In this article, I
firstly discuss why a prioritarian clause can rescue the utilitarian doctrine from
the risk of exacerbating inequality in the distribution of resources in those cases in which utility
of income does not decline at the margin. Nonetheless, when in the presence of adaptive prefer-
ences, classic prioritarianism is more likely than utilitarianism to increase the inequality of re-
sources under all circumstances, independently of the diminishing trend of utility. Hence, I pro-
pose to shift the informational focus of prioritarianism from welfare to either social income or
capabilities in order to safeguard those who are worse off . Following this, I argue that we may
have reasons to limit the aggregative logic of priority amended utilitarianism through one or more
sufficiency thresholds, an d that we can partially defuse the negative thesis objection that is usually
levelled against sufficientarianism, provided we interpret the threshold(s) as valid only as long as
everyone is led above it.
