What is the changing law of consumer consumption pattern?

The most striking theory in the science of consumption expenditure pattern is Engel's law of consumption expenditure change, which essentially points out the change of consumption pattern. The basic principles contained in Engel's law are very real and obvious. Food belongs to the most basic needs of human survival. If you don't even have enough to eat, it's hard to imagine that a person will have other consumption expectations. Food accounts for a high proportion in the income and expenditure of poor families, not because the poor have bigger bellies than the rich, but because their income has been so thin that they can't make ends meet. The poorer a country is, the greater the proportion of national disposable income spent on food, which will decrease with the increase of wealth. As a social commodity, food belongs to the most basic and necessary material consumer goods in daily life. But the production and consumption of social products don't just refer to food. Otherwise, the evolution of human society follows the simple logic of "sheep eat grass". I remember someone severely criticized that some people in society always ignored the improvement of living standards. They "took the bowl to eat meat and put down chopsticks to curse their mother", that is, they have been in an unsatisfied psychological state. Perhaps there is some truth in this statement, but conversely, does this description compare the masses to an animal whose greatest satisfaction is only "eating"? The reason why modern human society is different from primitive animal society is that with the development of society, the proportion of material consumption in total social consumption expenditure is getting smaller and smaller, while the consumption of other types of social products is getting higher and higher. This is the application of Engel's law in the consumption structure of social goods. The same principle can also be used to analyze the legal system of a country or society. People often hear people evaluate the advanced or backward legal system, but what is the specific measure? As a social product, one of the basic functions of the legal system is to adjust (establish, maintain and remedy) the right relationship. There are many kinds of rights, such as the right to life, property rights, reproductive rights, labor rights, education rights, privacy rights, the right to vote and be elected, and the right to association. In fact, these rights can also be divided into different levels, such as those basic "security rights" that are directly related to the survival or reproduction of life, such as the right to food, the right to survival and the right to procreation, and other "improvement rights" based on the basic "security rights" but aimed at further optimizing life or quality of life, such as the right to education, the right to privacy, the right to patent and the right to association. According to the general logic, people can only continue to pursue and strive to achieve the next step of rights improvement after obtaining the basic security rights. In other words, serfs are mercilessly deprived of their basic right to subsistence, so it is nonsense to realize other rights. In this sense, Engel's law reveals a basic and universal principle of social evolution: the degree of social evolution must be related to the proportional relationship between people's basic rights and other rights. Theoretically, the realization of rights depends on the transition between rights or the upgrading of rights. The establishment and exercise of a right cannot be separated from the foundation of other rights, just as the right to improvement is usually based on security rights rather than outside. For example, the urban household registration management system that has been widely implemented in China for a long time may belong to the legitimate public law rights of the government from the aspects of public security management and maintaining urban economic order, but from the perspective of equal employment and survival, is it suspected to deprive farmers of their basic private law rights? Coincidentally, just a few years ago, people in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River often suffered from floods. They were indignant and criticized for some people in the upper reaches who cut down forests and destroyed the ecology. Has anyone ever thought that if they don't find other ways of life for these people, deforestation is tantamount to directly depriving those who have long regarded forest resources as their only livelihood of their basic right to subsistence? In recent years, the state's transfer payments and subsidies for "returning farmland to forests" in some upstream areas can be regarded as policy recognition of the basic rights of the people in the upstream areas, and economic compensation or relief when some of their rights are lost or restricted. In this sense, whether it is between public rights and private rights, or between guaranteed rights themselves, or between guaranteed rights and improved rights, it is not just a simple "substitution relationship", on the contrary, they belong to a complex "transaction relationship". The scarcity of resources often forces people to make difficult and even painful choices between different rights and the order and adequacy of the realization of various rights. But in any case, the law must not ignore the basic rights of one group and only realize the special rights of another group. This is not the fault of rights, but the fault of choice. It should be pointed out that the author's application of Engel's law to explain the main purpose of the legal system is not only to pursue originality in legal analysis methods. On the contrary, the author tries to understand the basic trend of legal evolution in the world more rationally and accurately. Just as the proportion of subsistence consumption expenditure (such as food) in total consumption expenditure can explain the wealth of a family, the structural relationship between basic rights and derivative rights can in turn prove the advanced degree of a country's legal system, that is, in the overall legal structure, the greater the proportion of laws aimed at establishing and maintaining the right to improve quality, the higher the overall level of the legal system. China is a developing country. From the perspective of the right structure, the word "developing" includes both the concept of economic growth and the concept of legal system. For the latter, "developing" at least includes the following meanings: (1) The basic security right structure itself is still very lacking; (2) The proportion of improving rights in the whole structural relationship is low; (3) China's legal system is far from being modernized and rationalized, and it still belongs to a relatively backward system. Therefore, economic development must go hand in hand with the reform of legal system. The principle of Engel's law is of great significance to law. The law should pay attention not only to public rights, but also to private rights, not only to basic security rights, but also to many extended or derived improvement rights, which constitute the sum of people's "due rights". However, the transformation from "due rights" to "real rights" and "realizing rights" cannot be separated from "legal rights", "rights protection" and "rights relief". Therefore, the law should not only establish, safeguard and remedy the basic rights of human beings, but also constantly discover, establish, safeguard and remedy those rights that multiply or derive from the basic rights. With the further development of society, the overall structure and quality level of legal structure will be continuously improved, and the system of the whole society will be continuously optimized. In this sense, the law should improve and straighten out the relationship between basic rights and the relationship between basic rights and improved rights, and on this basis, continue to improve and straighten out the rights extended or derived between man and society, man and nature, contemporary society and future society. Only in this way can the development of the legal system and the reproduction of rights keep pace with the times.