I am glad that you are jumping in this with both feet! But I have to add, that you are speaking for yourself (as I am) and not CARE. We have to reach an agreement on the details of the policy that CARE would support - this means the membership at large as well as the 2 RA's (me, Princess). And Princess and I would have to be convinced specifically that the details below would support the goals of the CDS.
[quote="michelmanen":12ra8y21]
1. If we are to establish the CDS citizenship as a fee- rather than landbased citizenship, the fee itself must be non-trivial. I suggest that $4.25 a month is the smallest such amount, since this would buy you a reasonable cup of coffee at Starbucks (venti white chocolate moccha for example). Anything less becomes totally trivial both in terms of contribution to the CDS budget and as an enforcement means for our future judicial system.[/quote:12ra8y21]
Issue #1: Fairness of the citizenship tax set higher than minimum current tier:
While I agree that decoupling the citizenship and tier payments means you have to *think* about what you are paying for and what you are getting. I think your proposal of overcharging tier for small landholders (or non landholders) amounts to a large regressive tax. I do not believe it is justified regardless of your preference for coffee (you could also say it is large since it is 2 days' wage for a worker in Thailand!).
Why regressive:
For large landowners, such a fee is trivial since it applies to tier already - and their tier is higher than that - so decoupled or not, their monthly fee is unchanged.
The amount many CDS residents pay currently is significantly (as a %-age) below that figure - so this tax will have the largest impact on those holding small plots in NFS. This would amount to a regressive tax as it stands today. It isn't a poll tax (equally nasty in my opinion) since the larger landowners total bill remains unchanged.
So ... my point is that I find a government expansion by increasing that total monthly bill on small landholders a non starter. If the government needs more money for projects - an across the board increase would be much more equitable - but I am not sure we need the extra revenue at the moment, which brings me to my second and more important point:
Raising taxes/fees is an entirely separate issue from citizenship - by making the minimum fee larger than many in CDS are currently paying for tier it is rolling in a regressive tax increase, which would need to be addressed separately.
[quote:12ra8y21] 2. The fact that this citizenship fee would entitle all citizens to a 512m2 lot which would still need to be purchased but would not attract extra tier fees doesnt mean all citizens would have to buy up to their limit. Some may choose to own less.... 128m2 or 256,2 or whatever... depending on the size of available lots.[/quote:12ra8y21]
Of course - but with the fees you pay, unless you buy at least 512m^2, your tier fees are up to 4x larger than what you could get in some other SIM and share with 3 other tax refugees.
Essentially we would be abolishing the village of Neufeistadt, and its small, affordable plots, and, frankly, this is a large part of the reason I moved in to NFS. (I use the word "abolish" since the plots are all well below 512m^2)
[quote:12ra8y21] 3. If we are able to revitalise our sims and democratic experiment, we could potentially attract many more landless citizens than available land. Lets say we get another 24 landed citizens with the new sim for a total of 100. Let's also say we get 100 landless citizens ar $.25 a month. This would increase oour budget by $527 US a month - or 6324 a year. With this income we can expland into more sims, better advertise our community and become a more attractive travel destination. In effect, we can begin to DO things we just cannot today. [/quote:12ra8y21]
Michel - realize when you increase total fees, you will be pushing out people as well - we have no idea the elasticity of tier payments vs. residency - I suspect it is high enough that we would have a fairly large group leave - and we would be working against the goals of CARE.
[quote:12ra8y21] 4. A uniform base citizenhip fee creates a more level playing field for all citizens - all will contribute meaningful amounts to the CDS Treasury indepedently of how much land they do - or don't- hold. So theargumentof larger land owners that they pay sio much more than the holder of a 128m2 lot would no longer be valid. [/quote:12ra8y21]
I cannot see how a regressive tax accomplishes this. A large landowner pays a lot into CDS - so the financial interest would remain large.
[quote:12ra8y21]5. This will also help us to deal with any fee increases for both old and new sims.[/quote:12ra8y21]
I do think that at some point we will have to address this, though the older SIMs are on older servers, so the reduced fee is due to lag.
[quote:12ra8y21] I would agree with both a cap on landless citizens at no more than the number of landed citizens, and with a deposit fee equal to the purchase fee of a minimum size lot (now 128m2, but in my proposal 512m2).[/quote:12ra8y21]
In the system you propose, this would be completely unneccesary - since you would then have current citizens having to pay deposits to make up for the fact they don't have 512m^2 in order to be fair.
[quote:12ra8y21]The many advantages of my proposal are clear. The one big disadvatage (for some) is that it dilutes the weight of the "founders". Should this be a reason to voluntarily put such a huge break on our growth? I don't think that's what CARE stands for.. Do you?[/quote:12ra8y21]
I don't see how that would do that? I think this penalizes people owning less than 512m^2, and makes Neufreistadt an economic non starter.
