One dubious implication of this kind of economic egalitarianism is that there exists some infallible method of conceptualizing and even measuring the relative states of economic well-being of different individuals. As has already been remarked, the very notion of "economic equality" is inherently subjective (p. 5.2:74). In practice, "redistribution" systems usually seek to reduce inequalities in monetary income. Yet the latter is a very crude and unsatisfactory measure of economic well-being. If X has a slightly higher income than Y, but X is handicapped and Y is not, then who is the "have" and who is the "have-not"? If X suffers from health problems leading to higher medical bills, should these costs be deducted from his income in calculating "equality"? If X and Y live in different cities, do we take into account differences in their costs of living? If so, do we also take into consideration differences in quality of life between the two cities? Should we make allowances for differences in working hours, job stress, or comparative enjoyment of one's work? Furthermore, how do we account for people who have little or no positive income but much accumulated wealth? In practice, individuals or families may be "poor" by a government's income-based definition, even though they may and often do own expensive homes or one or more luxury vehicles.

Clearly, in discussing poverty we cannot take at face value statistics that rely upon monetary income as the sole standard of measurement. Yet even if income could somehow be adjusted for all the above factors and a variety of other considerations, we should still not have addressed the crux of the problem: namely, that there exists no scientific basis at all for interpersonal comparisons of utility (cf. pp. 4.5:2-7).