France to release a balance-the-national-budget video game
So, taxpayer. Sick of watching your federal politicians dig the country deeper and deeper into debt? Ever think you could balance the budget, if only they'd hand the reins over to you?
If you lived in France, you could find out for yourself -- because the finance minister, Jean-François Copé, is about to release an online video game that challenges you to design France's federal budget, and drag the country back into the black. It's called Cyberbudget, and it's supposed to come out any day now. As Copé told The Guardian:
"The idea is that when we cut taxes, we can't do it without creating deficits," Mr Copé told France 2 Television. "In this game each French person can pretend they are the budget minister and make decisions to understand how much each [ministry's] budget costs -- education spending, military spending, how it's all organised -- and see what kind of decision we can make when we want to cut taxes."
I love it! Why doesn't the US government do the same thing? Then everyone could compare their budgets online, or even vote for their favorite one.
Of course, this description of SimFrance elides the fact that you could never create a sim that would satisfy all political stripes. Budget assumptions are notoriously ideological. Libertarians would argue that massively detaxing capital gains would produce a blizzard of economic growth; left-wing critics say it only concentrates wealth in the hands of a few rich folks, and ultimately decreases the tax base. Since a game would have to adopt one or the other set of assumptions for its simulation of reality, it would necessarily have an ideological bent.
It reminds me of how Will Wright's Sim City included the rule that when you increase property taxes, it drives businesses away from the city. I remember reading the manual back in the late 90s and thinking hunh? That rule seemed utterly context dependent. In New York, for example, high taxes don't chase any businesses away; they pay astronomically high ones merely for the allure of being located in Manhattan.
(Thanks to Greg for this one!)
Posted by Clive Thompson at May 17, 2006 12:49 AM
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Even in NYC, people think that way about high taxes, though. Even for NYC-specific companies that likely would not exist -- or not in the same way -- anywhere else. Don't you remember that point in the '90s when Giuliani gave incentives to Conde Fucking Nast to stay in the city? As if the New Yorker office would ever move to Hoboken?
So it's certainly ingrained enough of an idea to be a game rule, anyway.
Posted by: MoXmas at May 17, 2006 8:14 AM
Posted by: Pablo Halkyard at May 17, 2006 9:03 AM
MoXmas, sure, NY frequently handed out tax incentives because businesses threatened to leave. But Bloomberg has sharply curtailed that; as an actual business-owner who had a head office in NY for years, he knew that most of these businesses were just fronting. He called their bluff and, sure enough, none of 'em have decamped for New Jersey or Long Island. Turns out that while they whine and whine about their taxes, they so value the cultural capital of being located in Manhattan -- the cachet it imparts to their employees and, probably more imporantly, their clients -- that they stayed.
An economist might argue, quite rightly, that the businesses are simply acting in their financial self-interest by paying high local taxes in NY. Sure, you pay a lot up front to The Man; but you more than recoup it via the extreme efficiencies of everyday commerce (due to Manhattan's tightly packed nature) and intangible (if often laughable) Q factor that comes from being physically located here.
Posted by: Clive at May 17, 2006 12:08 PM
Pablo, very cool!! What sort of budgets did people produce with that game?
Posted by: Clive at May 17, 2006 12:09 PM
My French has gone considerably downhill since high school, so I'm not sure how much detail France's sim gets into, but's it's not the first one.
A non-profit group in California produced an online budget sim for that state.
I've also worked on one my department is producing for our provincial government. As you said, there's definitely an ideological bent. It's subtle, but someone who is savvy would notice it in the fiscal assumptions and options given to users, along with the consequences for those decisions.
Posted by: Dusty Bear at May 17, 2006 4:13 PM
Hmm, my link to the California sim didn't work. Must have screwed it up.
The url is www.next-ten.org
Posted by: Dusty Bear at May 17, 2006 4:15 PM
Ah, thanks for all this!
I'd suspected other governments would tried this. Interesting to hear about the ideological budget assumptions, Dusty Bear ...
Posted by: Clive at May 17, 2006 5:14 PM
It has been an interesting exercise, even a struggle at times. We try to keep it as non-partisan as possible, say when explaining the pros and cons of cutting or raising various taxes.
Still, by its very nature, it reflects the policies of the current government. For instance, the user doesn't have the option to nationalize the oil industry.
Posted by: Dusty Bear at May 18, 2006 12:09 PM
Just a small precision: JF Copé is the buget minister and not the finance one (Thierry Breton ex CEO of France Telecom is)
Posted by: Nicolas Toper at May 19, 2006 4:45 PM
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Even in NYC, people think that way about high taxes, though. Even for NYC-specific companies that likely would not exist -- or not in the same way -- anywhere else. Don't you remember that point in the '90s when Giuliani gave incentives to Conde Fucking Nast to stay in the city? As if the New Yorker office would ever move to Hoboken?
So it's certainly ingrained enough of an idea to be a game rule, anyway.
Posted by: MoXmas
at May 17, 2006 8:14 AM
Hungary has tried something similiar:
http://www.pestiside.hu/archives/online_game_gives_points_for_zapping_greedy_hungo_yuppies001779.php
Posted by: Pablo Halkyard at May 17, 2006 9:03 AM
MoXmas, sure, NY frequently handed out tax incentives because businesses threatened to leave. But Bloomberg has sharply curtailed that; as an actual business-owner who had a head office in NY for years, he knew that most of these businesses were just fronting. He called their bluff and, sure enough, none of 'em have decamped for New Jersey or Long Island. Turns out that while they whine and whine about their taxes, they so value the cultural capital of being located in Manhattan -- the cachet it imparts to their employees and, probably more imporantly, their clients -- that they stayed.
An economist might argue, quite rightly, that the businesses are simply acting in their financial self-interest by paying high local taxes in NY. Sure, you pay a lot up front to The Man; but you more than recoup it via the extreme efficiencies of everyday commerce (due to Manhattan's tightly packed nature) and intangible (if often laughable) Q factor that comes from being physically located here.
Posted by: Clive at May 17, 2006 12:08 PM
Pablo, very cool!! What sort of budgets did people produce with that game?
Posted by: Clive at May 17, 2006 12:09 PM
My French has gone considerably downhill since high school, so I'm not sure how much detail France's sim gets into, but's it's not the first one.
A non-profit group in California produced an online budget sim for that state.
I've also worked on one my department is producing for our provincial government. As you said, there's definitely an ideological bent. It's subtle, but someone who is savvy would notice it in the fiscal assumptions and options given to users, along with the consequences for those decisions.
Posted by: Dusty Bear at May 17, 2006 4:13 PM
Hmm, my link to the California sim didn't work. Must have screwed it up.
The url is www.next-ten.org
Posted by: Dusty Bear at May 17, 2006 4:15 PM
Ah, thanks for all this!
I'd suspected other governments would tried this. Interesting to hear about the ideological budget assumptions, Dusty Bear ...
Posted by: Clive at May 17, 2006 5:14 PM
It has been an interesting exercise, even a struggle at times. We try to keep it as non-partisan as possible, say when explaining the pros and cons of cutting or raising various taxes.
Still, by its very nature, it reflects the policies of the current government. For instance, the user doesn't have the option to nationalize the oil industry.
Posted by: Dusty Bear at May 18, 2006 12:09 PM
Just a small precision: JF Copé is the buget minister and not the finance one (Thierry Breton ex CEO of France Telecom is)
Posted by: Nicolas Toper at May 19, 2006 4:45 PM