The Economic Problem Need: a good or service essential for living. Examples include water and food and shelter. Want: a good or service that people would like to have, but is not required for living. Examples include cars and watching movies. Scarcity is the basic economic problem. It is a situation that exists when there are unlimited wants and limited resources to produce the goods and services to satisfy those wants. For example, we have a limited amount of money but there are a lot of things we would like to buy, using the money.