Cant work out why my economy collapsed

[Isisius]

I went from being +200k while having a full construction queue to -500k. Looking at my budget over the space of a year my welfare payments went from 300k to 1.5 million for some reason.
A number of my industries dont seem to have people working in them. Not sure if the pops lack qualifications or what. I have a level 30 university at one of my spots. Do you need more universities?

Im playing as chili and brought them to number 4 in the world, im at 1932, kind of annoyed my economy has collapsed and i cant figure out why. My welfare, education and healhcare instituions havent changed in over 15 years, ive had a constant influx of immigrants for 30 years since my standard of living is the highest in the world, but neither of those things should have suddenly caused like 20% of my populace to suddenly stop working and go on welfare.

[next]

The reason for not working is because the wages are not enough for them to buy necessities.
High-tech people need more luxuries. You need to see what the population needs and then lower the price of expensive products.

[Isisius]

Is there any intuitive screen to see that? Also my standard of living was the highest in the world for the lower and middle class (yay communisim, eat the rich). So like, there were jobs open, they could earn money by working those jobs, why were they not filling those slots. Even if the wages didnt get them all the necessities (which i feel like they were since the standard of living was so high).

[DinoMight]

Originally posted by Deus vult:

i'm mostly out of my depth with this but the most basic things i'm sure you already know is negative bureaucracy and trade agreements are bad for the player

depends which ones with which country and whose economies you want to enter

for example for mexico trade agreements early are beneficial while your economy is growing, because at the start you will import a lot from british market, which for you, at the start of the game has a bit too high tariffs to be worth it

so if you manage to get a trade agreement with britian, you saved yourself a lot of money

[DinoMight]

how often do you subsidise badly working factories until they are profitable again?

[Isisius]

Originally posted by DinoMight:

how often do you subsidise badly working factories until they are profitable again?

Mostly just my core ones to try and get people making things like steel or glass or paper again so my other industries wouldnt collapse. Still couldnt get people working again and dont know why.

[Isisius]

Originally posted by DinoMight:

Originally posted by Deus vult:

i'm mostly out of my depth with this but the most basic things i'm sure you already know is negative bureaucracy and trade agreements are bad for the player

depends which ones with which country and whose economies you want to enter

for example for mexico trade agreements early are beneficial while your economy is growing, because at the start you will import a lot from british market, which for you, at the start of the game has a bit too high tariffs to be worth it

so if you manage to get a trade agreement with britian, you saved yourself a lot of money

My basic understanding of trade agreements was that they mostly equalize prices between yourself and the country you are trading with. Which can be used to shore up industries where you are producing too much and can let you buy stuff cheap for other industries. It stops you getting the income from tarrifs but makes you more attractive to trade with for the industries in the other countries.

[next]

Originally posted by Isisius:

Is there any intuitive screen to see that? Also my standard of living was the highest in the world for the lower and middle class (yay communisim, eat the rich). So like, there were jobs open, they could earn money by working those jobs, why were they not filling those slots. Even if the wages didnt get them all the necessities (which i feel like they were since the standard of living was so high).

https://youtu.be/mX8e5Fy6skE

[DinoMight]

and yea, building too much construction sectors is the number one reason i see peoples economies drop

btw ive noticed one more thing for some reason, i guess it has to do with their very high building material price (it needs a lot of it) is when you start building government buildings and universities, for the duration of building them, my revenue drops sharply, and the moment that building finishes, it goes back again to normal upkeep when im building economy buildings

[DinoMight]

Originally posted by Isisius:

Originally posted by DinoMight:

depends which ones with which country and whose economies you want to enter

for example for mexico trade agreements early are beneficial while your economy is growing, because at the start you will import a lot from british market, which for you, at the start of the game has a bit too high tariffs to be worth it

so if you manage to get a trade agreement with britian, you saved yourself a lot of money

My basic understanding of trade agreements was that they mostly equalize prices between yourself and the country you are trading with. Which can be used to shore up industries where you are producing too much and can let you buy stuff cheap for other industries. It stops you getting the income from tarrifs but makes you more attractive to trade with for the industries in the other countries.

thats one benefit, the other is, like in mexico example, you wont have a lot of things, so you will need to import a lot of stuff, not necessarily in a bulk, but a lot of different goods, which can lead to tariffs accumulating, so as mexico you dont wanna pay that, so you try to get a trade agreement (in this case its britain who is losing on tariffs)

[thuuur1]

Actually the welfare payments are broken if you ask me. If you conquer new land from a country that is less developed then yours, your welfare payments go up. My welfare payments where stable. Went conquering. Grow x5 and my welfare payments went x20… This actually broke my economy. Had to have wages at minimum. Tax at maximum. Now spending 5 million on welfare payments with a national revenue of 8,9 million. It’s now more than 50% to make sure I am not in a deficit I need to downgrade my military. The hegemony victory seems impossible with this mechanic in game, or I should change laws to not have to pay welfare payments (if I could have the chance to do so…) the welfare payments should only count to incorporated states, not the ones that are not incorporated.

[Kogoro]

Originally posted by thuuur1:

Actually the welfare payments are broken if you ask me. If you conquer new land from a country that is less developed then yours, your welfare payments go up. My welfare payments where stable. Went conquering. Grow x5 and my welfare payments went x20… This actually broke my economy. Had to have wages at minimum. Tax at maximum. Now spending 5 million on welfare payments with a national revenue of 8,9 million. It’s now more than 50% to make sure I am not in a deficit I need to downgrade my military. The hegemony victory seems impossible with this mechanic in game, or I should change laws to not have to pay welfare payments (if I could have the chance to do so…) the welfare payments should only count to incorporated states, not the ones that are not incorporated.

While i was up at 3mil in welfare payments i tried to remove welfare payments but my government wasn't keen on it, about 2 years of being in debt the welfare payments starting going down as unemployed people left.

I remember looking at one point and i had 2mil unemployed people i honestly didn't know what to do, i tried building so they could be employed but to make enough jobs for that many people was basically impossible what i could see, and with how the economy was around Europe even if they were employed they would just be fired because most products were doing poorly.

The entirety of Europe had around 40% radicals everywhere because most of them were just being fired from jobs due to under performing materials, it took everything just to keep some of my people employed let alone the 2 mil which i might add were in a single state, the other state i had over 1 mil unemployed.

It just i dunno it seems like towards end game when this happened to me was massively unbalanced.

[Asher]

The only time your pops actually leave the jobs they currently own would be if the buildings become unprofitable so maybe check your market needs, could be some major war causing trade route embargo as you are playing Chile.

[Bibliophylax]

The game economy is broken imo, and is a pain to balance i have a screenshot of Spain importing from France, and then exporting to them almost the same volume for over decades.... There is something wrong with welfare payments too, you really don't know who profits them, also it seems that if the profitability of a building go down then the wage go down and people go away.
If you have a high standard of living then your people will refuse to work everywhere in crisis times until you have high welfare payments, even if their standard of living are way above the average. I think it's what happend Isisius.

[MtvYoloSwag]

Originally posted by thuuur1:

Actually the welfare payments are broken if you ask me. If you conquer new land from a country that is less developed then yours, your welfare payments go up. My welfare payments where stable. Went conquering. Grow x5 and my welfare payments went x20… This actually broke my economy. Had to have wages at minimum. Tax at maximum. Now spending 5 million on welfare payments with a national revenue of 8,9 million. It’s now more than 50% to make sure I am not in a deficit I need to downgrade my military. The hegemony victory seems impossible with this mechanic in game, or I should change laws to not have to pay welfare payments (if I could have the chance to do so…) the welfare payments should only count to incorporated states, not the ones that are not incorporated.

Same, literally broke my game as norway with 20+ wealth on lower strata.
Took over a treaty port, and this game apparently treats this as part of your country.
My standard of living actually broke, was showing "STANDARD_OF_LIVING_ICON_-7" instead of the actual icon and "not applicable" and the lines on chart weren't even on the chart.
When looking at the state details everything was fine, they had like 15 or so and it was improving being a part of me. But I guess the game can't handle drastic change like that.

[Bibliophylax]

lol, unfinished game