FOLLOWING A LEAD

I followed the link Wallyver gave us [in his comment on the previous post], and it was quite interesting. Sabina Alkire is an impressive person. The multidimensional poverty index she has co-developed owes a great deal to the inspiration of the work of Amartya Sen, who, all by himself, almost redeems the Nobel Prize in Economics. [I have had the very great pleasure of meeting Sen, although only once, and of communicating with him in connection with my scholarship organization. He is a real class act!] The core idea in the work of Sen on which Alkire crafts her index is that poverty both consists in, and is caused by, an impoverishment of powers and opportunities, not just of money. As Sen was the first person to point out, famines are caused by a breakdown of social distributuion, not by a shortage of food, and the best protection against them is not full graineries but democracy. I encourage anyone interested in this subject to follow the link provided. Thank you again, Wallyver [and also, my sister, Barbara, but then I owe her a good deal more than I can adequately thank her for -- including teaching me to read seventy-odd years ago.]