Codes of Living - 13 (Final)

Subsistence Standard and Needs of a Family of Four:

With our twelve-day article series, a standard young family consisting of four people, namely a father, a mother, a child going to primary or secondary school, and a baby who is still in diapers, at the age of breastfeeding, but can also eat food occasionally, will experience the following in Turkey in a month. We tried to find out together how much of an average income he might need in the economic conditions he was in at the moment. Even in this short time, although the daily prices are constantly changing, I think we all have a level in mind.

I can say that I benefited from the experience, manners and knowledge I gained in my own life while determining the standard of living for a middle-class family. In my opinion, the life level of our family in the article is the lowest it should be in order to live humanely. I tried to make the calculation as detailed as possible in order to reach a correct conclusion.

These standard conditions, which are determined by my assumptions, whose details I have written from time to time in the article, may be more for some of us and less for some of us. My goal was to find the average income needed to live as humanly as possible.

Before moving on to the overall assessment of the result, let me clarify some of the assumptions I made at the beginning of the series.

Assumptions or Assumptions:

One of the admissions was that although the young couple were not newlyweds, they made a house with a lump sum withdrawn from the dowry account as if they had just married. Therefore, in our acceptance, our family pays monthly installments on terms of dowry loan, which is not normally available in banks, instead of a dowry account. Please consider this as the monthly expense of a father who has already opened a dowry account for his son, who will soon reach marriageable age, and has started to save money. There is also a certain limit in the state support given to dowry accounts. We calculated as if it would support all expenses. This is my approach and I don't think the margin of error is very high after all. If the maximum support is less, the installments will be slightly higher. However, dowry support is already a very small proportion of the total need.

Another acceptance was that the amount of interest charged on the installments in some purchases made with bank loans was not included in our account. Since the aim is to find the need of the day by taking a slice of life, I preferred to simplify the calculation so that mixed loan interest calculations do not confuse our account. However, everything with great cost that I thought we could buy with credit, that is, the necessary installments for the house and the car that I was planning to buy from the beginning, were too high to be reached even with this hypothetical acceptance, so they could not enter the account anyway. Therefore, the possible error in our preliminary assumption did not change the result. The loans used for some other low-cost items will not affect the income requirement that is already calculated. Our income requirement in the account is high enough.

Let me give you one last bit of information. When I started the account, like you, I did not know what to expect from the beginning. For example, my plan from the beginning was to at least buy a car. But I researched the prices in the article when it was time, and when I calculated the installment amount, I perceived at that moment that it was too high. Usually, by nature, we perceive the subject better only when we pay attention, that's human nature.

Monthly 23,800 TL Income Requirement:

Let's come to the evaluation of the result.

A monthly income of 23,800 lira is a huge amount of money.

Even in the list of civil servant salaries, there is no salary at this level. Even the highest salary, the general manager salary, is 21,330 liras as of January 2022. Salary of a first-class district governor is 19,510 lira. The salary of the superintendent is 11,162 liras. Specialist doctor 13,312 liras. A professor costs 18,369 liras. The maximum teacher salary is 8,668 lira. A university graduate can receive 6,854 liras. The lowest civil servant salary was 6,429 liras. These are public salaries.

I am ashamed to write the pensions of our retirees, those in charge are not ashamed of calculating such low salaries.

The wages of workers in the private sector are even worse. You know, the minimum wage is 5,004 lira. Just over a fifth of our account, 21%.

I do not know how much the monthly wages of those working in various other positions are, but with internet information, night shift wages and contributions from the revolving fund, a specialist doctor could earn a salary of around 16,700 liras. A professor who works hard can earn up to 28,000 liras.

I don't think it needs any further elaboration. Our monthly wages are far below the monthly income requirement that comes out of our substandard account for a family we can call the middle class.

Where will the monthly 23,800 TL come from?

So how can we live under these conditions?

I guess the first remedy is for both parents to work, as in many families. Taking care of children by grandparents. Men also do additional work. Spouses who are housewives, perhaps, do some work at home to contribute to the family budget and make a small contribution to the family budget. If she is a woman with insufficient education or if she has not been able to find a paid job, many women perhaps go to clean houses.

Of course, we also lower our standard of living. We are eating cheaper food. We eat a lot of pasta, we eat more bread, maybe we don't buy red meat at all, maybe we don't buy chicken meat anymore.

Instead of markets, we shop at the market, at the evening market, so that it will be cheaper. If we buy something from the market, we either buy the one on sale or the cheapest. Even though it is prepared with a thousand chemical additives so that it will be cheap, we buy it just because it is cheap, without caring about our health. We care not only about our own health, but also about the health of our children. After that, whether you want a diabetes patient or a cancer patient, a thousand kinds of diseases are rife in the country.

We buy less clothes for our child and ourselves.

We give our child less pocket money, maybe not at all. After that, maybe he steals from his friend at school, and when he grows up, it's full of thieves.

We can't even feed our baby enough, maybe we use an American cloth linoleum as a base and boil the diapers in a cauldron and use them over and over again. Then her rash and crying are not missing, she suffers all day, she has nerves at that age.

We have to reduce the boiler's setting and we sit at home wearing thicker clothes, even if it's cold.

We don't go to the cafe or the cinema. Instead of watching all kinds of broadcasts on the Internet, we watch standard-oriented channels on television all day, because it is free. Therefore, we do not become conscious and become victims of propaganda bombardment.

After that, if we see people complaining about the cost of living in street interviews, we call in and out and show their mobile phone.

Young people who are exposed to this treatment are also chasing an opportunity to flee abroad by saying, "Will I live in this country?" Even our doctors prefer to work abroad when they have the opportunity. Then they try to take their place and manage a doctor who does not speak Turkish properly.

In short, those who stayed in the country are grateful for their situation, as they have heard from the biased channels. If they also gave two sacks of coal and a box of pasta, they say thank God, say Reyis, and say nothing else.

Here are the scenes from Turkey. If I wrote something wrong, say you're wrong, it's not.

However, even the unattainably high monthly income requirement for many of us who are out of account is just $1.375 (dollars) at today's exchange rates. Today's dollar rate that I use to convert is 17 liras and 33 kurus. I hope the internet gave the right rate.

Depreciation of Turkish Currency:

Exactly one month ago, that is, on May 19 of 2022, the exchange rate was 15 liras and 92 kuruş on our national holiday. In other words, our money lost 9% of its value in exactly one month.

The depreciation of our currency means that the price of everything we buy in foreign currency has increased by 9% in Turkish lira. If we have foreign currency debt, it means that the Turkish lira equivalent of our debt has increased at this rate. Since the wages we receive are in Turkish lira, it means that we need to work and produce more as a country in order to be able to pay this price compared to a month ago. There is a limit to a person's maximum physical work capacity. Besides, the cost of labor is no longer as high as it used to be. This means that it is not so easy to repay our debts by working only with muscle power, or in other words, by just shedding a sweat. There is no way to gain a place among world civilizations with such living conditions.

In order to increase the money we earn and increase our welfare level, we must find ways to produce goods with higher added value with less effort. In other words, the solution lies in education, we need to produce what we produce consciously. You have to be able to do what no one else can do. New ideas need to be valued. This is only possible if we give opportunity to young minds.

We need generations of knowledge, not vengeful.

All countries value those who produce ideas for this purpose, they support even the simplest idea. All of them are fighting in a fierce competition in the international market to turn new ideas into profit.

If we have it, if we don't have it, it's reys. The situation that Reyis has brought us is clear, is it even more Reyis? I guess this whole obsession is because we don't eat well, or we need to shave more often like in the joke. We do not know how to use our minds, we cannot use our minds, we do not read. We do not have a proper education anyway, nor do we think of providing proper education to the society.

We live, but we just pretend to live more, just like that, without realizing it.

This situation is very sad indeed, but let me mention one more thing rather than regret.

Medium Mast Cannot Get 23.800 TL Monthly, Consider The Rest:

In today's conditions of Turkey, there is very little group that earns at the monthly income level that comes out in our account. Despite the high cost of living for this high-income group, they don't care about anything and go about their day. The income distribution gap among the people living at the extremes of the country has widened, a large part of the society is low-income, and a very small group is extremely wealthy.

However, our calculation was made on the basis of a standard family, which we can define as the middle pillar. The reality is that those with this income level are in the majority. Of course, there will be those with more or less income, but the number of those deviating from the average is expected to be much less. If there was such a regular income distribution, while the low-income people would be raised to a normal life level with social supports, it would be normal for those who can create opportunities for themselves and earn a lot of income. As in every society, this small high-income group will naturally live in luxury conditions. However, since the difference in income distribution is not so much, the standard of living of the majority of the society will be sufficient for a normal life and there will be peace in general.

The more the scissors open, the more unhealthy our society will be. The main reason for today's polarization and deep turmoil in society is this gap in income levels.

In order to increase the level of welfare, it is necessary to increase our national income, but for peace, a balanced income distribution is essential rather than income.

Ensuring a balanced income distribution is one of the main duties of the state. The state is no longer able to fulfill this duty, as we have lost control. They try to continue the show by pulling a rabbit out of a hat every day, but people are tired of seeing rabbits now. The demonstration went on too long, the people's stomachs began to growl from hunger. Everyone is worried that we should go and eat something even after the show is over.

I said that the income requirement in the account is just $1,375 dollars. You know, if the society consisted of four parts as in our standard family, ie father and son men, 50%, and mother and baby ladies, again 50%, and our total income would be $1,375 per month. In this case, if we calculate our annual income, the gross national product for a four-person society in dollars would be $16,500. The per capita income in our family of four would also be $4,125 per year.

Turkey's Gross National Product in 2021 was 806.8 billion dollars. If we say that we have a population of 84 million, it would be $ 9,600 per person. This value is said to have dropped to $8,500 this year. In other words, even if we compare it with the said value this year, we can say that our calculation is actually well below the average of Turkey. This means that we actually made a very economic calculation. Of course, in order to arrive at a more accurate interpretation, it is necessary to determine the segments of the society and to calculate the income need for each segment under appropriate conditions. In other words, a separate account for retirees, a separate account for singles, a separate account for middle-aged people with grown children. After that, a more accurate interpretation and evaluation should have been made.

I still made this comparison just to give us a rank. Everyone knows their monthly income, so everyone can easily calculate where they are on the average.

Annual Income Per Capita Comparison:

If we convert the Turkish average of 2021, $9600, from today's exchange rate, that is, 17 liras and 33 kurus, to monthly income in Turkish lira, we see that the monthly income of each family should be 13,864 liras per person. This value is the average of Turkey per capita, that is, even if there is a baby at home, they have this income, even if they are older people. Which of us has this much income per person in his family? Come on, think about how open the ends of the income gap brand are.

Among the countries with high GDP, there are those with very high annual per capita income, for example, there is Japan with $45,000. This value means that their monthly income is $ 3,750 per person on average, and a family of two means $ 7500 per month on average. $15,000 per month for a family of four based on our account.

This is the welfare level. $1,375 per month for our family of four, and $15,000 per month for the same family in a wealthy country. The difference is more than tenfold.

Conclusion:

"Someone eats and looks, the apocalypse breaks out of him!" said the ancients. We must find a way to fix our income distribution before the apocalypse.

Before we forget, let's do one last calculation, as we promised at the beginning. One of the flavors of my youth, the last time Izmit bagels were raised was on February 22, now it is 4 liras. Again in February, the price of tea increased to 2.5 liras. If everyone, including the baby, eats tea bagels for every meal, the monthly cost is 2,340 liras with the account of 12 bagels and 12 cups of tea per day. If anyone can be satisfied with a bagel and a cup of tea, this is a lifestyle. On top of that, half a kilo of regret would go well with dessert. Half a kilo of the cheapest pizzeria was 65 liras, the discounted price, I don't know if there is a discount today, but it's not too much.

As I always say, in order to reach the welfare level of the developed world countries, we must work hard by using our minds and common mind. Together, we must make our country prosperous without deviating from the way of the veteran.

I think this is the magic formula we've been looking for all along. In order to follow the path of Gazi, one must understand him.

As a final word, let's hope for a beautiful future together!

With love and respect from Moscow