How to increase GDP?

[danhammond58]

I have been investing 20% of my investment points into economy and the GDP is still dropping. Lets take the USA for example. I have maxed out the pips in economy.
That gets me to 20% of the investment points in economy. The only way to increase it more now is to reduce other areas I am investing in like space or military or knowledge. None of which I want to reduce. I have welfare already balanced well. So I am not investing anything in that or unity or spoils. In short I have it optimized I think the best I can and GDP is still dropping every month. What is the secret?

The per capita GDP in the USA was $65,000 at game start now in May of 2027 it is $62,000
And I have been investing 20% into economy since game start. I shudder to think what the per capita GDP would be if I had not invested in economy at all since game start.

And I got inequality fixed which should be reducing the global warming impact on GDP.
So I truly do not get how this works.

[ArcticISAF]

Imo, the US kind of stinks for really raising the GDP of, at least off the bat. In the early game to mid game, after stabilizing with cohesion, I just have it roughly maintaining the GDP. Once you either increase the bonus percent that gets sent to economy, or incorporating other countries in like Mexico, then it gets pretty good.

I think the reason why is that there's the annual global impact to GDP from global warming. Like -2% which you can counter not too badly, but let's say you're improving the per capita amount by 4 points (no bonuses to economy). That's $15.7*4, $62.8 to per capita per month. Times by 12, and that's $754. Your per capita GDP may be around $60,000, so if you're losing 2% each year, then it's a $1200 decline.

But that's before bonuses. The one save in 2032 I have a 78% bonus, 24% set to economy, with 22.4 IP.... but I'll say it's 20%. Bunch of math gives me 8 IP in economy per month. So now I'm putting in $1500 per year, vs the $1200 decline. Also population growth helps bump this up a bit.

[danhammond58]

Yea in may 2027 I am at 21.9 IP and doing 20% of that in economy so about 8 IP in economy per month. My bonus is only 22% at this stage of the game. This is not enough investment into economy to keep it from dropping every month. It seems to me that with this kind of investment into the economy it should be growing not shrinking. It seems very counter intuitive. Like what am I doing wrong?

[ArcticISAF]

So basically you're not doing anything wrong. The mechanics of the game favours population in terms of pure total GDP growth.

I'll lay it out straight. You can either pump in 40% into your economy (as the US) to keep it going, or accept the slow decline for the next few years, focus on the other priorities - and come back later to pump up the economy when you have the bonuses to do so (like I'm rocking 152% right now to economy). Your IP will not diminish significantly in those passing years. I also recommend recalling the army from south korea to save 0.5 IP, and deleting the army in Minneapolis for 1.0 more - some people do not like doing this, and I understand why (IP already invested). I like it because it is not bordering a sea region, so it's a bit more micro-finicky, time delay... anyway. Just an idea.

P.S. The Investment points are per month rather than every two weeks, so 20% is 4.4 IP per month.