On my end, my pokeverse has been in a state of frequent changes based on what canons Im immersed in, what I want to use from a fic Im reading for my headcanons, so-on
Ive always gone with "pokedollars are yen, subtract two digit places and get usd", and thats all and well until I get to "uhhh okay pokeball is 2 bucks.. wb rent"
And thats where the bigger questions start cropping up.
For trainers who are legal minors (and not orphaned or kicked out) housing is something you know you can come back to eventually, so thats not an expense.. but we dont know if say Delia Ketchum has a mortgage or how she pays it. We dont have a ton of answers on how layfolk live and pay for their lives in the pokemon world.
Whether its because its made for kids and thinking about this just stresses people out.. or because the games arent about trainers above the age of 16 let alone adults that would be taxpayers.. or because the setting has utopian intent plastered all over it we dont exactly know
I can handwaive some elements though.
A financial system of some form exists because we have pokedollar transactionary exchanges in mainline games.
Single parent households, and overall households with children, are subsidized. Delia Ketchum regardless of career or estate ties, affords her lifestyle because (if extrapolating from stuff like the novel) she was a teen mom.. who not long after was abandoned. Whether she had the home beforehand, whether it was from family or a housing voucher, she has it now and its a guaranteed thing in her life.
I generally imagine, unless things have 'gone wrong' due to economic meddling, most pokemon regions have an economic system with socialist or communist elements, in that markets are sufficiently regulated that tax evasion by corporate interests is minimized, and a fair number of social safety nets exist.
Pokemon leagues and careers fulfill a keystone species role in economies beyond what our irl world had to offer.
I imagine low unemployment rates whether due to the countless paths one can take as a pokemon trainer, or robust economies, and I imagine largely free healthcare, affordable food and housing, so-on.
A lot of this assumes things dont 'go wrong', or that being an adult isnt a soul-crushing experience for many.
I have also imagined that those who fail to become career trainers, having watched their dreams crumble, must find some way of paying the bills if it isnt back to their prior routine. Maybe the wages make life affordable, maybe it means long hours.
The games now and again include some darker moments, like ORAS had a mauville resident being abducted by men in black for being behind on rent payments and is never to be seen again.
On some level this was the basis for my concept on The Casca Region project, in that like a number of regions out there the pokemon league's political power wanes, and what usage there is is by actors who are contempt or swayed by private interests. Erasure of the middleclass plays out, cost of living increases, and now and again you see a parent pressuring their kid(s) to go on a journey and become a profitable trainer for the family or get serious about their career prospects atter highschool.
In other words, people acting in response to changing material conditions, whether the results are pretty or not.
At the same time Im not sure Im ready to write the cascan pre / revolutionary period narratives. I have a twine game concept likenable to the oregon trail romhack, but again it doesnt mean Im actively working on it.
Nestball Testall and Perlin's noise takes place a good 10 to 15 years after the recovery period begins, and by then my intent is for things to have reached some status quo with pokemon regions like the game depicts, if not a bit more bearable.
And with an adult protag a good decade older than any of the game protagonists.. woops I need to map out their finances
