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Knowing how much money people need each month in order to survive is a conundrum for many economists. Some people need nearly $1 million dollars per month in order to meet their full person development needs and others can make do with just $50 a month if they have free housing, food, and utilities. In the latter case, the food and housing can be pretty modest as well and the utilities are viewed as bare minimal to almost non existent. However, they are not suffering they only have bare minimal expenses, for example the $50 may be mostly savings and an occasional flavored beverage, a new pair of shoes every few years, and contribution to a celebration or gift, also on a 2-3 year cycle.
Humans were very different in all parts of the world before the 1800s. While the industrial revolution removed many disparities with income, housing, and food supplies; it also created a lot of conflict and animosity. Today, most of those hostilities are gone and none existent but there is still questions about normal life in different countries. Many countries don't have concepts of rent or food purchases, those are free and utilities come with the home. Money is used for what Maslow calls self actualization, or to sell a service or skill to an employer for a time, or as a long term partnership which are limited and not to intrude on home life.
Workers in the U.S. are currently viewed as slave laborers; working and commuting nearly the entire week for what humans in other countries get for free or very low cost. Rent or payment for accomodations, in other countries can be as little as $500 to $600 for a 4-5 bedroom house and as little as $50 for a bedroom with no economic opportunity nearby. At the cost of a 5-6 bedroom home, the economic payment is normally $4k-$5k every 30 to 45 days. And people don't work very long, they grow tired and weary of working all the time and inquire about others that are willing to do their job so they can spend more time with their family.
The U.S. is looked as, like peculiar, a strange place with bizare math formulas used to count the area requirement for basic neccesities; and it seems a lot of people tasked with the responsibility to do so accurately and dilligently lack the required math skills. That's were economic modeling is helping with modernization in the USA, so its population can focus on traditional interests that are good for humanity and civilization such as space travel, natural resource management, technology safety development and use procedure documentation, and medicine.
These things, societal interests, are the main focus in most developed nations, not an hourly wage or cost of rent.
How does economic modeling work? In most advanced nations, economic modeling works through the national census, which is then examined at a regional and finally a local level. Sampling takes place at the local level mostly, because those same data points can be placed within a region to examine the national outlook.
Once a count of people is completed with approximate height, weight, living requirements, based on square feet in the US, utility requirements, and food requirements with food including beverages; then a giant task list can be completed with the labor requirement to grow food, distribute it through stores or restuarants based on the vote of the people, and to run the utilities or escavate for additional energy sources. That is a $0 baseline, just the bare minimum requirements for humans to live like a wild animal with den, food, and beverages. No self actualization yet, and for most people likely zero to low opportunity for socialization.
Socialization takes place when people have extra beyond the bare minimum. Scavenging around for items that can increase the counter, only to drop down to $0 or negative at the end of each month is not an economy. It is considered cruel, inhumane, and definitely underdeveloped.
It goes without saying that socialization, the exchange of ideas, the agreement to form teams and accomplish goals outlined in agreements starts above a $0 baseline. Socialization in ancient times centered around exchanging food and talking, about things that were different in each others world or that were similar and pleasant. If people only have enough for their own food requirements, its difficult for humans to be motivated enough for socialization.
Once the bare basic animal condition habitat is built for the humans in a region, the next step is often to get them to socialize, form families, friendships, go on adventures, and make discoveries. This is where the math gets interesting and economists monitor that $0 baseline. In some years, $0 can be $3,000 a month per person, and in other years, the same amount might be enough for a family of four although its rare costs will remain low in more advanced nations, there are ways to account for different requirements, like needing only $50 per month for full person development.
Disparities in Income People that are construction workers may have different income than people that are teachers. A construction worker may need $50k to $60k in equipment just to be able to go to work every day, plus an expense budget for boots, gloves, and hardhats. In contrast, a grade school teacher may not need more than $1,000 in expenses each year. A chalkboard, some printouts, and a pencil sharpener.
Regardless of the teacher's expenses, the school still needs to pay the teacher enough to live in the area, that $0 baseline. Additionally, a survey of teachers might find that they enjoy going out on fridays, need savings for the Summer months, and that many have families outside of town that they would like to visit for the holidays. The economists may decide that a grade school teacher salary is worth $5k to $6k per month for that specific area and that rent is to be capped for people in that income bracket at $900 to $1,000 per month. Many people expecting a large 2-3 bedroom for the $1100. Taxes paid uniformly and proportionately meaning everyone pays the same percentage of tax and is often a moot point since a competent government can print more money when needed and taxes are used for a different purpose than funding the government, often for community based voting and yearly economic performance overview for an area.
The construction worker in this scenario, might make $8k to $9k a month without a garuantee that will be long term. They each have $50k to $60k in loans, and the loan payments are used for further economic modeling. They have mostly the same desires as the teachers outside of work, even if the interest in activities might be the different, the costs are similar. They also have equipment to replace that function much like replaceable part estimates; gloves, boots, hats, vests and small tools; the larger tools having a longer shelf life.
Even though this economy is different, it still functions similarly and an economic baseline is required. They may have fluctuations in pay, that are hopefully not too drastic, and may receive pay increases and bonuses from time to time depending on the job site. This makes their economy volatile, not because its likely to crash; without it there would be no new homes, business parks, retail centers, or building repairs; but because it fluctuates and must be remodeled more periodically in order to maintain its accuracy.
Overtime geographies gather data on various income economies and all are required to ensure their workers are not falling below that $0 baseline. This allows industries to become self sufficient, and have reports generated on economic performance which accountants can use with other data to decide on further business activity, to wind down, or to give workers an opportunity to rest. When hiring new workers to an industry, its often not just a handful of workers, its usually tens of thousands of workers minimum and for a lot of economists, those are small numbers when compared to training costs and manufacturing costs for clothes, tools and equipment.
Here, humans are fairly self sufficient, self actualized, and the government has plenty of data for printing requirements, for influctuations to the economy, and projections on where economies are likely to fail or at the points were population numbers would require drastic new modeling.
This is combined with local area sampling; grievances are also annotated and documented for inclusion in modeling simulators. The simulators can provide indicators and hypotheticals of what certain areas may look like when a proportion of their area population falls below that $0 baseline. Long term, this prevents advanced nations from falling into a state of developed or underdeveloped and keeps them in a context of setting advanced nation standards.
Disparities in the United States The UN Security Councilis composed of 5 permanent members that includes the United States, and 10 rotating members with a 2 year assignment. The current list can be found in the references section 1 .
The permanent representative of the United States to the United Nations has a Title of Ambassador Extraodanaire and Plenipotentianary to the UN. The current US Representative to the UN is known as the Chargé d'affaires and has a title of Honorable Dorothy Shea in the US and a title of Her Excellency Dorothy Shea at the UN 2, 3, 4, 5.
Economic Modeling normally is focused on SDGs 8, 10, 5, and 1 for work; SDGs 6, 2, 4, 11, 12 for home; and SDGs 3, 1, 13, 14, 15 for government. The rest are philosophical or require regional conversations. SDG 7 for example is being discussed as being built into the rent cost and modeled at the regional level, with energy assessment for over consumption. Justice can vary from place to place and is undergoing modernization 6.
The SDGs often tie into the UDHR, for work based SD goals, the SDGs tie into UDHR art. 23, 24, 25 and UDHR art. 22, 21, 20, and 19. Which gives workers the right to seek jobs or projects that benefit them and make economic sense for them, as well as the right to talk about work conditions and economic requirements for an area to experience full person development which is descrbed in UDHR art 26 7, 8.
For the United States, because it lacks economic modeling that is inherent in most governments9, 10, 11, 12, the current goal is grievances and voting such as there is not enough money in my home to pay for our food and beverage costs 13, 14, 15, 16, 27, 7, 5.
This means, inhabitants will need to be aware of their personal budgets and model what their budgets might look like over 5, 10, 15 or 20 years without accounting for inflation or price increases. Meaning, if prices did not change over the next 25 years, model a personal or household budget at various intervals. Common intervals are currently 6 months to 2 years, 2-3 years, 4-5 years, 5-6 years, 8-10 years, 8-12 years, 10-12 years, 15 years, and more than 20 years. The last parameter is usually, not very detailed for most people; its normal to get less detailed as the modeling nears 25 years.
While all this is going on, and people are documenting and talking about their budget shortfalls with financial counselors; the national government, mostly the US Executive Office, will be working on establishing that $0 baseline nationwide, and creating formulas to make rapid adjustments to industries, economies, regions, and areas that are at risk of falling into an undeveloped status of den, food, and beverages.
A follow up post will provide some data and samples of what specific personal or household budgets may look like and will focus mostly on those data points with a brief overview of how that scales out to a national basic neccesities budget which is a requirement for an economy that supports a flourishing abundance of socialization.
Referenced Publications (not all included in text)
1Current UN Security Council Members
https://main.un.org/securitycouncil/en/content/current-members
2US Representative to the UN
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ambassadors_of_the_United_States_to_the_United_Nations
3Treaty of Paris 1783
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/treaty-of-paris#transcript
4U.S. Constitution art. 1 sec 9 cl. 8
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-9/clause-8/
5UN Participation Act 1945 amend. 2022
(pdf in left navigation, use desktop device)
https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/COMPS-1090
6UN SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals)
https://sdgs.un.org/
7UN UDHR Transcript
https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
8UDHR Web Portal (older website)
https://www.ohchr.org/en/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
9Current Monarchies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_monarchies
10Current Communist States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_communist_states
11UK Commonwealth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Nations
12Overseas France
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_France
13Right to Redress of Grievances 1.8 and 1.10
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/amendment-1/
14Right to Vote; race, color, servitude
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/amendment-15/
15Right to Vote; sex
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/amendment-19/
16Right to Vote; age
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/amendment-26/
17Right to unenumerated rights at time the US Constitution was written
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/amendment-9/