The oxford dictionary conveys the meaning of the following words as given below:
Necessity – A situation that requires a
particular course of action. Comforts- Things that contribute to a state of physical ease. Luxuries- An item that is expensive and enjoyable but not essential. A quick glance at the meaning of these words gives us the idea that these words relate to the economic factor that associate an individual’s life. It could also be called status of an individual in the society. Hence, analyzing the financial status of the people around the world could clarify the meaning of these terms practically.
Necessity is the term which focuses on the basic needs of mankind. A famous quote by Jonathan Schattke is relevant here which goes as
Necessity is the mother of invention, it is true -- but it's father is creativity, and knowledge is the midwife. However, certain common
necessities exist for all categories of people viz., food, clothing, shelter, access to health centers, safe drinking water, etc. Depending on the status a person spends his income on the above mentioned necessities. Historically speaking civilization began with filling the stomach first. Man gave secondary priority to clothing and shelter. As times changed yesterday’s necessity has got substituted with comfortable living. Hence man started giving importance to acquiring the means for choicest food and stable life which means shelter. These factors are in return dependant on man’s capabilities for instance; a skilled laborer earns more than a layman. Automatically, his earnings are affected henceforth, his finances. A nation’s prosperity is dependant on the individual’s financial capabilities. Per capita income is the yardstick by which an individual’s economic status is gauged. Thus necessity confines itself to economic self-sufficiency further income leads man into the comfort zone. Comfort could mean procuring certain benefits erstwhile unknown off like an own shelter, surplus clothing, own conveyance etc., and luxury is the pinnacle of status which include owning vast expanses of real estate, vacations to exotic resorts etc.I have chosen Luxury for the subject of my address this evening; because I think that the employment of wealth, in what we should agree to call luxurious expenditure, is a source of considerable perplexity to moral persons who find themselves in the possession of an income obviously more than sufficient for the needs of their physical existence, and for the provision of the instruments necessary to their work in life………(Sidgwick, para1).The above definitions could be interpreted with a live model where per capita income is taken as the base with people below the national per capita income, equal to the per capita income and more than the national per capita income are categorized as Lower Income group (LIG), Medium income group (MIG) and Higher Income Group (HIG) respectively. A person shall mean an individual and a family will include four dependants. For a person under LIG watching a movie in a cinema hall once a month might be a comfort and when the same act is repeated with the entire family it becomes a luxury. The same act when viewed from an MIG group might be a necessity for an individual and with the entire family it might be a comfort and not a luxury. For an MIG person owning a home theater system might be a luxury. The same context if applied to a HIG yields different results because he has surplus income at his disposal, hence watching cinema with the entire family doesn’t even fall under the category of comfort. This is because he is already owning a home theater system and just for a change he goes to a cinema hall. For him, comfort lies in watching a cinema in a Multiplex. Luxury includes an aspiration to watch an exclusive premier show sitting along with his favorite stars. The same thing when viewed in the modern context, most of the urban householders irrespective of their income group own luxury items likhoe theater system, cable TV etc. Thus, necessity, comfort and luxury vary with time and technological innovation.Anthropologists expect people in different cultures and in the past to have varying ideas of what constitutes satisfactory relations of body, material culture, and environment. They have found that technology, social structures, and belief systems dictate widely varying designs in domestic environments (Crowley, para2)