See my sibling comment: figure out how much inelastic demand there is for a good-category, rebate that amount off of all prices using necessity-dollar allocation, and then whatever&#x27;s left over is the true nicety-dollar (i.e. elastic demand) cost.<p>One interesting effect of this is that if you calculated it <i>per-market</i>, then different goods would have different inelastic-demand floors in different markets. In e.g. Vancouver, where tiny one-bedroom detached homes can cost &gt;$1mm, there&#x27;d be a pretty large necessity-dollar allocation for rent&#x2F;mortgage. In Cleveland, where houses go for $65k, it&#x27;d be much lower.<p>You might not <i>want</i> this effect—you might want to incentivize people to move to cheaper markets instead. But the network-effect of cities is another of those things economic incentives just don&#x27;t seem to work very well to treat.