In Victoria 1 I was annoyed that in laissez-faire economies populations did not have to pay for medical expenses, their own retirement pensions, ect. This made it so that when reforms were introduced and the player had to crank up taxes there weren't really many benefits unless your population was restless. In the Victoria 1 system if you provided a pop with 5 dollars of social benefits a day, but had to tax them 3 dollars a day to pay for it, their income was simply reduced by 3 dollars a day.
In reality, the 5 dollars the government spends on the pop would be 5 dollars the pop needs to spend on themselves. So if the pop was spending 5 of their own dollars a day on retirement and health insurance and then the government nationalizes social security and health insurance, but has to raise a 3 dollar tax on this pop to pay for it, the pop should actually be making 2 dollars more a day, opposed to the Vicky I system where the pop would be 3 dollars poorer.
Of course the way tax sliders are applied will effect this, so If 3 dollar tax was raised on the middle class, a 7 dollar tax might be applied to the wealthy to pay for the disparity between 5 and 3 dollars. So raising taxes in order to institute social reforms should have the capacity of actually making some pos richer instead of all the populations universally poorer.
In reality, the 5 dollars the government spends on the pop would be 5 dollars the pop needs to spend on themselves. So if the pop was spending 5 of their own dollars a day on retirement and health insurance and then the government nationalizes social security and health insurance, but has to raise a 3 dollar tax on this pop to pay for it, the pop should actually be making 2 dollars more a day, opposed to the Vicky I system where the pop would be 3 dollars poorer.
Of course the way tax sliders are applied will effect this, so If 3 dollar tax was raised on the middle class, a 7 dollar tax might be applied to the wealthy to pay for the disparity between 5 and 3 dollars. So raising taxes in order to institute social reforms should have the capacity of actually making some pos richer instead of all the populations universally poorer.