SPOONS.

SPOONS. Annalisa sent me this link in which a lady explains how hard it is to be sick and have a very little amount of energy (in this case because she is suffering from lupus). She illustrated it for a friend by collecting a number of spoons and positing that each activity during the day –even showering or getting dressed–required the subtraction of a certain number of spoons. Soon there were none left. Economists speak in terms of a total budget which puts a constraint on what we can do. Usually it is a dollar budget, but they occasionally make the observation that for many of the affluent it is time that is the more important constraint. For the sick or the malnourished, energy may be the binding constraint. Robert Fogel has written in THE ESCAPE FROM HUNGER AND PREMATURE DEATH, 1700-2100: Europe, America, and the Third World about how until very recently weakness kept the poor from accomplishing much. As I posted here, in the nineteenth century some of the poor in France and Russia were inactive all winter to conserve their limited energy.