial and residential development in the region has to be balanced for all wealth types

The only way that I've found to stabilize this is to create a separate city (or a separate area) that has the necessary wealth types. All this is to say that you can't make an assumption on SimWorld (ie., the areas not covered by your region) that they will somehow supply the remaining industries. From having created many cities, all of which ended up in this roundabout death economy after a certain stage, I'm pretty certain of my findings and have now resorted to optimizing my regions.