@Mike,
You are right, there is plenty of room for making up your own economic details, but we do know a bit about the OTU.
1) There is very low productivity growth. TL changes, a good proxy for productivity, take hundreds of years (much slower than Earth's recent experience).
2) There are very low interest rates. Starship loans are below 5%.
3) There is a highly integrated, interdependent intersteller economy. Otherwise the Long Night could not have happened, and the emphasis on trade throughout canon can't be easily explained.
4) Technology does not diffuse hardly at all. Otherwise TL would have converged within the Imperium over its 1000+ year history.
Given those four, we can deduce that the Imperium is a very low growth economy, with what aggregate expansion there is coming from population growth (if any) and incrementally opening up the frontier to exploit new natural resources. One more source for growth could be seeking gains from trade through exploiting differential comparative advantage. This perhaps explains the policy of Imperium to secure space and trade: these are the only material sources of economic growth for the empire.
How much tax does the Imperium raise from each member world? Is taxation in the core sectors the same or different to taxation in the frontier sectors? How are megacorporations taxed?
Taxation details could be used to drive political differences/intrigue in YTU, but probably aren't relevant to the aggregate economic situation. The OP is mostly just interested understanding the strategic setting of the Imperium in the canon.
Does the Imperium actually own whole planets and if so how are they taxed?
I think canon answers that fairly clearly: "The lmperium is best considered to rule the space that separates the stars rather than the worlds themselves. Individual worlds are left to their own devices, providing they pay their taxes, acknowledge the power of the Imperium, and obey the basic laws it promulgates. The lmperium wields power in space, protecting trade, encouraging travel and commerce, and controlling diplomatic relations." (S11 p6).
When you can cheaply harvest the mineral resources of asteroids, use cheap fusion energy and maker technology to manufacture goods at TL15 how does that affect the lesser worlds economies?
That is an interesting question, and every TU that makes sense will have to answer it. If we think TL15 gives us Star Trek-type wealth, that has dramatic implications for the polity. But I think the canon doesn't support that view: TL15 isn't disruptive that way.
I do think that gets to the weakness of the Striker economic rules. They seem to be consistent with B3 data for the average Imperium system, but there is no way that per capita incomes grow linear with TL. I think one could use Striker for everything else (military expenditure, distribution between forces, taxation by Imperium) but not that.
@Ishmael & McPerth
Thanks for the leads. I'll see if I can get a peek at any of those before I drop my $s. Do any of those sources get at how TLs affect income?
