The Equation

In the totality of life, the essential problem is almost never, a lack of resources. It is lack of intelligent actions.
Lack of sensible decision in one sphere of life could lead to lack of resources in another sphere. And once resources get scantier, the problem becomes a little bit unsolvable, the amount by which the decision was off from the perfect one in the other sphere, to be exact.

Example:
You earn certain amount of money. To grow and live the happiest possible life with that income is a different proposition than increasing the rate at which you earn. To earn more is what I will call, the problem in the other domain with respect to optimal use of what you’ve got. Given a specific income level, there is a worse way, a better way and the best way to use it for achieving maximum happiness. It could be investing wisely, balancing your life-style with your income or many other techniques. The goal is always to increase total happiness. Investing wisely for example does not mean you put up so much for the future that the happiness you will be able to reap in future with the saved money is actually less than the sacrifice you are making today. There is always the best trade-off between different uses of money to achieve the greatest possible happiness. But the subtle point here is, the limit of this happiness is curved by your income level too and that is in a different domain of problem. The amount of money you have is a limiting factor set in the domain of using it wisely.
But if you follow carefully, the argument of lack of resources not being the problem applies to that ‘other domain’ too, and this goes recursively indefinitely. It is not true that you cannot earn more. Given a certain level of potential (intellectual, physical, or whatever it is), you can always find a way to earn the maximum that is possible. Again the limiting factor here is outside the domain, namely, potential, physical possessions for example. Reiterating the point, with the same potential it is possible to earn at different levels only though different levels of intelligence applied in making decisions.