Ever started chopping wood at 6am til the sun goes down without a break? And only eating an apple or whatever you get for 10 septims?

Spending about 1000 septims a week for an acceptible life in Skyrim is not off.

i had a character live of 100 septims a week. he was a DiD playthrough. poor guy was kiled by 4 mudcrabs.

there are beggars because they drink alot and they also are too lazy to cut wood, pick crops or mine ore.

Seriously, play with Needs mods.

When actions make you tired/hungry/thirsty and you have to spend money on food/drink, the game's economy isn't all that strange. The Hearthfire Homes become absolute blessings because they come with garden plots (The Lakeview Home does, at any rate), which can help you be at least slightly self-sufficient.

Or the opposite. Some kind of immersion helps to have fun. With your logic it would be ok to when the developers added machinegunes with 999 damage per bullet into the game because it makes the game more easy and enjoyable I don't care about the mentioned quest rewards but at least they should have paid more attention some balance between the items. Fine clothes are as cheap as normal ones and only one example

Ok, a one hit kill gun with infinite ammunition is a pretty huge stretch between money being relatively easy to obtain. And I would also enjoy more immersion, I'm one of the people who really wants a hardcoe mode. But average casual gamers don't want to be spending all their time trying to save up gold. Also please read my second http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1449956-why-are-the-people-poor/page__view__findpost__p__22388768, it goes a little more into detail with what I meant by gameplay and player convenience.

The beggars are also good for a speechcraft bonus.

Exactly. You could pretty much answer OP with two words:

Player convenience.

I have to say, sir, I find myself agreeing with your take on things so often that I find no need to post in some threads because you have said it all already.

People can't seem to understand that everything in games like this is representative of a bigger picture. This is called scale. The easiest example, which you have given already Mr Veloth Fyr, is that an hour in the player's world is a day in their character's world. Other examples are:
+ The population of is representative of a larger population. It's harder to explain in a game like this, but take Grand Theft Auto 4 for example; there are at most, perhaps, a thousand or two characters in that game, and a few hundred buildings, but it is representative of a city exactly the size and population of New York. Another example, if you have played Morrowind before, is http://lelek1980.deviantart.com/art/Balmora-Aerial-view-291703424.
+ This means distances between cities are further than represented in the game.
+ There would actually be more animals and crops on farms, the ones there are just representative of a larger amount.
+ Because of the time scaling, things take longer than the seem to do. Like making potions, crafting armour and of course, chopping wood.
+ And, of course, the amount of wood a character chops is representative of them chopping a lot more than is displayed.

Just because you can stand there pushing the same button over and over again for half an hour, doesn't mean it would be that easy for your character or an NPC to do. That is where role playing comes in, and this largely comes down to you, the player. It would be great if they could make things more "realistic", but there are limitations to what can be achieved with games. So it is up to you to govern things like this.