The Essentials
The Utopian Payment Model was designed to assist in paying for essentials and only to the extent that assistance is needed, and that too with some limits. This chapter introduces and discusses at length what an "Essential" is in an ideal society. When thinking about essentials, at the conceptual level, we need to identify the categories of essentials, justify why each of the categories is an essential, identify the kinds of products and services in each category and finally conceptualize what sort of limits should be placed on these broad categories. We will discuss the criteria for identifying the categories of essentials, and we will discuss the specific categories of essentials.
Criteria for Identifying Essentials
Each one of us has different needs. Of all the possible needs that citizens can have, how should we determine which needs are essential? That is, how do we determine the essentials?
Imagine a prison where we confine citizens who violate our laws. People sent to prison are sent to prisons for some time as a punishment for violating some law. Depending on the severity of the violation, the time served in prison could be small, large or until death of the prisoner. This particular discussion is about "how we treat imprisoned citizens and how it relates to treating law-abiding citizens".
If we do not give such prisoners food and water, anyone judging us would call us inhuman. This is because without food and water, the survival of the prisoner is impossible. We also house them in rooms called "prison cells" which protects them from the elements of nature like sun, wind, rain, lightning, wild animals, etc. We also provide prisoners with bed, bedding, clothes, shoes, tooth brushes, toothpaste, soap, water, toilets, showers, etc. If the prison is in a hot desert, then the routine daytime temperatures could soar well above 50 degrees Celsius (or 120 degrees Fahrenheit). If we do not set up air conditioning in this prison to make the temperature closer to normal human body temperature, then anyone judging us would call us inhuman. Similarly, if the prison is set up in a location where routine temperatures are below freezing, then such a prison would need the equipment and energy required for heating. We also provide prisoners healthcare. Maybe the healthcare provided to the prisoners is not the best in our society, but we provide healthcare. We also provide prisoners opportunities to get educated; we provide them books, study material and enable them to earn academic credentials. We do all this because we are not inhuman.
So, if we take such good care of those who have little regard for our laws, we ought to take much better care of all our law-abiding citizens when they need help.
Generally, citizens are law-abiding. That is, they are law-abiding up until such time that they encounter an essential need, and they have financial difficulties in satisfying that essential need. When facing financial difficulties, and in order to satisfy some essential need, if a citizen has no other choice but to break some law, then that violation of the law has some adverse consequences for someone else or the entire society. Moreover, when such a citizen breaks some law, that act causes some injustice, and the society is responsible for remedying such injustices. Remedying injustice requires effort and incurs costs. If we have to imprison the violators, then we will have to bear the cost of the essentials anyway plus some more to ensure that imprisoned citizens do not escape their imprisonment.
When citizens face financial difficulties, we would not want them to resort to breaking the laws and violating other citizen's freedoms and rights in order to satisfy their own essential needs. An ideal society does not want financial difficulties of a citizen in satisfying one's essential needs to become the reason for that citizen to give up on being a law-abiding citizen. Thus, it is the responsibility of the society to help such citizens in their essential needs when these needs cannot be fulfilled by them due to scarcity of wealth.
The things that we provide to prisoners are an easy indicator of what essentials are. We should explicitly classify these things as essential. There will be many categories of essentials, and we need to identify all these categories and place all items that belong to each of those categories in those categories and enable citizens to pay for those essentials using the Utopian Payment Model.
When classifying products and services as essential, we should be more generous to all citizens than we are to prisoners. When citizens commit crime, break laws and when we imprison them, then that imprisonment should reduce the amount of essentials those citizens get and that too substantially.
We will eventually advance our society and human civilization to a point where there will be no crimes committed and there will be no prisoners, and hence no reference point for what should be the bare minimal set of essentials. When we reach such a point in time, then what would be the basis of identifying essentials? While such a time seems a remote possibility right now, when we reach it, we will use the very same humanitarian considerations to identify the essentials.
When classifying products and services as essential, we should not go overboard and classify everything as essential. Beyond the essentials there should be plenty of other things that could be had and citizens should be fully responsible for obtaining those things for themselves.
When classifying products and services as essential, we should exclude any items that seem luxurious. For example, if we include umbrellas as essential, then when a basic umbrella costs say 10 dollars, we should exclude all umbrellas that cost say more than 30 dollars. That ensures that we have correctly identified the essentials and excluded similar products that would be considered luxurious.
Considering the distinction between needs on one hand and desires and luxuries on the other, activities like going to movie theaters, eating out at fine dining restaurants, playing golf at golf clubs, tourism, etc. are not essentials. These are the kinds of things that we desire, we want, but they are not needed as an essential for living.
Identifying Essentials
Based on all these criteria for identifying essentials, there are three broad categories of essentials: living expenses, healthcare and education.
Living Expenses have further subcategories of food, clothing, shelter, and the shelter's maintenance. Each one of these subcategories has plenty of products and services within it.
The subcategory of food should include all raw produce like vegetables, grains, legumes, dairy, poultry, etc. It should include oil, vinegar, salt and spices. It should include prepared foods like bread, pastries and even entire meals. This subcategory can also include packaged dry foods like cookies and pasta noodles, as well as canned foods. To ensure that we do not include luxurious items in this list, we could use the average per pound or per kilogram price of raw produce and if the item being considered is more than four times as expensive as the raw produce, we should exclude it from the subcategory of essential foods.
The subcategory of clothing should include not just basic clothes, but also shoes, jackets, umbrellas, etc.
The subcategory of shelter can be alternately named as housing. Rent is the only item in this subcategory. The average rent paid for housing determines the average cost of having a shelter or housing. Those who own their houses obviously do not pay rent, and hence when determining the average rent, the number of renters rather than the entire population should be the divisor for determining the average. Having a shelter is a need; it is an essential. Owning a house is not an essential, it is a desire. Owning our house is our dream, our want. Owning our house is one of the indicators of a good life. When one does not have enough wealth, one can rent the shelter. When one has sufficient wealth, one can own one's own shelter. When one has plenty of wealth, one can own a shelter commensurate with our desires and available wealth.
The subcategory of maintenance of shelter will include things like electricity, natural gas, heating oil, water, sewage disposal, garbage collection, yard maintenance, etc. While owning a house is certainly a desire, maintaining it is still a necessity. Hence, regardless of the rented or owned nature of the housing, all maintenance costs should be regarded as essentials. Its average will be commensurate with the average wealth and standard of living enjoyed by all citizens.
The category of healthcare includes everything that we consider as healthcare. It is not just a narrow subset, but it will include care of people with severe physical and mental disabilities as well as care for people who cannot continue an independent living, like very old people who need assistance. Healthcare as an essential is discussed in a separate chapter.
The category of education as an essential is also discussed in a separate chapter.
Limits on Paying for Essentials
The living expenses are required in a steady and non-varying quantity throughout life. Hence, there will be limits on paying for living expenses using the Utopian Payment Model. These limits will be closer to the average spending on this category.
Expenses on Education usually occur in the first third of our life. The average spending on education is not representative for a single individual in a single year. Hence, limits for paying for it using the Utopian Payment Model should be higher than those on essentials for living. More on this in a separate chapter.
Expenses on Healthcare usually occur in the last quarter of our life. Hence, limits for paying for it using the Utopian Payment Model should be higher than those for living expenses as well as for education. Moreover, since having good health or being comfortable even in the state of poor health is critical for a good life, the limit on paying for healthcare using the Utopian Payment Model would be much larger. More on this in a separate chapter.
About Living Expenses
The preceding discussion has identified living expenses as a category of products and services and has provided for the reasoning for considering living expenses as essential. Further, it has also indicated the kinds of products and services that should be included in this category.
For living expenses we should create a category, place all the subcategories of food, clothing, shelter, and maintenance of shelter under that top level category. We mark the top level category of living expenses as for essentials. Then we place all products and services that are intended for living expenses under one of the subcategories under the living expenses' category. Now, the Utopian Payment Model can be used to pay for any products and services under this top level category of living expenses.
As per the description in the chapter on the Utopian Payment Model, we will already be tracking all purchases in this category. Based on this tracking, we would know the average annual spending per citizen for items in this category. We use this information to place a limit on spending that is funded by the Utopian Payment Model. This limit could be automatically set, or we could set it by consensus. Perhaps a limit of twice the average spending is appropriate if we consider that two people in a family do all the shopping and spending for living expenses for a family of four people. The limit is intended to make citizens aware that they have the responsibility to use the assistance well and not waste their limit on things that are not truly required for their specific needs.
Once the category is marked as essential and its limit established, the Utopian Payment Model applies to any purchases from that category. When citizens buy products and services in this category, they pay for those items based on their typical wealth and their year-to-date spending for this category and the limit.
Using the Utopian Payment Model to pay for all items that are living expenses solves all the problems that the current Full Price but Subsidized and Rationed payment model attempts to solve. Further, it does not introduce the problems of Full Price but Subsidized and Rationed payment model because it does not place the responsibility of conducting the production and delivery of living expenses in the hands of the government. The government is responsible for accounting and for financing such items for those citizens who are in need of such assistance and to the extent that the citizen needs assistance and that too up to a limit.
Any citizen, who has wealth at or above average wealth, takes care of his or her own living expenses because the Utopian Payment Model does not provide these citizens with any assistance. Any citizen who has less than average wealth, gets assistance from the society for taking care of their living expenses. This help is higher the poorer the citizen is. Thus, every citizen can satisfy his or her living expenses without needing help from any specific individual or their employer.
In order to be independent and self-sufficient, one first needs to be able to bear the living expenses and if that needs help, that help is gladly supplied by society. Providing this help is a better alternative than not providing it and thereby forcing a desperate citizen to choose a solution that solves his or her problem by using means that are not Utopian. When society adopts the Utopian Payment Model for living expenses, society would have a significantly reduced need for prisons.