The wage situation needs to be rectified sooner rather than later

[toxicgrunt]

If you don't already know, it's been popping up more and more recently in discussions (not just here, but steam and reddit as well, it is hitting the mainstream) that wage raising in this game is completely altruistic. If capitalists have a profitable business, the workers' wage will continually rise, their SoL will continually go up, your economy will continually go up.

Im not trying to be exaggeratory, but honestly this is a crippling design decision in my eyes. It restricts the game down to extreme basics and completely demolishes nearly all of the internal strife that arose in the industrial revolution. Genuinely, how are you going to simulate the industrial revolution in all its glamour and horrors without wage abuse. How are you going to justify the rise of leftist thought? Literally everyone is perfectly altruistic in this game, you do need to involve yourself in any political changes that took place over the era.

This problem essentially trivializes any changes in economy that people might want to try. There's no reason for minimum wage, the wages are already as high as they can go, it's strictly harmful. There's no need for welfare because all the workers get tons of profits and are consuming machines. There's no need for any left-wing politics at all because all capitalists are altruistic and as the game is being played more and more people are going to start noticing.

On top of that, there is no complexity to diplomacy, ive never used the alliance feature once because all the great powers will just pick a side they want anyways for an obligation. You can't even tell why countries dont want to do something, theyve gone away with EU4 intricate detailings of AI thought in tooltips and replaced it with (X country doesnt want this -100000). People will start to see there's no complexity in government either, because you should strictly only be using the benevolent capitalists to raise wages endlessly. With government and diplomacy in a poor state, what else is there? War? no not that lol. Economy? Well, every country's economic loop is exactly the same. Start the game, make some tools, use the tools to upgrade your buildings, and there you go, youve already snowballed out of control way faster than any AI can manage.

Did wages cause a chain reaction of thought that makes me worried for the game? yeah

 

[straw_man]

wage raising in this game is completely altruistic. If capitalists have a profitable business, the workers' wage will continually rise

Interesting. I wonder if this can be corrected by mods. Seems like it would make the economic game much harder - which would be good, in my opinion.

 

[GrounchoVilla]

Interesting. I wonder if this can be corrected by mods. Seems like it would make the economic game much harder - which would be good, in my opinion.

it would help mitigate the fact that overall demand tracks overall supply too well, so long as you are mindful about producing the right balance of goods

 

[brainiac1530]

It's terrible for both the line-goes-up crowd and the care bears alike. It means that every player does basically the same thing, and for the whole game. Build more of anything, but especially construction sectors and the goods they consume. Government income, wages, demand, and standard of living all flow from this one simple principle. Even reforms follow, because the industries displace or simply overpower the landowner IG and/or the rural folk.

 

[Aupirix]

Wages are currently directly correlated with the productivity of a building - which from game design perspective makes a lot of sense, since that's a mechanism that ensures that most productive industries are the ones keeping the workers when there's a labour shortage, and at the same time automatically creates additional demand as the economy develops. It might be kind of unrealistic though, because there is no actual pressure on the factory to increase workers' wages as long as there is an abundance of potential workforce with low wage expectations and bargaining power.

Assuming there's no government regulations or collective bargaining via labour unions, wages should be set on market level - just as all the consumption, industrial and military goods already are, taking into account both supply and demand. In the early and mid stages of industrialization that would keep wages at low level, as long as there remains huge reserve of peasant pops from subsistence farms.

By the way, another problem that's not really well simulated at the moment, is unemployment. During my ~50hrs of playing Vic3 so far, it's never been an important issue, since pops that lost their jobs almost instantly 'teleported' back to subsistence farms in the countryside.

 

[straw_man]

If a building makes a profit beyond the price of inputs and wages, and the cash reserve is full, where does that money go?

 

[PedroLuiz]

If a building makes a profit beyond the price of inputs and wages, and the cash reserve is full, where does that money go?

in to the capitalist's pocket and into the investment fund

Wages are currently directly correlated with the productivity of a building - which from game design perspective makes a lot of sense, since that's a mechanism that ensures that most productive industries are the ones keeping the workers when there's a labour shortage, and at the same time automatically creates additional demand as the economy develops.

except that by limiting the profitability of buildings the devs have limited the growth of the investment pool massivelly

 

[jaredstanko]

Buildings should be highly reluctant to raise wages past the point of sustainability, sustainability being something like a 20% profit with +15% priced inputs and +0% priced outputs. They should not raise wages past this without laws being passed for it, even if this means they are unable to hire some other industries engineers. In their pursuit of qualified labor buildings raise wages to insanity, then go into a deficit when the market changes

Combine this with better and more interesting labour's movement events and I think the problem is mostly alleviated. But I think the first part would be far simpler to implement and is also far more important. The complexities of wage theft are important but the majority of my industry being unprofitable because the capitalists decided to give away all their earnings is not working for me as a player

 

[Ir0nSlug]

I wholeheartedly agree.

I often end up with no social law what so ever, just because I didn't thought about them. Because my workers are so rich and prices are so low, they are already really happy. And I can mitigate the artificial push by the TU for it. And yes they die, but combined with multiculturalism and migration, I have an endless supply of workers to replace them.

I also agree with what your wrote about diplomacy. Alliances are pretty useless except as a deterrent since they will abandon you anyway. So far, the way I handled diplomacy was by being way stronger than anyone so I could not care about it. I think obligations should simply not be used to call to war, be it by using it or by giving it. It would probably eliminate a lot of weird swaying already.

 

[AomaYple]

I also posted about it

I hope Paradox will improve on this

 

[curtadams]

Yeah, industrializing in this game feels like Silicon Valley and not Dickens. The SOL for the working classes didn't improve in most countries until late in the 19th century because of exactly what you're talking about - as long as there was an endless supply of hungry peasants industrialists only need to offer subsistence wages. The iconic factory of the early part of the Victorian period - an owner becoming fabulously wealthy from workers barely able to survive in the slums - just doesn't happen in this game, and that's a pity.

One possible fix that wouldn't completely solve the problem but might not change things *too* drastically would be to make factories pay wages based on the average of their own profitability and the lowest available income in the state.

 

[Aloraand]

I remember some dev comment that the buildings are an industry consisting of factories that can compete with eachother for workers, which creates pressure to share profits. This seems like a reasonable wage market if supply of labour is equal to demand.

When supply is lower, the buildings themselves raise wages to be able to hire, this is also reasonable.

But high supply of labour currently doesn't seem to lower workers wages, which should definitely make people radicalised and be a downside to migration.

Also what's missing is the consolidation that often results from competition that removes it from the equation i.e. competition causing its own disappearance. The current model represents what happened in Birmingham well, but can't represent the reality of Manchester.

Also peasants needed to be displaced by introduction of capital into agriculture to enter the workforce, so they shouldn't compete for wages.

 

[toxicgrunt]

Buildings should be highly reluctant to raise wages past the point of sustainability, sustainability being something like a 20% profit with +15% priced inputs and +0% priced outputs.

I personally would go even further, I wouldn’t want any building increasing its wages at all if the building can maintain full employment in competition with the other buildings in the state and migration. All extra profits should go to the owners then the applicable investment pool

I often end up with no social law what so ever, just because I didn't thought about them. Because my workers are so rich and prices are so low

Yeah I just did an achievement run on speed 5 (Algeria) and just got the taxation law that gives you free money and women’s rights when the event gave my IG the feminism trait. Didn’t need to do literally anything else because my rich folk were sorting everything out and uplifting the poor

 

[Wizzington]

There are changes to this coming in 1.1 - buildings will only raise wages to prevent major worker radicalization or when trying to compete for labor rather than just going 'we made a bigger profit, everyone gets a raise!'

 

[PedroLuiz]

There are changes to this coming in 1.1 - buildings will only raise wages to prevent major worker radicalization or when trying to compete for labor rather than just going 'we made a bigger profit, everyone gets a raise!'

CAPITALISM IS BACK ON THE MENU BOYS!

 

[Question]

There are changes to this coming in 1.1 - buildings will only raise wages to prevent major worker radicalization or when trying to compete for labor rather than just going 'we made a bigger profit, everyone gets a raise!'

What measures will be taken to ensure that pops will get paid more (to a certain extent) in order to raise their SOL over time as more technologies are researched, unlocking higher tier production methods?

The current system of infinitely rising wages is problematic, but a system where wages never rise except to compete for labor will create additional problems as well, namely that SOL will largely remain stagnant as excess profit isnt distributed to the lower strata (outside of council republics).

 

[Wizzington]

What measures will be taken to ensure that pops will get paid more (to a certain extent) in order to raise their SOL over time as more technologies are researched, unlocking higher tier production methods?

The current system of infinitely rising wages is problematic, but a system where wages never rise except to compete for labor will create additional problems as well, namely that SOL will largely remain stagnant as excess profit isnt distributed to the lower strata (outside of council republics).

Whether buildings raise wages in 1.1 is based on expected standard of living vs the wealth of the workers, so a profitable building will consider raising wages up to a 'target' where they think the workers won't be getting too radical. This target also takes into account factors such as colonial wage modifiers and discrimination, so it's not just that buildings will always hike up wages to an 'acceptable' level, but ultimately what it means is that as Pops get more literate and you unlock more social techs, wages will rise.

 

[MylesSCP]

What measures will be taken to ensure that pops will get paid more (to a certain extent) in order to raise their SOL over time as more technologies are researched, unlocking higher tier production methods?

The current system of infinitely rising wages is problematic, but a system where wages never rise except to compete for labor will create additional problems as well, namely that SOL will largely remain stagnant as excess profit isnt distributed to the lower strata (outside of council republics).

Is that really a problem though? Seems like that's part of the gameplay reason for implementing minimum wages or moving to worker's coop's. The ownership class shouldn't be altruistically raising the SoL of thier workers just because.

Whether buildings raise wages in 1.1 is based on expected standard of living vs the wealth of the workers, so a profitable building will consider raising wages up to a 'target' where they think the workers won't be getting too radical. This target also takes into account factors such as colonial wage modifiers and discrimination, so it's not just that buildings will always hike up wages to an 'acceptable' level, but ultimately what it means is that as Pops get more literate and you unlock more social techs, wages will rise.

This seems like a really good way to go about it. Wages rise to keep workers happy enough to not riot, but not to the point that industries are basically 0 profit.

 

[toxicgrunt]

There are changes to this coming in 1.1 - buildings will only raise wages to prevent major worker radicalization or when trying to compete for labor rather than just going 'we made a bigger profit, everyone gets a raise!'

That’s pretty cool ngl. one of my biggest gripes with the current system

 

[PedroLuiz]

Whether buildings raise wages in 1.1 is based on expected standard of living vs the wealth of the workers, so a profitable building will consider raising wages up to a 'target' where they think the workers won't be getting too radical. This target also takes into account factors such as colonial wage modifiers and discrimination, so it's not just that buildings will always hike up wages to an 'acceptable' level, but ultimately what it means is that as Pops get more literate and you unlock more social techs, wages will rise.

what's the thought behind buildings not allowing pops to radicalize? isn't that what the police and national guard are for?