Healthcare alone will blow through that, and not sure where you will draw the line on necessary and unnecessary for that.
People at some point in their lives might be spending a majority of their money on unnecessary items, but eventually, it will catch up to them (and potentially be made up by government subsidies).
Again; you’re missing the bigger point entirely and fixating on specific numbers that I threw out as a quick example.
My point was to dispute this overly simplistic assertion:
>but with the nature of marketing and social pressure, almost no one is willing to make that kind of sacrifice today.
You’re trying very hard to completely miss the broader point and are instead nitpicking something that I didn’t even claim. This is entirely a waste of time.
It’s also why discussion culture has gotten so terrible on the internet, because instead of making obvious assumptions about my intent, people insist on critiquing little irrelevant pieces of it.
I would like you for one day to stop, and each thing you use, break down the supply chain that is necessary to produce each step and part of that product, and then break those products that make each step of that process and so on until all you have is raw materials. It's highly likely you'll give up even before doing that on a very very simple item. But the inner connection between the crap you do need, and the crap you don't need isn't going to look like what you think.
Then I'd like you to do some research on tribes that lived outside of modern technologies. How many of those 'individuals' think of themselves like they are their own little gods, versus how many of them deeply understand they have on the members of their tribe to keep them alive?
So, no, an individual is not paying for train lines and ports from their personal budget. Perhaps there are some people who spend 90%+ of their income on food, shelter, and electricity, but I’m fairly certain that the majority of costs are “unnecessary” consumer goods.