While I agree there are simpler economic systems out there, the basic thing here is that I wanted an economic system that had some semblance of reality into it.
Specifically: That your SPENDING was not related at all to your INCOME.
The US budget, for instance, has nothing to do with income other than congress's general awareness that the public has an aversion to excessive debt/defitic spending. We have tried to capture that here.
I can tell you right now that regardless of how vocal people become, linking your income with your spending is a non-starter. It isn't going to happen.
However, that said, there is one flaw and two non-optimal issues with the overall economics in the game:
The flaw: Social and Military Spending should be linked as one slider. Factories produce the industrial units they need.
Arguably, if I had it to do it over again, I probably would have eliminated social spending completely and instead had buildings on the planet that employed laborers to construct buildings. But changing that would be a radical change and, in the bigger scheme of things, it's not that significant.
However, in the scope of a 1.x, it could be doable to have a "Guns" vs. "Butter" slider that determines where that factory production goes -- buildings or ships.
Secondly, the labs -- research would be de-linked and would go between 0 and 100% on them as well.
Unused social production would then be transferred to ship production. And if no ships were being built, it woudl simply go back to your treasury.
But while that would be doable in a 1.x type scenario, it wouldn't be a 1.1 version. I twould be more like a 1.5 issue since it would require consideable AI reworking to do it along with significant documentation, play balancing, etc.
But as for the tax slider and the spending slider, no, they won't be joined. Ever.
