A proposed fix for Cost of Living at higher TLs - Page 3

Stormcrow · 11-29-2018, 05:53 PM

Child labor was pretty much the main reason to have kids in the first place in low TL societies. If you're a farmer, you're putting your kids to work as soon as they can manage it. They cease to be noncontributing dependents.

Fred Brackin · 11-29-2018, 06:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phantasm

What I originally meant was: the GURPS $ was first calculated back in '86 and has remained constant through all four editions even with consistent real world inflation.

That said, I'm not sure about the TL8+ starting wealth levels, since that's where GURPS recalculated a lot going from 3e to 4e. I)

I don't think Gurps did recalculate a lot of things going from 3e to 4e. Thrusting Broadswords remained constant at $600. It's sort of like D&D and its' 15 GP Longsword.

We might actually have seen deflation in sword prices between 1986 and now.

This is what the Gurps $ is all about. Regulating how much adventuring gear adventurers can buy for a given amount of cp spent on Wealth or related Advantages. It's not about simulating non-adventurers paying their bills.

Michael Thayne · 11-29-2018, 08:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Child labor was pretty much the main reason to have kids in the first place in low TL societies. If you're a farmer, you're putting your kids to work as soon as they can manage it. They cease to be noncontributing dependents.

Certainly this was true for farmers. I've heard of kids as young as age two being put to work on farms. I've not heard of such things for townsfolk, though. While apprentices started young by modern standards, you have to be a bit older to be useful in a blacksmith's shop. I'm not certain of this, but my guess is it would've been fairly common for a craftsman to have three or more children who were too young to be useful. Also, I know many medieval and renaissance towns and cities had fairly high literacy rates. (When we talk about TL3, we're also talking about the early renaissance since TL4 officially starts in 1450.) That implies children can't have been spending too much time working.

dcarson · 11-29-2018, 08:45 PM

IIRC age 8 is around the break even point for farmers. You put the kids to work well before that but 8 is when they actually produce a surplus. From then on they're a farmhand you don't have to pay.

Stormcrow · 11-29-2018, 09:02 PM

Are you suggesting that TL3 urban adolescents hung around the house or moped around with their pals, being nothing but a nuisance to their parents who, nonetheless, had to support them?

That's a modern situation. Before the twentieth century kids were made to work as soon as possible. Boys would not always be doing the father's business: they might be fostered or apprenticed.

I'd also suggest that low-TL children aren't necessarily fully qualified dependents either. They need less food and clothing than a working adult. The cost of living of a dependent baby is probably negligible at a low TL. At higher TLs young children require more — doctor visits, schooling, entertainment, etc.

The point is that it's not a simple math problem — it needs context to determine whether a given situation makes sense. I completely agree with what Fred Brackin said: the GURPS system isn't about simulating real economics. Just figure out your income, pay off your cost of living, and use the rest for adventuring expenses. Forget building realism behind it, because you don't actually use that in adventures.

Michael Thayne · 11-29-2018, 09:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Are you suggesting that TL3 urban adolescents hung around the house or moped around with their pals, being nothing but a nuisance to their parents who, nonetheless, had to support them?

That's a modern situation. Before the twentieth century kids were made to work as soon as possible. Boys would not always be doing the father's business: they might be fostered or apprenticed.

I'm not sure of the details, but the sources I've read indicate boys were typically apprenticed at nine or ten at the youngest. Sometimes not until later. Are you suggesting that six year old apprentices were commonplace?

Quote:

I'd also suggest that low-TL children aren't necessarily fully qualified dependents either. They need less food and clothing than a working adult. The cost of living of a dependent baby is probably negligible at a low TL. At higher TLs young children require more — doctor visits, schooling, entertainment, etc.

The point is that it's not a simple math problem — it needs context to determine whether a given situation makes sense. I completely agree with what Fred Brackin said: the GURPS system isn't about simulating real economics. Just figure out your income, pay off your cost of living, and use the rest for adventuring expenses. Forget building realism behind it, because you don't actually use that in adventures.

I don't want an economics simulation. But I'd contend it does matter if allegedly middle-class PCs wind up with an implausible amount of money to blow on adventuring, or if conversely it costs 30 extra points to play a family man because of the high Wealth you need to support a family.

hal · 11-29-2018, 09:45 PM

When talking about GURPS wealth, cost of living, etc - I had to give up on that beast a long long LONG time ago.

Want to play around with some math?

Look at the rules for monthly income. Multiply that value by 12 to get yearly income. Divide that value by 52 weeks in an hour, 40 hours in a week (or simply 2080 hours per year). The resulting "hourly wage" values will surprise you.

If these are "after taxes" and if you presume that taxes against your gross income is about 27% (state and federal taxes combined that is) - then you'd have to multiply the hourly rate by a factor of 1/(1-tax rate) - which in the case of 27% works out to 1/.73 or 1.36986.

So, let's take social status 0, wealth cost 0 income of 2600 per month for TL 8 (taken from page 516 and 517 of GURPS CAMPAIGNS).

2600 x 12/2080 = $15. WooHOO! That's the mandated $15 per hour that we see in the news headlines. But wait, that's after taxes (as one person suggested, so let's adjust that to its gross income level overall) to 15 x 1.3698 or $21.92 an hour

Hell, I never made that much an hour where I live!

In all? I go the simple route:

Cost of living is 85% the income for that given wage grouping. That means then, per GURPS rules where the income range for standard wealth, status 0, at TL 8 is between 2100 to 3600 - the hourly rate works out to...

$12.12 to $20.77 an hour.

Yes, GURPS is supposed to be Generic, and we're not supposed to rigorously apply math and analysis to the GURPS Wealth System. We're supposed to have fun and not spend a whole lot of time figuring out to the penny, what the household budget is supposed to be for our heroes. Did we See Bruce Willis in Die Hard obsessing over whether or not he had enough grocery money - or did we jump into the movie and never once worry about how much he spends on his monthly cost of living?

My own fix is simple: Cost of Living is 85%. If I need to break down the cost for housing, that's 30%. If I need the cost of food - that's 40%. If I need the cost of utilities, service fees for basic cable, phone service etc - that's 15%. Discretionary spending - what is left over after cost of living, is generally free to be used for anything else - like car payments, emergency medical expenses, a trip to the restaurant for your favorite meal on your birthday, really NICE clothing, a night partying at the nightclub etc.

GURPS does not distinguish the cost of living for a married man or for the single man - it is all the same one basic cost.

Anthony · 11-29-2018, 10:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hal

Look at the rules for monthly income. Multiply that value by 12 to get yearly income. Divide that value by 52 weeks in an hour, 40 hours in a week (or simply 2080 hours per year). The resulting "hourly wage" values will surprise you.

Not really. The median pretax household income in the US is currently about $46,000, or an after tax income of $2,800/month, and the median for a single male household is slightly higher. Admittedly that's in 2016, not 2004.

hal · 11-29-2018, 10:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anthony

Not really. The median pretax household income in the US is currently about $46,000, or an after tax income of $2,800/month, and the median for a single male household is slightly higher. Admittedly that's in 2016, not 2004.

And that pre-tax income is for a single earner or two?

hal · 11-29-2018, 11:16 PM

This link will take you to where they discuss buying power (ie cost of living) versus what the median income is by state.

It is kind of interesting when you get right down to it - because they take regions (aka states) as subset of the whole and compare them against each other. Where I live, I (with my wife's income) have never met the Median household income (below it for sure). So what precisely would GURPS term the Median Income for two people working at the level of 60,850 pre tax, or roughly 45,000 after tax? Note this does not include property taxes, gasoline taxes, cigarette taxes (my wife smokes) or anything else as that gets paid by the after tax income. By the time you take out all of the taxes involved in my area, you're looking at a tax rate of about 40 to 45 combined with state and federal taxes%. But we'll skip that, because talking about health insurance costs take even more of a bite out of the income pool - and frankly, I don't think people want to get into THAT depressing aspect for their player characters ;)

Per GURPS, that 45,000 seems like a decent take right? That works out to a touch over 3700 or the upper end of social status 0 wealth level standard. But that's from two people working instead of one (and yes, that's how things work today versus how they worked in the 1960's, 1970's etc. With double the expenses involved with cars, insurance, etc - that eats up even further into our "cost of living" expense.

So, two people each combining their incomes make about half of the 45,000, so call it 22,500 after taxes. That's 1875 per month per person.

Now the fun part is the "buying power" relative to the rest of the nation. NY has an index of 115.3% meaning that instead of 1 dollar being worth 1 dollar where cost of living is concerned, it is relatively speaking, buying only 85% of what on average, the rest of the nation is able to purchase. So, dropping that 1875 by 15% and we get...

1593.75 per month per working adult person. In GURPS terms if it were $1 real world equals $1 GURPS, we'd be called "Struggling income" working double the hours (two people). We won't get into the fun stuff like student loans for a four year college. ;)

Long story short? Trying to use GURPS prices as compared with Real World prices for New York State just does not cut it. A single person making the wages suggested in GURPS CAMPAIGNS page 516-517 is so far beyond what I could have ever earned in real life - that you'd likely have to put me in the struggling wealth category. No biggie, we're not all Yuppies nor are we all welfare recipients. And I largely suspect that we're not going to hear from anyone whose wealth level is beyond comfortable. But, what I have observed in life is this: People tend to spend nearly to their limit, and the really wealthy people either won the parent lottery (Wealthy parents) or they earned it the hard way, by not spending money frivolously and saving it, investing it, etc.

11-29-2018, 05:53 PM	#21
Stormcrow Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Ronkonkoma, NY	Re: A proposed fix for Cost of Living at higher TLs Child labor was pretty much the main reason to have kids in the first place in low TL societies. If you're a farmer, you're putting your kids to work as soon as they can manage it. They cease to be noncontributing dependents.

11-29-2018, 08:45 PM	#24
dcarson Join Date: Mar 2008	Re: A proposed fix for Cost of Living at higher TLs IIRC age 8 is around the break even point for farmers. You put the kids to work well before that but 8 is when they actually produce a surplus. From then on they're a farmhand you don't have to pay.

11-29-2018, 09:02 PM	#25
Stormcrow Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Ronkonkoma, NY	Re: A proposed fix for Cost of Living at higher TLs Are you suggesting that TL3 urban adolescents hung around the house or moped around with their pals, being nothing but a nuisance to their parents who, nonetheless, had to support them? That's a modern situation. Before the twentieth century kids were made to work as soon as possible. Boys would not always be doing the father's business: they might be fostered or apprenticed. I'd also suggest that low-TL children aren't necessarily fully qualified dependents either. They need less food and clothing than a working adult. The cost of living of a dependent baby is probably negligible at a low TL. At higher TLs young children require more — doctor visits, schooling, entertainment, etc. The point is that it's not a simple math problem — it needs context to determine whether a given situation makes sense. I completely agree with what Fred Brackin said: the GURPS system isn't about simulating real economics. Just figure out your income, pay off your cost of living, and use the rest for adventuring expenses. Forget building realism behind it, because you don't actually use that in adventures.

11-29-2018, 09:45 PM	#27
hal Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Buffalo, New York	Re: A proposed fix for Cost of Living at higher TLs When talking about GURPS wealth, cost of living, etc - I had to give up on that beast a long long LONG time ago. Want to play around with some math? Look at the rules for monthly income. Multiply that value by 12 to get yearly income. Divide that value by 52 weeks in an hour, 40 hours in a week (or simply 2080 hours per year). The resulting "hourly wage" values will surprise you. If these are "after taxes" and if you presume that taxes against your gross income is about 27% (state and federal taxes combined that is) - then you'd have to multiply the hourly rate by a factor of 1/(1-tax rate) - which in the case of 27% works out to 1/.73 or 1.36986. So, let's take social status 0, wealth cost 0 income of 2600 per month for TL 8 (taken from page 516 and 517 of GURPS CAMPAIGNS). 2600 x 12/2080 = $15. WooHOO! That's the mandated $15 per hour that we see in the news headlines. But wait, that's after taxes (as one person suggested, so let's adjust that to its gross income level overall) to 15 x 1.3698 or $21.92 an hour Hell, I never made that much an hour where I live! In all? I go the simple route: Cost of living is 85% the income for that given wage grouping. That means then, per GURPS rules where the income range for standard wealth, status 0, at TL 8 is between 2100 to 3600 - the hourly rate works out to... $12.12 to $20.77 an hour. Yes, GURPS is supposed to be Generic, and we're not supposed to rigorously apply math and analysis to the GURPS Wealth System. We're supposed to have fun and not spend a whole lot of time figuring out to the penny, what the household budget is supposed to be for our heroes. Did we See Bruce Willis in Die Hard obsessing over whether or not he had enough grocery money - or did we jump into the movie and never once worry about how much he spends on his monthly cost of living? My own fix is simple: Cost of Living is 85%. If I need to break down the cost for housing, that's 30%. If I need the cost of food - that's 40%. If I need the cost of utilities, service fees for basic cable, phone service etc - that's 15%. Discretionary spending - what is left over after cost of living, is generally free to be used for anything else - like car payments, emergency medical expenses, a trip to the restaurant for your favorite meal on your birthday, really NICE clothing, a night partying at the nightclub etc. GURPS does not distinguish the cost of living for a married man or for the single man - it is all the same one basic cost.

11-29-2018, 11:16 PM	#30
hal Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Buffalo, New York	Re: A proposed fix for Cost of Living at higher TLs This link will take you to where they discuss buying power (ie cost of living) versus what the median income is by state. It is kind of interesting when you get right down to it - because they take regions (aka states) as subset of the whole and compare them against each other. Where I live, I (with my wife's income) have never met the Median household income (below it for sure). So what precisely would GURPS term the Median Income for two people working at the level of 60,850 pre tax, or roughly 45,000 after tax? Note this does not include property taxes, gasoline taxes, cigarette taxes (my wife smokes) or anything else as that gets paid by the after tax income. By the time you take out all of the taxes involved in my area, you're looking at a tax rate of about 40 to 45 combined with state and federal taxes%. But we'll skip that, because talking about health insurance costs take even more of a bite out of the income pool - and frankly, I don't think people want to get into THAT depressing aspect for their player characters ;) Per GURPS, that 45,000 seems like a decent take right? That works out to a touch over 3700 or the upper end of social status 0 wealth level standard. But that's from two people working instead of one (and yes, that's how things work today versus how they worked in the 1960's, 1970's etc. With double the expenses involved with cars, insurance, etc - that eats up even further into our "cost of living" expense. So, two people each combining their incomes make about half of the 45,000, so call it 22,500 after taxes. That's 1875 per month per person. Now the fun part is the "buying power" relative to the rest of the nation. NY has an index of 115.3% meaning that instead of 1 dollar being worth 1 dollar where cost of living is concerned, it is relatively speaking, buying only 85% of what on average, the rest of the nation is able to purchase. So, dropping that 1875 by 15% and we get... 1593.75 per month per working adult person. In GURPS terms if it were $1 real world equals $1 GURPS, we'd be called "Struggling income" working double the hours (two people). We won't get into the fun stuff like student loans for a four year college. ;) Long story short? Trying to use GURPS prices as compared with Real World prices for New York State just does not cut it. A single person making the wages suggested in GURPS CAMPAIGNS page 516-517 is so far beyond what I could have ever earned in real life - that you'd likely have to put me in the struggling wealth category. No biggie, we're not all Yuppies nor are we all welfare recipients. And I largely suspect that we're not going to hear from anyone whose wealth level is beyond comfortable. But, what I have observed in life is this: People tend to spend nearly to their limit, and the really wealthy people either won the parent lottery (Wealthy parents) or they earned it the hard way, by not spending money frivolously and saving it, investing it, etc.