*Wealth Inequality in the ISFL Episode IV: No New Hope?

[infinitempg]

Wealth Inequality in the ISFL
Episode IV: No New Hope?
Last time: https://forums.sim-football.com/showthre...?tid=24917

As we saw in the real world, the league's rich only got richer during the pandemic. Or at least some of the rich have...

you may have to click on this to make it larger

The overall wealth of the richest 5 users has now exceeded 2 BILLION DOLLARS, with Isa and myself making up a whole billion on our own as the top 2. Tesla is slowly catching up to Isa, who has seemingly stopped writing (for now), while BigRed may get displaced by Steg in due time as BR has stopped making draft graphics.

This top 5 now match a whopping 38.27% of users at the bottom - a growth from our last update in August (37.10%). Overall, there has been a slight strengthening of the "ISFL Middle Class", with the lower classes of creates who never come back staying the same:

• 10%: $2.00M → $2.00M (-)
  
• 25%: $5.00M → $5.00M (-)
  
• 50%: $8.57M → $9.00M (+$0.43M)
  
• 75%: $13.19M → $13.82M (+$0.63M)
  
• 90% $24.70M → $27.27M (+2.57M)
  
• 99%: $114.83M → $122.87M (+8.03M)
  

The gains here, again, are significantly skewed towards the top. How much of this is offset by there being a large, stagnant population at the bottom, I am not entirely sure - but let's consider the changes here to the previous episode. The 50th, 75th, and 90th percentile users were all at a gain of about $1M each, which was fairly even. Now? That even sharing of wealth has disappeared. The 90th percentile now made over 4 times as much money as the 75th percentile, and nearly 6 times as much money as the 50th percentile.

Another way to look at inequality is to compare the mean and median. As every statistics teacher has told their students, the mean can be a misleading measure of the typical member of a population if the population is skewed in one direction. The mean would then also be skewed in that direction, giving the view that the overall population is at the mean when really a few big numbers make it seem that way. The median would actually allow us to see the 50th percentile person for what they are. In the United States in 2018, the mean household income ($90,021/yr) is over $25,000 more than the median household income ($63,179) [source], or about 1.5x the median. Obviously our economy is in a different scale and we're dealing with wealth not income, but this is what the league looks like:

Our mean wealth ($14.755M) is nearly $6M more than the median wealth ($9M), or 1.64x the median. But pay more attention to the x-axis of this image, because I think that's where the important part is - the mean income is at rank 373 (77th percentile) while the median is at rank 831. That is a huge shift!

Let's take a quick look at the users with more than $150M:

Where have these users made their money?

Media-based:

• IsaStarcrossed
  
• Tesla
  
• iStegosauruz
  
• SchwarzNarr
  
• woelkers
  
• Swanty
  

Graphics/Dotts-based:

• Jangorhino
  
• ThunderTitan82
  

Offseason Events-based:

• infinitempg
  
• BigRed1580
  
• Nickyvmlp
  

Head Office-based:

• iStegosauruz
  
• Bex
  
• ADwyer87
  

What does this tell us?

If you want to make big money, write lots of media.

Media by far pays the best per effort - writing 2501 words in an article gets you $4,775,650, and that's not including media grader bonuses and the fairly frequent double media bonus that comes around the draft and otherwise whenever Joe feels like it. Heck, I'm already over 600 words and I've only been writing this article for about 20 minutes.

Graphics, on the other hand, pays out at a maximum of $3M on a subjective scale. I don't actually think that the subjective scale is a problem, but a truly majestic piece of art can take many hours to put together. I've spent hours on graphics which I personally thought were good, to be given a 5/7 ranking and $2M instead.

A 7/7 score ends up being the same worth as a 1,723 word media article, a 5/7 is the same as an 1,189 article, and a 3/7 ($1M) is the same as a 652 word article. Now, a 3/7 graphic is not very time-intensive for an experienced graphics artist, but for many new artists it can also take a long time to reach this score. I'm almost at 800 words at this point in the article - it's been maybe another 2 minutes of typing. Is 25 minutes of typing (not even including the data I had to research for this!) worth the same as an hour or more of graphics work? I don't know. Users are expected to write up 200 words every week regardless for their Point Tasks, and can even write up 1000 words for their Ultimus Week tasks. While it's hard to come up with topics on your own, a little bit of U L T I M U S  W E E K    E F F O R T each week can get you $1,644,000 fresh dollarydoos.

Offseason Events are probably even more of an inefficient money generation method (and yes, I know I'm at #1) - it took a lot of negotiation to get the pay structure that we have today. Each ISFL Draft Card made gets you $500K - I'd say this takes at least as much effort as a 3/7 graphic for the pay of a 2/7 graphic. DSFL Draft Cards get you $100K each - the same as a 1/7 graphic.* Award show renders go for $5M total - given that there's over 20 awards in each show, that evens out to about $250K/render, less than a 2/7.  Events Heads actually make less together ($5M altogether, which Moosey and I split) than other department heads ($7M)^, and then the actual putting-together-of-the-show (which on it's own takes HOURS) sits at $1.25M per show.

*I actually have DSFL Draft Cards monopolized at the moment - and if we're being honest they actually belong as a 1/7 since there's no editing. It is a pain in the ass getting all the images though

^I just talked to Bex and got this fixed

Dotts is arguably also inefficient, as each gfx artist makes $100K per base set card and $1M per specialty card. I think we can all agree the Dotts specialty cards are gorgeous, but they're going at a 3/7 rate.

Being in Head Office is self explanatory - you need to make yourself available many hours a day for the league, putting out fires and planning out the best path forward for the league. $13M a season is about a 7,500 word article, and adding on commissioner pay at $7M is another 5500 words. This is probably fine if we're being honest.

Remember again, graphics rates are way lower than media rates! This means that Dotts and Events are extra-devalued compared to Media.  But let me be clear here...

Media Pay Rates should not go down.

I think giving new users a relatively easy way to make quick money while also getting their name out to GMs is GREAT. A lot of new creates feel pressured to make as much TPE as possible right away, but in order to do that you need monies. New creates can't get jobs very easy, and so media is by far the best way to do that. Heck, Twitter is also a wonderful way to make money as 1 Tweet a day gets you $1M!

What do I propose should happen instead?

1. Raise the upper echelon of graphics pay rates. Make a 4/7 worth $2M (1189 words), 5/7 worth $3M (1723 words), 6/7 worth $4M (2283 words), and 7/7 worth $5M (2637 words). Given the fact that 7/7s are given so rarely anyways, they should be worth the time and effort put into them. This will also further incentivize new users to try and make graphics, as a decent amount of effort (4/7) makes them a good payday.
   
2. Raise the pay of offseason events and Dotts to slightly-below graphics pay rates. This means raising ISFL cards to $1M/card (3/7) awards to $500K/render (2/7), and specialty Dotts cards to $2M/card (4/7). These are repetitive and templated and as such do belong at a lower rate than they would be individually - but the effort should still be rewarded fairly.
   

Now, I definitely think the graphics pay rate should go up - but I would be okay if Events and Dotts didn't. Why? Most of those people already have enough money to sustain themselves, and they will always have a good inflow of work to do to make more money. Having the graphics pay go up would allow new users to make good money in a different way, which should hopefully strengthen the middle class more. Media is always going to be the main way people make money in the league, but allowing graphics to take more of a foothold in the league as a good money-making option even for people with less skill or experience is in my opinion, good. Raising the pay of events and Dotts may only help the rich get richer, which is the opposite of what we want to do.

I've been notified that a lot of the teams aren't updated, so take this with a grain of salt.

Lastly I want to take a quick look at the teams in the league and their wealth:

The Yeti were definitely the richest team for a long, long time, but with myself leaving the team and joining forces with BigRed on the Coyotes, Kansas City has taken over the top spot! What a shocking development for a developmental team (bah dum tss). The Grey Ducks are in third here, richer than 13/14 ISFL teams! This is probably in part due to ThunderTitan having nearly $200M to himself as well as the Grey Ducks having more members than any ISFL or DSFL team. In fact, DSFL teams do pretty well for themselves on this list, with the Luchadores in 4th (also ahead of 13/14 ISFL teams), and Seawolves in 8th (ahead of 11/14 ISFL teams). These are probably due to the high wealth recreates in the last few drafts - so we will see how that carries on in the future.

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STOCK MARKET ADDENDUM

So I was too lazy totally forgot to account for stocks, but I just got that done! There are quite a few interesting additions here. First:

The overall comparison between the wealthiest and least wealthy hasn't changed much, though Jangorhino replaces Steg for the #5 spot thanks to his stock portfolio!

Breakdown of the percentiles:

• 10%: $2.00M → $2.00M (-)
  
• 25%: $5.00M → $5.00M (-)
  
• 50%: $8.57M → $9.00M (+$0.43M)
  
• 75%: $13.19M → $14.00M (+$0.81M)
  
• 90% $24.70M → $28.70M (+4.00M)
  
• 99%: $114.83M → $149.23M (+34.4M)
  

OH MY GOD ITS SO MUCH WORSE

The top 10%'s wealth increased by significantly more, and the top 1% saw a ridiculous 30% increase in wealth! Holy guacamole the stock markets made income inequality so much worse. (I'm sure this line has never been said before.) This is kind of insane, to be honest. I should probably mention that the August numbers don't account for the stock market or not, so that may play some sort of factor here. But, the stock market opened only 2 days prior to that article being published, and at that time, you were limited to only $10M in the stock market.

We have 4 more users to add to the >$150M list: RansackTheUniverse, Laser, Frostbite, and 124715.

Laser has a whopping $155.4M in stocks, over 85% of their personal wealth. Ransack is also well over the 50% mark, with $127M of their $214M in stocks. The only other user near $100M in stocks is OrbitingDeath with $99.76M of their $148.4M in stocks. Now, given that stocks can vary based on team performance, it's a little harder to claim this wealth is stable (I don't know how volatile the stocks get here), but it is clear that there is an enormous amount of wealth in the market. Only 3 more users have over $50M in the market (Duilio05, Frostbite, and dewalt27), all above $95M in total wealth.

The stock market is definitely a rich user's game, and the potential for growth is always present. I don't think it's a good way for a new user to quickly attain wealth though - as in real life, you need a lot of money to make that money make more money. That being said, it's impressive how much money the Casino is holding on to!

Anyways holy cow the inequality

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As usual, you can check out all the data (and find where you are at) here: https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/xm9L6/2/ (it's updated with stock info now!)

I always enjoy writing these up because it gives me an ego boost it's an interesting look at the league at a macroscopic scale. We have a lot of really rich folks here, but for new users - don't feel stressed to catch up all at once! Make as much money as you need or want to, because in the end the league is for your enjoyment, and trying to compete with some of the big money folks in the league will burn you out super fast.

Also pls don't eat me

[slate]

I think your graphics payout suggestions are great, GFX definitely seems like the far less efficient method to make money to me and I basically only do it when I have an idea for a graphic I really want to make for myself. The league money is just a little bit of a bonus.

The team statistics should be taken with a fairly large grain of salt since it appears that there are a large number of bank accounts in the wrong areas. For instance, at least half of the Grey Ducks' top 10 wealthiest users are in fact on different teams now by my count (ThunderTitan and Crodyman on Chicago, Bandit on the Coyotes, Vorshayla on BBB, and ckroyal on San Jose).

Also I would personally like to see this data with stock holdings included as wealth. Some of us have poor liquidity!

[Cheech65]

I knew I was broke but damn...

I'm BROKE.

Good article! Some quality suggestions in there. A GFX pay bump would be amazing!

[.Laser]

I too would like to see stock market wealth included, I have over 150m alone in stocks

[Faded]

DOWN WITH BIG ISFL

WORKERS RISE UP

[Hallmonitor_20]

Tax the rich?

[OrbitingDeath]

90 million if i cashed out stocks today
~50 million in pending graphic payouts
45 million currently in bank

I think in total i could enter the 1 %, not a bad start for still having to play my first isfl game

[Jimi64]

Not sure i trust an article written by the 41st pick in the DSFL draft

[timeconsumer]

I spent all my Cooter money

[Bigred1580]

eat the rich