ABSTRACT
At times one feels that large parts of prescriptive welfare economics have been struck down by a similar mysterious disease. If one surveys the battlefield of welfare economics in its encounter with real world problems. In addition it is true of dead weight loss or excess burden measures of welfare loss, and similar consumer measures of welfare gain. As Silberberg and others have shown, these measures typically suffer from a dependence upon the arbitrary feature of the path of integration chosen for their evaluation. The chapter identifies the disease which is responsible for striking down our distinguished patient, the Bergson-Samuelson social welfare function, alongside the other prescriptive devices suggested by welfare economists. For reasons which will emerge later, we will identify this disease as quasi-ordinalism. In addition we will suggest a cure which will transform the seemingly dead body from nonexistence back to a healthy positive existence.
