China, Starvation, Sen (Was Why Decry the Wealth Gap?)

[Brad De Long]

>On Tue Jan 25 2000, Brad De Long (delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU) wrote:
>
>>  Amartya Sen points out that democratic societies are inherently more
>>  egalitarian than, say, Maoist ones: mass famines haven't happened in
>>  democracies, while they happen with some frequency where the people do
>>  not elect the government and the press is not free. And the relative
>>  income gap between someone who has enough food to survive and someone
>>  who does not is very, very large...
>
>Unless I'm misunderstanding, Sen seems to have at least once drawn the
>opposite conclusions: that Maoist society, while not democratic, was a
>step forward both in eqalitarianism and starvation proofing;

Let me ask him to reconcile the two...

Brad DeLong