unforum

[POTUS]

If a subscription to the Sentinel costs 2350 Lecks / year and my city's paper costs $135 / year (delivered), that's 20:1 Dollars to Lecks.

See what happens when you put a warmongering business failure into the White House!

Anyway. Forty billion seemed like a lot of cash for a city smaller than New York. But in my money it's 800 Billion, which is more than the USA will spend on Iraq in 10 years.

There is a lot of corruption in Perplex City methinks. ALOT.

{Edit: bad math]

[leakingpen]

you goofed up your math. if 2350 lecks to 135 dollars, then 40 billion lecks is equivilant to $229,787,234.00. and this is a city state with a standing army and the possibility of actual warfare. and... weve already spent nearly 812 billion on iraq.

[Violet]

The question is... this budget is to defend against what? There doesn't seem to be a world outside Perplexcity mentioned, and the article talks about internal defense against crime and such, but leaves out any specifics.

[POTUS]

Thanks leakingpen! You're absolutely right. I was angry when I thought of that!

My conversion to American dollars should have read: 17.4 dollars = 1 Leck, based on the rate my city charges for its newspaper.

The PMs are writing in a definite British English, it MAY follow that their usage of a billion is a different integer than I consider it to be. An "American billion" is to some people smaller than a "British billion".

1,000,000,000
1,000,000,000,000

This could have come out to 696.29B (US). Which is a far cry from 800, but still a phat pile o' ca$h.

I don't know if 696,000,000,000 (AB) is going to get spent defending NY. NY. It seems like and incredible amount. So I think they are highly-miltarized. Or they are crooks!

***We don't know if it is a single year budget or a multi-year plan, but elections are later this year and the calendar year just changed.

Commander Sui is not playing with toy soldiers as we're told and that seems more a reference to his weapons than his goofing off. I think they may be at war too - maybe they plunder the worlds they find with their cube weapon!

[they'realloutogetme]

Anybody tried asking Scarlett or the Sentinel about other cities/places? They have a foreign affairs section, there must be other locations. Might also want to ask how government works, and he acadamy's (and cubes?) role in government. (or cubes role in culture/society.) AAAAGG! so many questions, and the answers will just make more questions! I love this game!

[tanner]

these days our billions are the same

1000000000

it was a sad loss to to devalue the billion to one thousanth of its value but it was a needed sacrifice for international harmony

[leakingpen]

you are still doing your math wrong. 17 lecks equals one dollar, not vice versa...

[Kleitophon]

This is an extremely enlightening article for several reasons.

1.) This shows that PPC has an extensively large military. However, this could lead to two conclusions: either PPC spends a significantly larger portion of budget towards it's military than we do, or the city is Immense in size, approaching a city of 100s of million people.
I would assume the latter due to the fact that there are several mayors of different parts of PPC as show in "Gladstone Mayor Under Fire" article. Gladstone seems like a city within a city, similar to the boroughs of NYC.

2.) Even more evidence for PPC being a police state is found within this article as well. In our own culture (In America at least), the Pentagon is not even allowed to engage in domestic police actions except in the most extreme circumstances (ie. martial law). It seems their law enforcement and military budgets are one in the same. There is no distinction between foreign and domestic security. This situation is similar to the Eastern Bloc during the cold war.

3) Finally, we find that the council is extremely politicized, quite small by our standards (assuming their city council is the size of our councils, not of our legislatures), and politicians in PPC are just as wishy-washy (if not more so).

[POTUS]

leakingpen wrote:

[DogsHead]

[InspJJ]

Circulation of PPC approx 5 million, major but not only paper, if similar to our dailies in UK - Sun has 30% of a 10.5m market with 3 million, our population 55m. Maths never my strongpoint but approx 75m would seem large on basis of Council set up etc - even if previous spec about >100% penetration by PPC is correct it is a big city...

Have tried asking Scarlett about various geopolitical stuff, sent her some pretty pictures as a sweetener, still nada....

[Mikeyj]

[Marvin]

[Centipede]

[Violet]