Economists, scientists, and thinkers have devoted a lot of attention to the study of the nature of human needs, rightly believing that social relations are based on these needs .
Economic needs are internal incentives that encourage the social production of necessary goods, works and services. Needs encourage the use of available useful resources as efficiently as possible. Economic needs also show the attitude of people to the conditions of their activity. They also show the relationships that arise between people in the process of distribution and production of necessary economic goods.
Classification of economic needs:
By subjects:
- Personal (individual), collective, social (food, housing, clothing, social needs for a reasonable leader, a positive psychological climate, good working conditions, recognition in the team. Economic needs of a society are economic growth, a favorable economic climate in the country, and no inflation , deficit, unemployment;
- The needs of enterprises, households, and states that are economic entities (the need for high-quality goods, work and services at low prices, increasing the competitiveness of products, reducing costs, maximizing profits, increasing revenues to the state budget, etc.)
By objects:
- Physiological - due to the fact that a person is a biological being who needs to maintain his life;
- Social - needs for information, communication, education, recognition of merit by society;
- Material - this is the need for services and goods that have a material form;
- Spiritual - needs for creativity, self-improvement, talent development;
- Priority - those that can be satisfied with basic necessities;
- Minor - those that are satisfied with the help of luxury goods;
The economic needs of society and their hierarchy in the life of each person are most clearly depicted in the Maslow pyramid. Economic needs here are arranged as follows (from top to bottom from less important to basic):
- Self-realization
- Respect, recognition by society
- Social (love, friendship, etc.)
- Safety and security
- Physiological
This classification is by far the most universal, since it comes mainly from the biological needs of the species, and is not so influenced by culture and other characters that distinguish people.
Economic needs: classification according to the degree of possibility of their implementation:
Absolute - arise and come to light at the current level of development of technology and science (for example, the demand for mobile phones was impossible several decades ago due to the lack of technical capabilities);
Valid - can be implemented at the current level of science and production;
Solvency - those that a person is able to satisfy with the help of his income. It is these needs that manufacturers are most interested in.
But that is not all. A lot of social needs also take shape historically, they very much depend on cultural and religious characteristics, as well as on climate, geographical conditions, gender, age and other features. So, the needs of people living in different countries, for example, residents of Sweden and Australia or professing a different religion, can radically differ from each other.
An important feature of needs is that they can never be fully satisfied, while the possibilities for meeting them are limited by available resources. After all, man is so arranged that his desires usually exceed the ability to produce goods that satisfy them. On this basis, the law of exaltation of needs was even formed , which says that they increase faster than the production of goods. Even in the year before last, Engel's regularity was noted, which states that with the growth of well-being, the share of costs associated with essential products decreases. In other words, only the smallest part of the income goes to food, while the main expenses are spent on luxury goods.