If we deliberate this form an economical perspective there is traditional to ways to measure poverty, we can either deliberate given wealth gap within a given society or we can Concord on a minimum income someone should have before they no longer are considered to be poor. Both measurements present their own economical problems. Since economical actions, and thereby human actions, is a tradeoff between two or more options. And because the decision that a given individual makes in a given situation depends on that his or hers preferences, the situation where the decision is presented to the individual, the information that is available, and the different alternatives that the individual is choosing from, we will never be able to make a normative judgment on the act of deciding. This means that a normative judgment on the effects of the economical judgments becomes equally impossible, and thereby also the normative judgment on whether someone is poor.

If we are contemplating poverty as a moral question, then it becomes a question about quality of life, what constitutes ‘the good economical life’? A moral judgment can either be a universal judgment that guide human action in any given situation, or it is a relative judgment that depends on external factors. A universal moral judgment on what constitutes ‘the good economical life’ would require that society restrict the individual’s liberty in deciding in a given economical decision. This would not only violate the principles of private property rights, but also imply that there is a universal economical preference that is moral superior to the individual’s preferences. What we then are left with is then the relative moral judgment, which means that we no long have a ‘golden standard’ from where we can define ‘the good economical life’, which forces us to constantly debate the definition itself.

So if we can’t find any normative judgment on poverty does it then follow that the debate about poverty is meaningless? I would argue that debating who is or is not poor is meaningless and would never come to a satisfied conclusion. However, the debate about what society can do to ensure that every individual has the possibilities to realize his or hers idea of ‘the good economical life’, is a more relevant and plausible debate both form a philosophical and economical perspective.