[PnP] Economics -- looking for help

[Burton Choinski]

Ok, I have been chewing on this for at least a month now, slowly  
adding to it, but I'm constantly revising and tweaking and still not  
100% happy, so I'm throwing out a line to the list to anyone with  
experience in economic systems (or at least faking it in an RPG :)

Given the assumptions:
	1) lowest pay rate is 1BB/day (unskilled labor)
	2) an average family consists of 2 adults, 3 children
		a) for simplicity, 3 children = 1 adult in production and resource  
needs

Ok, starting with farming.  A farm of 5 acres is enough to support a  
single family, providing food for consumption as well as for barter  
for other needs and for any reasonable tithes or taxation.  Roman  
wheat yields were about 20 bushels per acre, of which about 20% was  
used for next year's seed.  This rounds close enough to about 5,000#  
for the 5 acres.  If we assume that a family on 5 acres is living at  
2BB/day (basically a peasant), that's a need of 2,160BB per year.   
This results in the estimation that a pure wheat farm gives us a value  
of .432BB per pound, or 45BB for a hundred-weight sack and 5BB for a  
10# bag (buy in bulk, people!).  An adult needing 2FP per day can get  
by on the "good" grain and have a little margin, or go for the poor  
quality at HALF price.

This seems to be fine, and it's mainly a matter of defining what the  
farmers should live at.  If the above farmers live at 1BB/day, this  
means that grain is half the above figured price, which allows for all  
1BB/day people to manage to some degree.  I have dithered back and  
forth of this, to the point that I have an excel chart to do the  
calculations incase I change my mind again. :P

Secondary steps are where this all starts to get hairy.  Take  
charcoal, for instance.  I currently have Lumberjacks figured at 2BB/ 
day (semi-skilled labor), and a team of 10 can produce 450 cords of  
firewood per month.  This implies that firewood, if just taking labor  
into account, goes for 0.75 cords per BB.

A charcoaler can convert 10 cords of wood into 2.5 tons of charcoal  
per month.  Given his income needs (at 2BB/day, or 60BB) plus  
materials (14BB for wood) = 74BB, it would imply that charcoal goes  
for about 3CC per ton.  However, that's if you get the wood at the  
flat cost found above, which is the big question here that I would  
like some consensus on.

I have tried various ways of handling the costs of needed materials,  
from taking them at the flat rate, to adding a token 10% to  
everything, to even a sliding rate (25% for consumables, 50% to soft  
durable goods like wood and cloth, 100% for hard durable goods like  
metals and armor).  I've probably revised my numbers 25 or more times,  
and am still not happy since I'm still just guessing at things in  
terms of ancient/medieval mercantile rules.

And don't get me started on mining and metals.  Even going with  
reasonable ore yields, iron ends up dirt cheap when compared to  
copper, so why isn't everyone working with iron?  The rules seem to  
imply that iron is relatively uncommon, otherwise why make a special  
rule for elves about it?   And given average gold/silver yields a 10- 
man team mining and smelting ore ends up producing about 3500CC of  
precious metals per month (if coins are 50/#, 1# silver = 500CC, 1#  
gold = 5,000CC).  I know this does not cover the cost of any security,  
but is seems like a 100 man team is nearly monty haul with the cash  
production.  What are reasonable worker counts for small/medium/large  
ore deposits, given P&P technology to detect and extract ores?