I'll try to keep this brief: there's way, way too much money in the game. And I'm not talking about credits or sources of income or whatever; I'm simply talking about inflation.

I just robbed a post office and got a message that said "Success! You grabbed yourself $669." If you punch that into an inflation calculator online and set the date to 1930, that works out to almost $10,000 in today's money for one petty crime.

The following site really illustrates what I'm referring to: http://www.paper-dragon.com/1939/priceguide.html

Some highlights: 

This is an era where your average doctor/lawyer was making $3,000-4,000 per year.

A brand new suit/tuxedo would cost $25-32.

A 10 day cruise to Bermuda cost $110. A 2 month cruise to Europe cost a little under $500.

Simply, the amount of money in this game is not remotely realistic. Petty crimes should get you $6, not $600. Your first bodyguard should cost you $500, not $50,000.

What's the rationale for these unrealistic money amounts? To attract new people? I'd argue that serious players who want a Mafia RPG would be more likely to stick around and become a part of the community. The kind of person who'd do a petty crime and say "lol 6 bucks wtf lmao nthx bye!" and never log in again is most likely not going to stick around to become a member of the community. 

So what's the solution? I have no idea how to code things, but I imagine it could be tricky since we'd be dealing with existing money. Is there a way to just move the decimal point two places to the left? Or just add a visual decimal point everywhere you'd see money, even if you don't change the calculation (and remove commas)? If EVERYTHING just gets the decimal point moved over, then I'm hoping there wouldn't be any major disruptions. I'm unsure about the implementation aspect of this, but just sliding things over two places would certainly seem to simplify things. 

There's a famous depression era work where two characters talk about buying a farm for $600. I just made almost half of that by snatching one old lady's purse. According to the lastest stats: 

Total Available Cash In Game: $2,100,000,000 that means an average of $2,621,723 per user (based on 801 users)

With this much money in the game, it all feels like monopoly money.  Lets have a hundred thousand dollars actually mean something. Lets have a million dollars actually impress people. 

Fair points, Squishy, and obviously providing new information from a perspective I'm not familiar with.

The whole "change anything with the money and even a small error could Break Everything" is obviously a big deal. I would slightly dispute the inclusion of the word "tiny" applying to realism, but your larger point that things works correctly should be valued more than realism is a good one. Is there a way to test this without people losing work to the possibility of a rollback? Perhaps on a day like V-Day? (Is that still a thing, where the real game is put on hold?) Or an announced (so that everyone is aware), monitored  trial run for an hour or two at the lowest traffic time for the site?

I somewhat philosophically disagree with the pinball effect thing. Is this a proven psychological thing? If so, I defer to the evidence. Pinball may not be the best metaphor here, since it's a single player game and everybody starts every game from zero. I'd argue that new players finding out that another player has 100 million in the bank would make their efforts seem futile. People might be a bit more excited earning 600 dollars from a petty than 6 dollars- but when the average user has 2 million dollars... it all just seems like monopoly money, entirely disconnected from the world we're supposed to be in. In some ways, I think reducing the amount of money would make it more appreciated. Particularly because it's connecting to the money we're actually using in real life. Who the hell feels differently about 3 million dollars compared to 8 million dollars? I mean, 8 is, so obviously that one is better- but we're talking about numbers that have never impacted my life. Whereas if we're talking about 30,000 to 80,000... well, now we're talking about an expensive car, or a student loan, or X% of a house, or whatever. Someone tips me $20,000 for a street post when I've got a million in the bank... thanks, really appreciate it, but it doesn't feel like it's anything because the number cap is so high. Whereas if I had $10,000 in the bank... hey, $20 is $20! (Especially in the 1930s, where it'd be more like 300 today.) So it not only improves the realism of the game to the 30s, but it also makes the money feel real  because of our own lives. (Apologies to any super rich millionaires who don't understand what I'm referring to here.) 

But again, a rollback would obviously be horrible. I have no idea what goes into testing a change to the game, so I entirely defer to your opinion here. I would never propose that we precisely reconfigure our money to mirror the 1930s, reflecting the fact that each dollar then was worth 14 dollars now... it'd just be too much math and the risk for an error would be huge. But would sliding the decimal point over two places for everything simplify the process so that the risk was close to zero?

And for the record, Squishy, I apologize if this has been suggested before. I tried to find it by searching this forum and couldn't find anything like it. I'm not leaving anything unsaid or unwritten this time around, so I'm just putting it all out there. If no one else has any interest in this, I'll just go back to grumbling in my Scrooge McDuck money pile / dragon hoard.

I'd be curious to see what other people think!

I feel like without explaining the natural cost of things in the 1930s to every new player the 6 dollars on a crime would end up being a huge turn off. Its like "hey you spent all this time robbing a bank, here is a Popsicle for your effort" The average person who pops into this game isn't going to understand the financial difference between then and now, so going with a somewhat rewarding system for now times like it is currently just feels right. I do totally get what your saying as far as it being unrealistic for the 1930s though.