The term "consumer basket" regularly sounds on TV screens during news broadcasts, flashes on the pages of the press, and so on. The society roughly understands what is at stake. But if you dig deeper, not everyone knows what exactly is hidden under the concept of “consumer basket” and how it is formed.
The "consumer basket" is understood as a certain set of goods and services that are objectively required to meet the primary needs of a person. That is, this is something without which it is almost impossible for every person to live.
Principles of forming a consumer basket
The composition of the consumer basket is determined by scientific and empirical methods. Large-scale studies were taken as a basis, based on which they were able to determine the priority items necessary for every modern person to survive.
The minimum composition of the consumer basket is intended to satisfy the lower bar of a person's needs for food, clothing, etc. The consumer basket includes food, clothing, shoes, household items, and services.
The consumer basket is sensitive to inflation. In connection with changes in pricing policy and the general development of the economy, both the composition and quantitative indicators of the basket are changing. So, for example, the concept of the consumer basket today includes the footage of an apartment, the number of gigocalories of central heating per year, the amount of water in the knocks, cubic meters of gas, electricity, transport costs, non-food products, food, leisure costs, etc.
Half of the consumer basket is occupied by food products. The second large group is non-food products, which include clothing, footwear, etc. Utility costs are in third place in the formation of a consumer basket.
Today, the basket has been brought closer to modern realities by adjusting a number of parameters. Thus, food products were correlated with the norms of healthy nutrition, and the non-food part was brought to more real values.
The calculation of the consumer basket includes calculations for the minimum set of food products, a set of non-food items, and a set of services. The entire basket should meet the food needs of the main social groups of the population, not forgetting about poor families, taking into account the choice of products that should organize healthy meals at minimal cost. The same goes for the formation of the remaining 2 pieces of the basket.
Cart problems
Today, politicians often accept the consumer basket as a dogma and are guided by it when forming the budget, believing that the average person should fit into the norms allotted to him. In fact, the number of products and other items in the consumer basket makes ordinary people laugh. Political analysts, however, argue that it is by no means possible to take basket calculations as a standard, because it is just a starting point for calculating a complete human diet.
The authorities cannot come to a consensus, since it is difficult for three departments to come to an agreement with each other - the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Economic Development and the Ministry of Health. Each of the heads of these ministries has their own calculations for the basket, but they do not agree with the arguments of their opponents.
