"Good afternoon kids and welcome to the advanced hacking class. Miss Burn tells me that you are all quick learners and frankly, I have better things to do than sit in a classroom for four hours a week, so I�€™ll just hand your grades to the administrator at the end of term."
A hand shot up at the front of the class. "But Sir, we did this two years ago in Basic Hacking."
"Your disdain for my assignment is noted and I've duly lowered your grade. Now, as I was saying, I'll now split you into to groups and tell you which firms servers your marks are on"

I want to read more.

This is interesting.

-Chrysalis

nah... lowering the grade isn't that big a deal since they're changing them anyway. He'd increase the security around the grades.

Great story!

And I agree, preserve it somewhere other than here too.

And send more!

Tutorsofts are like.. right in the book.

Its obvious that any 'schooling' for poorkids is going to be 'soft based, especially as you can jack them off technonet or whatever.

Oh... Like any good ShadowParent is going to trust a Tutorsoft that came from the CORPS!

I'm sure once the faculty re-writes half of it, they might use them for homework, or perhaps for kids who are unable to attend regular classes.

or perhaps for subjects that they don't have faculty for.

The tutorsofts in SR are extremely powerful with very short horizons to achieving high skill levels, so I can certainly imagine that they would be popular corp or know. To the point where UCAS, CAS, the UK and every other world power would use them as a adjunct or even the primary method of teaching to the 3rd and 4th quartile of the population in terms of wealth.

Those would obviously have to be unbranded.

I don't know. Joey D campaigned with simsense teaching as part of her manifesto and it seemed that people considered it controversial.

It's not possible for them to deliver conventional teaching because they don't have any money.

All the income that you might tax is earnt by people who work in another country (the mega corps). And they are happy to give away land to people who don't pay property taxes (extra territorial corps). So pretty much all the tax payers have fled - corps and medium to high income earners - leaving the UCAS which low income earners to deal with.

So they have no cash to pay teachers, but all these poor people to educate. I'm not sure how else they can do it.

Simple. Over-sized classrooms with understaffed, overworked teachers, insufficient text books, and so on.

We're seeing it now in some areas.

As CanRay said, but toss in: buildings with failing infrastructure, greater emphasis on security (for the staff) than the education, no cultural (music, art) education at all, no support for sports, no food programs (the kind of programs that keep poor kids fed in the morning, for instance), etc. Oh, and of course a healthy dose of, "No one cares about the street scum, just keep them away from civilized people!"

I'm sure a lot of teachers that try to be crusader types will take what they're given and do their best to make a go of it. I'd be willing to bet that those teachers often break the rules behind the backs of the school board (all of whom are likely proxies for various companies) and use teaching materials such as tutorsofts that they're prohibited from using normally, or at least the ones that aren't donated to them by some corp. Those teachers would be the sorts that the shadow schools would like to pick up. In fact, this has been the run I'm working on for my group, it is how they're going to pay their tuition

Pretty much, yeah, SW.

I grew up at the "Welfare School" in Northern Ontario, where everything was lacking as I stated. (At least we weren't serached at the door!).

Luckily, I was gifted enough that I went to the Tech High School, despite it being completely clear across town.

But to employ a teacher you need to actually pay a salary to someone who has a degree, and can presumably make significant money by working for a corp as a teacher at a private school or as a corp trainer.

It wouldn't be like the current situation - without income taxes from the top 20% of earners (megacorp citizens), payroll taxes, property taxes and company taxes (corps again), government budgets would require them to deliver 50-80% of the services on 20-30% of the money. Income taxes from the top 10% alone account for ~50% of the canadian budget, much the same across the world. These people leaving - which they have to work for the corps - would pretty much single handedly end government services across the world (the real reason no-one is ever going to let anyone have any sort of extraterritorial policy ;P)

To extend the classroom teaching model, a teacher would have a class of HUNDREDS at that level. Thats not school, thats lectures, except you don't have tutors to do the 1 to 1 stuff.

Giving everyone and trode net and saying 'welcome to tutorsoft 2.0 virtual teaching' actually has a incremental cost of 25 yens and is basically free by comparison. While its hard to make definitive statements, it seems so much cheaper that you wouldn't bother with actually having a building or teachers or anything for the unsustainable public schools.

Except for Tradition, and the fact that the Megacorporations wants the general populous to stay just rich enough to be a consumer and undereducated.

The less you know about things, the easier it is to twist reality.

So despite the extraterritoriality thing, they volunteer to hand over 35% of net because they have social responsibility? That doesn't really fit with the portrayal as total monsters in every other respect. And all individuals who work for megacorps also donate 40-50% of their income to local government? What the hell?

Note that if the top 25% of income earners left to megacorps, the UCAS couldn't even afford the US military (which they patently have) much less education. That doesn't even consider the effects of the missing company tax.

I was refering to Tradition being the reason to get away from TutorSofts.

But I can see the Corps having a few financial fingers in the Schools. Good for PR, and allows them to spot bright children at a young age, indoctrinate them, and "Give" them scholarships to Universities that indebt them for life.

As for affording a military, how many 3rd-World Countries can't afford a military, yet have one? Hmmmmmmmmm?

I would say companies have different levels of intrusion in schools. High intrusion means that the whole school is one giant advertisement. Low intrusion is often when there is a group of companies sponsoring the school. You see brand-names, but it's not in the curricula. No intrusion means that there are no logos, maybe even a no logo policy.

I would see that outside of beavervilles corps run aptitude tests at secondary grade schools, similar to A levels or SATs. For you to get a corp job or join MIT&T you have to score high enough on your aptitude tests to be awarded a scholarship. The aptitude test measures, mental acuity, intelligence, science, language and general knowledge.

By the way the proper term for a shadow school is a hedge school.

-Chrysalis

It's also worth noting that the SR books are narrated by a bunch of people who understandably distrust the megas. I'm not going to argue that they're saints by any means, but I think shadowtalkers may overstate how bad they are, either by omission or that anything good they do is almost always not run relevant.

Very true, Leofski. The Shadowtalkers are a bunch of Neo-@s, anti-social, anti-government, anti-corporate, anti-everything freaks and weirdos, some of whom are borderline sociopaths. (Some not so borderline! I'm looking at you, Kane!).

Not to mention that they constantly see the worst of what is going on, and rarely see the good things going on. Of course they'll suspect everything!

Well, a third world military is considerably cheaper than the US military. I imagine that significant cost savings can be relised by scrapping all the boats, planes and nuclear weapons, then firing all of the navy, airforce and marines, and then selling all the Tanks, UAVs, NBC gear, radio gear and trucks, and having a military comprised entirely of guys in the back of technicals, but I wouldn't really say that 'dudes in utes' is really in any way comparable to the US army.

But yeah, you could afford the 'dudes in old trucks' with only like, 1% of the current US defense spend.

As for corp schools, well I imagine they run schools for private corp employees, under a scheme like that chrysalis outlines, but I don't see the street sweepers and cleaners qualifying for that stuff causing the problem.

Though both of those tasks are probably automated, so I guess its 'who does it for the kids of the unemployed?'

I'm sure the corps have something for the children of the unemployed... after all, it wouldn't do for some poor, yet heinously smart brat to slip through the cracks and get picked up by the other corps, would it?

Mickle grabs the point for the Unemployed Children...

And I personally see the UCAS Military running on Corporate Military Surplus just like a lot of militaries today run on US and Soviet Surplus.

With some "Donations" from the Megas to curry favour with the Countires in question. Don't forget that Ares is constantly trying to portray itself as "America's Megacorporation" and "One For Mom and Apple Pie" that the UCAS and CAS eat up, a donation of some uniforms, a few crates of rifles, and the rare AFV goes a long way towards that, and can be written off as "PR Budget" easily enough. Especially seeing as said country is now reliant on spare parts for same from the source.

No point for poor kids. Poor kids do consistently score worse on tests that people from rich backgrounds, very low ROI. Sure you might find the next einstien but that is so unlikely that the ROI just isn't there. Plus, if some other corp does, its way cheaper to pay for an extraction team later on

The exception is mages, because that is extremely easy to test for, so you'll yank them out of poor ares later on, once they awaken

As for the military, the hand me downs explanation doesn't fly. They still have the full nuclear arnseal etc in the fluff (which isn;t included in the mian defense budget, some comes ontop of that 20% expenditure) and no-one else does except Ares. if you are going to get them hooked and bill them later you need them to actually have money to bull them.. which they don't. You'd have to cut the US's already dismal health program to less than 10% of its current funding and completely cut social security and cut education to 10% of current funding and then maybe you could afford the defense force to have 10% of current funding.

However, that stuff really only works in 3rd world nations because what they have is seriously cheaper (and miles less effective). A modern military with C&C and stuff is expensive.

I do agree that they could have disbanded the US military as we know it and gone for something more Ethiopian.

Remember the UCAS government really doesn;t have any money at all whatsoever and is running on 20 ot 30%. To achieve that the US would have to cut social security and medicare by 50%, while not running down the trust funds at all in the intervening time, and completely disband all other government services, including education, law enforcement, transportation, justice and military

I don't disagree with any of the above, save for one thing: sports.

We know that major league sports continues into the 2070s. Mostly corp sponsored. However, I seriously doubt the Corps are gonna rely on jsut hte kiddies that pop up in their Corp run schools for their employees. Money will still be funneled to schools to promote a sports program (at least ones that are direct training for the "Pros.")


"The Ares Excellence in Football scholarship goes to Tommy Jones, the most outstanding highschool running back of 2071. We at Ares are proud to support those less fortunate in metahumanity by providing educational benefits to outstanding young achievers. Tommy has won a full scholarship at Ares Tech and will be playing for the Ares Tech Cannons this fall. Also, his school will receive funding as part of our Excellence in Football program. Let's give a hand to our promising young scholar who has done so much not only for himself but for his school."

A young, very large brutish looking orc strides to the podium as the crowd goes wild.

Vlad

Ares will want to recruit top sports players because studies show they are highly effective at things like investment banking.

I see things like 'Megacorps don't pay taxes' and 'Megacorp employees pay taxes to the corp, not the government' and even 'X nation is flat broke' quite a bit, but nobody ever actually provides any quotes.

Very few of the actual Megacorporate facilities are actually considered extraterritorial. The bulk of their holdings are on sovereign soil. The same is true for the residences of the employees of those megacorporations.

I don't recall reading anything about employees not paying taxes to the nation in which they live anywhere in Shadowrun, but it's been a while since I have read the Corporate books. I also don't recall anything about megacorporations having blanket tax immunity either. Extraterritoriality has is benefits, but it also has a few restrictions on how and when it is implemented, and as far as I know, merely claiming AAA status does not mean they are now tax-exempt.

Please ... someone provide quotes to back up these claims.

i'm presuming that extraterritoriality and citizenship of another nation works as it does now. I have not encountered any material in shadowrun that examines the taxation code either way, nor addresses the proporition of facilities that are extraterritorial.

However, for the provisions of the CrashCart etc NOT to go to extraterritorial areas to matter, the majority of areas would have to be extraterritorial, otherwise this would not be an issue in games.

And areas like the Renraku archeology - do seem to be extraterritorial.

Assuming that is the case:

http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&ct=r...MAtHzsbuBK0YM9A

Foreign embassies do not pay property taxes. Presumably, extrateritorial corps do not pay property taxes.

The US federal income tax is an increase case, but if you earn taxation overseas while being an Australia citizen, the oz government has no lien on that money, UNLESS you are an employee of the australian government working overseas, in case they do, but in either case, megacorp employees are immune



For example, a worker working in an MCT facility might be a UCAS resident and then meet the continuous foriegn service requirement. Atlnetatively, you might be a permant resident of a corp and own a holiday house in the 'foriegn country' of the UCAS.

As workers are routinely described as living in corp owned complexes, it is difficult to see why they would be UCAS residents.

The company tax question is actually the least debatable provision. They are DEFINATELY exempt from corp taxation.

Even if very few areas are tax free, it is still quite possible for the corps to 'herd' their tax liability to one place, much like microsoft does today with its tax burden. For example MCT headquaters in <tax free location> may license the MCT brand for 100% of the 'profit' that would be generated by MCT subsidiaries, so they make no money.

I'm just unable to work up a definition of 'extraterritorial' that makes sense given the parameters of 'can have private armies' 'extraterritoriality has a serious impact on things' 'corp citizenship' and 'stills pay full taxation'

You seem to be attributing the bulk (if not all) megacorporate holdings with extraterritoriality. This is not the case though. There are certain requirements that must be met in order for any specific property to qualify for that status.

There is no need for every single facility to have this status though. As a case in point, Stuffer Shacks do not benefit from extraterritoriality, despite being openly owned by Aztechnology. Weapons World is a similar case even though Ares owns it lock, stock and barrel.

You are correct in saying that Renraku Arcology (or at least parts thereof) were considered to be extraterritorial. But that kind of environment is not the sole means in which megacorps operate. Not every employee lives in an arcology, or even in a corp-owned gated community (which may or may not qualify for extraterritoriality). I'm not even sure if the majority of corporate employees do, when considering all the subsidiary companies involved.

Upon hearing a rather loud BOOM from one of the lower classrooms the self-proclaimed head of the school began to run towards the sound. As he rounded the corner the door to Mr. Taylor Nathan Tucker's class opens slowly with both smoke and kids exiting. "Now remember the lesson of the day kids," Mr. "TNT" says from inside the class room. "Short burning chemical fuses look just like long burning chemical fuses. Enjoy your weekend."

Ares wants to recruit top sports players because they are highly effective at winning sports events and selling merchandise and Ares owns the team, advertises at the sporting events and it's GREAT PR.

Vlad

You need many more bankers than you need teir 1 sports players

@Fortune

Fair point. So lets move to your model about extraterritoriality.

Even if only a small percentage of the highest value properties accommodating the top 1% of income earners - A number I feel is very reasonable, this is generally senior management and maybe the top end of middle management - and if AA and AAA corps account for 50% of business profit (not unreasonable either as the megacorps are vast I'm assuming AA and AAA account for pretty much the fortune 200, and is probably on the low side) government budgets would be down about 55% +/- 5%.

So they would be broke, because for the US government to achieve that they would need to cut ALL services except for medicare, social security and debt payments which account for about 53% (and remember they only have somewhere between 50 and 40%) of the federal government budget. Ie they would disband the entire public service and military, and the entire education system.

That is marginally less apocalpytic because they could just cut all social security and medicare and leave everything else, and instead run all their other services which would result in a very shadowrun world I guess.

Debt repayments might well be moot, as the UCAS is not the USA or Canada, but a brand new country. As such, it may not be responsible for past debts. Shrug ... it's happened before.

I have no problem with welfare and Medicare being cut, and have not argued against that particular point.

I fully admit that most, if not all governments will not be as flush with capital or free with spending as they are now. I don't think they will be as destitute as you make it out to be though. With less liberal spending, and the private sector almost totally subsuming research (alleviating that drain on government spending), among other things that I'm sure are there, but because I am not as knowledgeable as I should be on the subject, I would be pulling from my ass, there should be enough to maintain a decent military and even a half-assed basic education system.

Especially with shrewd marketing and sponsorship deals. Recall the little blurbs in the 'ads' Street Sam's Guide and Fields of Fire about who is making what for which army.

I'd be willing to bet that extraterritorial areas are leased from the home government, meaning that at the very least they pay a flat fee for the right to ignore laws. Some states may well follow different models though, for instance the PCC inspects extraterritiorial areas regularly, which suggest either taxation or that certain legal regulations must still be met.

Never forget that governments can still hassle anyone entering or leaving extraterritorial space, with SIN checks, body searches for smuggling etc and as a final move,at least some governments retaiin the right to expel megacorps from their territory, witness the PCC with Aztechnology. So they clearly aren't quite helpless in the relationship.

Remember that only AA and AAA Corporations are Extraterritorial, as well. Smaller businesses still have to pay taxes.

What's your source on that?
My understanding always was that as soon as an AA or AAA label is on a company/facility it is extraterritorial. Stuffer Shack won't be a AA company, nor does it use the label Aztechnology's Stuffer Shack (making it a direct Aztec asset instead of a different company owned by Aztecnology)

I don't see why the big corps would want to pay more taxes than they really need to. They are supposed to be even more monstrous than todays big players, and actually getting those to pay taxes is a huge pain in the ass already without extraterritoriality.

All AAA corps are extraterritorial.

Not all AA corps are extraterritorial. Lone Star is, for instance, and its mentioned in a few places how big a deal that is.

No A corps (that I know of) are extraterritorial.


-paws

I thought the point of fighting to become a AA-Corp was to get extraterritorial status...

Bah, gotta go through those books again. Got to find the NASCAR reference, too.

Corporate Download and Corporate Shadowfiles have a lot of information on this (and I think one of the SotA books), but as I said earlier, it has been a while since I have had access to the Corporate books.

As I understand it, extraterritoriality is location-specific, not an automatic label attached to every single thing AA and above. For a facility or site to qualify for extraterritoriality it needs to be well-delineated as such, and be self-contained, either as a fenced or walled-off compound or an entire floor (or more) of a building. These restrictions are on top of any specific level of corporate activity ... all AAA corporations have extraterritoriality, but I seem to recall that the Corporate Court decides who among the lesser AA's that gain that advantage.

Megacorporate trucks and other shipping vehicles that are both clearly marked and sealed also qualify for extraterritorial status, but only while en-route between facilities.

Ah, so an Ares Truck hauling Bare Metal between an Ares Smelter and an Ares Gun Factory is covered under the "Diplomatic Parcel" law, but an Ares Truck hauling guns from the same Factory to Weapon's World (Which is an Ares Subsidiary, but *NOT* large enough to be Extraterritorial) does not, eh?

Just to make sure I got that right.

And certainly isn't covered under those laws when you're hauling to Wang's Huge Gun.

Actually, I think the truck in the second example would be covered until it reached its destination. The point being that only vehicles actually engaged in legitimate corporate activity (and meeting the other criteria) are considered extraterritorial. Hopping in an Ares semi parked at the side of the road does not automatically mean you have stepped on extraterritorial property in regards to escaping the Star and the like. If I recall correctly, it also means that the Ares truck, once hijacked (and hence no longer engaged in legitimate business practice) no longer qualifies for extraterritoriality until such time as it is reclaimed. Of course, this can get messy, but then again red tape makes the world go round.

Where's Nath? He's the expert on this stuff.

Firstly, coming from a nation that has extraterritoriality: the policies do exist And using those as a reference I would make the guess that income earned on extraterritorial turf would be off-limits to any sort of income taxing. That would mean someone working on a project within an arcology wouldn't be taxed while someone on a different project working off of a non-ET site would. There is plenty of work off-site, especially in such a wireless world. Still, the point remains that education would be shorted significantly, which is why I mentioned corporate sponsorship (as did a few other posters). Yes, it is good corporate policy to spend the money on school-sponsorship. Not only do you get the pick of the litter in terms of potential smarts (despite low test scores, there are smart kids in the ghettos), physical attributes (even if they can't make the sports teams, maybe that big 8th grader would be great for a securtiy gig when he's done with high school) and of course, magicl talent. Plus you get to make some of those feel-good adverts with the sunrise going on and fluffy clouds in the sky and uplifting music playing while the corp tells Johnny Citizen about the good that they're doing and that by purchasing the corp's products they're giving some poor ork kid a chance to read and write. Finally, extraterritoriality in the sixth world probably does include a lot of requirements on behalf of the companies involved, some of that might be monetary, some might be simple requirements. Afterall, if all the government does is outsource everything, you'd think that they'd at least get some corporate contracts to enforce SLAs on the services the outsiders are providing. Failure to meet those SLAs means UCAS drags some evil mega-corp to court to have their ET status suspended, revoked, etc.

Red Tape makes the world go 'round, and is one of the best weapons a 'Runner has that doesn't need ammo!

If this 'hug a poor person' crap actually resulted in effective outcomes for private sector corporations they'd be out there right now sponsoring schools for the extremely poor people in backwaters. Except they don't, much preferring to strike at the university level after someone else has done the hard work.

It would be a huge waste of money and they'd get better ROI by offering uni scholarships to the people who make it. Which they do. It's the role of government - which has no profit motive - to offer schools for the disadvantaged. And they should damn straight do it (and they do, more effectively in some places than others), because it has big whole of society incentives.





Well, if you cut all government spending on social security, health care, agriculture, transport, veterans benefits, pensions, and some other assorted junk (like research and anything to do with regulation of, say, environmental damage), you could keep the military, education, foreign affairs and justice.



I mean, that would completely demolish the government as we know it, and remove all its biggest areas of responsibility aside from defense, but yes it would keep education and the military! Incidentally, not paying for R&D yourself just means you pay for it on the sticker price of guns you pay, but I've assumed you can fully cut it (which you cannot of course)

In my view they'd scale back equally across the board of course, which would mean that the education sector has to deliver for more people with 1/2 to a 1/4 as much money, implying average class sizes to 70 - 140, making tutorsofts the only logical option, but other distorted resolutions to the problem of plummeting revenues are certainly an option.

The number of people would be dying in the streets from things cholera in the proposed 'no healthcare or other services for poor people' model you have posited would certainly lead a dystopian feel. Keeping education probably won't help as they will drop out the first time they get ill - which will happen often as things like measles and mumps will be endemic in the population due to no vaccinations in the slums.

Other effects include business consolidation due to double taxation everyone except AA and AAAs with extraterritoriality only have to have gross profit margins 71% or better than other businesses as well, which will demolish any small businesses in very short order, leading to industry consolidation and further falls in tax revenues which will result in you having to find further fat to cut after disbanding most services completely. They will also attract all the best people as the top levels of AA and AAAs pay no income tax, but everyone else does, resulting in a brain drain to the AA and AAAs with extraterritoriality, improving their advantage further.

I guess at a fundamental level extraterritoriality is a total crock. I sound somewhat combative here, but it's mostly my disgust with how badly thought threw the concept is It really isn't very functionalm which is unfortunate as its essential to the setting.

The concept may very well be poorly conceived, but it is what we have to work with. I am merely trying to find a reasonable way to put the square peg of education into the round hole of the Sixth World as described.

Incidentally, I did not posit ''no healthcare or other services for poor people"! I merely acknowledged that cuts would be seem to be inevitable.

I also have no problem with large classrooms supplemented with tutorsofts, but until your last post I was under the impression you were arguing against their use.

Oh sorry, no, I was saying that given that you'd have to slash spending across the board, you need to come up with innovative education solutions.

That makes tutorsofts inevitable, supplemented by a 'lecture series' teaching model for the entire countries worth of kids at a time delivered by the 'trix. IMHO. I thought that arguement was clearly elucidated in post 58



In which case we both seemingly agree with each other. You could probably even do that quite cheaply if you develop your gear inhouse. It will probably be more efficent to do that than license corp softs on a per seat basis.

Back to the economics.

The problem is that due to your reduced income that if you want to keep anything at modern levels, you pretty much have to completely abolish everything else. Using the conservative model for the changed tax model results in 40% of the current federal budget without considering things like

* The various trusts held by the US will have run out
* The adverse dependant:productive worker ratio is really going to be kicking the US in the teeth by 2070, particularly as orks coming through the system would otherwise reverse that trend are more likely to be sinless and poor. When you consider social welfare programs, the poor are tax netural.
* Consolidation in the business sector thanks to the megacorps.
* The books make out like the middle class is dead. If this is the case the entire system is dead, as poor people don't actually contribute any taxation to the system - they take out every cent as benefits they put in, as the wealthy will 'fly' to megacorp taxen havens, that leaves no-one to actually pay tax and the entire system collapses.

Conversely I'm ignoring state taxes - like sales taxes - and programs they run, like local infrastructure, which may come to your aid, but I think they will actually be worse off because they will loose payroll taxes which is a huge source of revenue.

So saying that the budget is 40% of current levels is a really, really generous estimate. The US has to pay 53% of its federal to maintain its current worst in the OECD healthcare and social safety net.

The US defense force takes over 20% of the current budget once you factor in things like the nuclear arms program. The US spends alot of money sure, but it has capability that no-one else has. You could jettison that capability, but that number isn't going to drop alot unless you cut like hell. Particularly if you keep the nukes and other bling. For example, if you where to cut that to 10%, you'd be down to australian levels of capability, ruling out nukes, nuclear anything, carrier battlegroups (Which are amazingly expensive) and all the other US force projection bling.

Education takes about 8%, and the public education system is again, one of the worst in the OECD.

So what you've got to do is maintain worst in OECD programs on 40% of current funding levels. That makes your unemployment benift about a week long, if that for example. Either you have to slash into the procedures that are covered by medicare, which doesn't help as its really simple programs like vaccinations and dentistry that make the biggest difference, or slash the amount that you pay - and as they are working poor they don't have any money anyway. If you keep the simple stuff you just right off anyone that gets anything resembling a complex disease, creating a cool 'reverse triage' where you kick people who have serious infections, major injuries from a car accident, been assaulted, cancer, heart disease etc out on the street to die like you were dealing with a nuclear explosion except every day.

It would effectively end society as we know it and cause a catastrophic backsliding towards other social models - fedualism for example.

Edit: An intresting counter argument not applicable for the 'many people flee and many sites are extraterritorial' is that you have to provide hugely fewer services. For example, all the assembly workers will fall under the Ares' health scheme, and AresVille needs to build its own damn roads, and you might be able to swing that.

Chaos, carnage, destruction, gangs running the city, crime everywhere, the wealthy megacorporations held in safe and secure bunkered buildings while the rest of the people live in terror of the street monsters, police being underequipped and undersupported, and just general moral decay, in other words.

...

HEY! We just described Cyberpunk!

The dependancy ratio is less of a problem then made out to be. Given the current legislative slide, using the UK as a reference, orks and trolls will almost never claim pensions, while elves and dwarves will speculatively still be working and hence not qualify for state pensions. You only need to worry about human elderly in terms of costs, which provides a significant saving.

I don't think the middle classes have been written out of the setting, in fact looking at books like arcology shutdown I'm pretty sure they're still around in force. The difference is that they are not generally setting relevant. Shadowrun as a game world focuses at the extremes of wealth and poverty within a system, shadowrunners aren't likely to have a huge impact on the lives of the middle classes.

Yup, you can debate if the dependancy ratio is a problem, which is why I'm not really digging into it. I think it will be an issue, but I also subscribe to the belief that ork life spans are shorter in 2070 for the same reason that Australia Aboringial ones are today, because they live in extremely disadvantaged circumstances on average. However either way, orks and trolls being poor and dying early is actually bad rather than good. With their huge birthrate they could make your depenancy ratio AWESOME TASTIC and cause a GDP growth boom similar to irelands recently.

Middleclass: But thats corp ivory towers were they don't pay tax, which is much the same as being removed. It's probably an open question - but if the middle class is still as strong as it is today in say.. norway.. why do we even have such an unstable society? I think they have to have been servely damaged to generate the instability.

Writing out the classic middle class is exactly what SR did (and alot of current nations also manage to accomplish sadly). A decline in education will eventually purge the middle class as the discrepancy between those who are corporation material and those who don't qualify for anything but grunt work is getting bigger.
We can observe this happening at the moment and adding in the brain drain by megacorporations it will get worse.