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In his texts about what he calls " moral economics ", professor Julio Boltvinik Kalinka asserts that the ideas exposed by David Wiggins about needs are correct but insufficient: needs are of a normative nature but they are also factual.

These " gross ethical concepts " ( as stated by Hilary Putnam ) should also include an evaluation: Ross Fitzgerald's criticism of Maslow's ideas rejects the concept of objective human needs and uses instead the concept of preferences.

They assume, just like many other logical positivists, that values cannot be rational and assert, therefore, that the definition of poverty threshold, a task charged with values, is an arbitrary action of researchers, an assumption which implies a narrow view of poverty.