Chapter 45: The Index of Sufficiency
Dhammonomics:
Chapter 45 –
Index of Individual Sufficiency
Throughout the period of
45 years of preaching by the Lord Buddha, his teachings had covered numerous
topics in different arenas such as meditation, conduct, politics, etiquette,
universe, earning and spending, love, karma, supernatural power, various realms
and etc. As such, the Lord Buddha’s
teaching on earning and spending management is one of the most popular topics
referred by many Buddhist masters who teach Buddhist economics.
Thus, this chapter of dhammonomics
applies the Lord Buddha’s key teaching on earning and spending management of
which Buddhists are recommended to allocate their incomes into three major
groups out of four ratios as followings:
25% of income for saving
25% of income for
spending, and
50% of income for
investing
This simple teaching
gives us the percentiles that we can express them in term of dhammonomic
equation and graph as follows:
i = Income
S = Sufficiency
E = Percentile of Earning Allocation
E = (±) 25% Saving (±) 25% Spending (±)
50% Investing
E > 25%, S = Overly Sufficient
E < 25%, S = Insufficient
E ≈ 25%, S = Sufficient
(since E meets Cost of Living at 25% of
Income)
E > 0% < 25%, S ≈ 0 as it meets
cost of necessity, but not the total cost of living.
Saving
(±) 25% Saving = Principle Amount ±
Interest ± Inflation/Deflation
(±) 25% ± (% of Interest) ± (% of
Inflation or Deflation)
Spending
(±) 25% of income to meet cost of living
= Expenditure on Necessity ±
Expenditure on Luxury ± Etc.
= (need) ± (want) ± (etc.)
Need = Shelter + Medication + Food +
Clothing
Want & Etc. = Transportation +
Education + Technology + Recreation & Sport + Energy & Fuel + Utilities +
Communication + Entertainment + Charity & Donation + Caring & Sharing (give and get) + Tax
Investing
(±) 50% of income
= (% of invested amount) ± (% of Profit)
± (% of Loss)
With the given variables,
we can create and plot the graph of index of sufficiency whereas more than 25%
of income that meets the cost of living can yield ‘sufficiency’, otherwise, the
lesser percentile denotes the earning which may meet the cost of necessity but
not all of the cost of living. As a
result, the ‘shortfall of sufficiency’ occurs.
On the contrary, if earning is negative, it means that one is running into
a deficit, and the graph reflects insufficiency.
In conclusion, the index
of sufficiency takes into account of the Lord Buddha’s teaching on earning,
saving, spending and investing with given calculable ratios. We found it very useful to implement this
philosophy into dhammonomic expression whereby the ratios can be converted into
certain percentiles providing that corresponding equations can verify the
doctrine as well as possibly giving approximate equivalent of values in
numbers.
By Pirajak Tisuthiwongse (Pittaya Wong)
Dhammonomics Inventor / Dharma Wizard
20 Sept 2022
