Magic reduces resource scarcity. Thus I completely agree with Taure regarding the plausibility of an extremely large government, even ignoring the necessity of it, given the reduced emphasis money should have on a magical person's life. Unless you think this scarcity advantage is entirely consumed by the larger government, I think an earlier retirement age would also be reasonable.

Now... I understand that large, difficult global coordination problems do not necessarily get solved very quickly (or at all). However, ignoring solutions to easy problems like comparative advantage between magical/muggle societies seems unlikely. I can understand magical governments being leery of their citizens going to work for muggles. I also don't understand what they can do about it (short of imposing an incredibly strict totalitarian state). Cultural norms could keep the purebloods purely within their society, I suppose, but I can't imagine muggleborns not keeping up with muggle society to the extent that they don't realize there are better job opportunities there.

 

One possibility: double taxation. If a wizard works in the Muggle world he has to pay both Muggle and magical taxes on income.

 

Ok, fair enough, but this still leaves the opportunity for highly-skilled muggleborns to heavily out-compete everybody else (though Hogwarts lacking muggle education could be a way around this). Earning 30k a year after taxes would still be quite a lot, considering the lower prices of essentials (food, etc). Unless you imagine that wizards do take advantage of arbitrage opportunities and sell to muggles when the respective prices shift too far away from each other, in which case prices for magically non-exclusive goods should be pretty much the same in the wizarding and muggle worlds.

 

Going back to Ministry numbers, it suddenly occurred to me that we don't have to rest entirely on speculation:

Ministry support staff -- that is, secretaries, administrators, etc. -- number around 500.

 

Impressive numbers Taure. Like many here, I also think that they are too low. With only 325,000 worldwide, with almos a third in China, things would be too unequal. Small countries would have no magical population. The ideia to give countries traditionally associated with magic a higher percentange of magical people a good one, but I believe we're at 7 billion now, or close enough. An 1,4 million of wizards is more palatable, to say. Although Britain could be the home of a high population, they could be an old population, so less kids compared ro other countries.

About Britain in specific, I think doubling the number of students in Hogwarts for an avarage year would only be logical, conflict time and all. Homeschooling at per cent seems fair. I know that those number stretch cannon, since there are no mention of less kids then usual or empty Common rooms or class rooms, but there are mentions of empty classes right? (Or is it fannon only ?)

There is also somthing that I want to disccuss with you guys here, about how many magical beings there are? We know quite a bit, but only the british ones and veelas. Do ou think anyothers would be possible? And other magical creatures, too few non-european ones.

About the economics, wizards don't seem to need too much money, but such low income, wouldn't make living with muggles or just interacting with them quite taxating ?

 

You also have ridiculously high ratio of employment to population. If we count 45 people per age group, then 69% of the population over 15 is employed. Compare that to countries like UK or USA, where the figure is 57 and 58 respectively (world bank numbers). When you consider that magic simply makes a lot of things unnecessary, you could easily support a lot higher unemployed population in magical Britain than you can in real world UK.

So you could axe half of your ministry workers and get a ratio closer to 50%, or similar to real world France.

 

It would seem that every child is home schooled in canon so thats a home maker for every family with kids.

 

Hagrid is older than McGonagall.

 

Speaking from someone who does know a bit about demography 325,000 wizards world wide and 7650 wizards in Britain is a sufficient number to escape inbreeding being a major problem.

You got to remember this isn't a closed system muggleborns will continue to bring new genetic material into the gene pool and with instantaneous transportation Britain's population size is irrelevant when discussion potential for inbreeding. When its no problem at all to migrate anywhere in the world to find a partner national populations are irrelevant when it comes to breeding and genetic diversity instead you jut need to look at the world population.

I think this is almost the perfect population size for the magical world. A population much larger and you would have to stretch plausibility a bit to far to explain why they haven't been discovered by the muggles yet.

Well that assumes magical and muggle nations are identical which from cannon we know isn’t true. We’ve been given cannon nations already with no muggle counter part with Transylvania and Flanders having their own national Quidditch teams.

 

This was the only bit I particularly disliked, mainly because of the seemingly paltry amount that you end up with for the wealthiest residents (as discussed in other posts).

An alternate way of solving this issue is to simply assume that the wealth of wizarding Britain's elite is extremely illiquid, with the concept of large scale investment being all but unknown.

Given the lack of modern banking and finance, and the very long continuity of the more ancient pure-blood families, it isn't too far fetched to assume that their combined hoarded wealth massively dwarfs the year's domestic product, yet contributes minimally to it (since wealthy wizarding families already have almost everything they need).

 

Isn't Dumbledore referred to as ancient looking quite often, that seems to contradict that a 145 year old wizard looks 65 years old.

 

A long beard can add a century or two to how old you look like. Trust me on this.

 

I only have one major issue with these numbers?

Where does the funds come from to pay for all the Ministry workers?

You cant have over half the population work for the ministry unless the other half earn way more and are taxed like 70%.

I know wizards dont need as much money for day to day things, but if they didnt need money they wouldnt work at all, and if non ministry jobs paid a lot better they would take them.

Unless they have some form of draft to fill ministry jobs no one else wants...

But that still doesnt solve financing. Unless the Ministry of Magic is funded by the muggle government with out them knowing, black hat projects ect.

 

In Taure's canon-verse, they're at least partially self-financed via things like using cursebreakers to find treasure.

 

We know that at least some criminals are not in Azkaban. Also, 150 of 7650 people in prison is really high, even after civil war (especially as significant part of DE avoided prison and their number was quite low - only about 100 people are active police force). To compare: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate#Incarceration_rates (magical UK has 1961 people for 100 000 inhabitants). It is about three times the rate of North Korea or USA!

It is much lower that it is necessary to handle large-scale problems - even assuming that they use time-turners on special occasions. It is probably barely enough to handle typical work (especially as it seems that it is not case of "nobody cares about random Muggles convinced that they are ducks" and there is some kind of real oversight). Maybe there are some emergency teams controlled by ICW to respond to emergencies, maybe there is large scale Fidelius-like magic.

I would suggest setting "Inhabitants of Azkaban" to 50, criminals outside Azkaban to 50 and assigning now free 50 people to ICW controlled Obliviators.

Also - how military works? Are wars limited only to civil ones (why?). Or maybe Aurors/Hitwizards are both police and military? Or maybe Department of Mysteries contains equivalents of nukes? Lame country-sized unbreakable wards? Or maybe Magical country would use Muggle military as puppets in case of international war (at least nukes would be quite effective)?

 

I did read that, but I find that very unsatisfactory, because A, it assumes a never ending and rather constant source of ancient tombs, and if magical population is all corresponding with actual human population, there simply wouldnt be enough ancient tombs. Also the British Ministry of magic wouldnt have authority to go busting into tombs in other states territory.

Also even if there were a massive number of tombs, you cant plan an economy around a system where one year you get a million galleon in hidden treasure and the next you get 45 sickles.

They need a constant, reliable, and large income to support the ministry.

Considering the governments over half the population here, the only way I can see it working is if the muggles fund it, either with out knowing it, or the minsitry has a deal that they take care of certain issues for their revenue IE weather control, the ministry is responsible for keeping the north Atlantic surrent going which is what makes Britain much warmer than it should be for its geographic position.

 

It's actually 48%. Muggle Britain, as a comparison, has 19% of the population working in the public sector.

I think it could work, given the size of the magical economy. I imagine basic goods like food are pretty cheap, and that Ministry salaries are accordingly very small -- salaries which, if converted to Muggle currency, would be absolutely tiny.

I don't think using Muggle funding is a good solution, due to the fact that they use a different currency.

Presumably magical governments have special ways to obliviate large numbers of people at once. They did manage to obliviate the entire world at one point, after all.

Haha, that's a neat idea. I'm loving the idea that the Ministry of Magic has been selling Britain's sunny days on some kind of international weather market.

This is getting into 100% fanon territory, but I've always imagined the Hitwizards as the closest thing the Ministry has to an army. Nowhere near as skilled as the Aurors, but focused entirely on combat. They overwhelm the enemy with numbers and overwhelming force rather than elegant duelling.

 

Thinking about it a way to assure the Ministry always get the staff it needs is by guarantying certain services.

Work for the ministry you get, Free health care at St Mugos, free warding for your property, access to ministry services like the transfiguration squad which can help solo wizards with housing developments ect.

Ensuring that they always have a good supply of averagely talented wizards they can train in a specific field who rely on each other to get by. Backed up by the quote from Fred and George about ministry staff being supplied with shield hats.

So all the best wizards go off into private fields like enchanting or solo business or reserch, and the large majority of average wizards join the ministy co-op.

 

Not a problem: buy gold or anything else valuable in both worlds using Muggle currency, sell this for galleons. I can easily see goblins doing this.