I was first introduced to Peter Singer’s idea of altruistic poverty at Governor’s School. It suggests that to achieve social and economic equality, individuals have to give away all they have until they reach the poverty line. While trying to wrap my mind around this questionable solution to such a complex issue, I realize that my previous way of thinking had been so egocentric. If I gave everything unnecessary for my survival what would my life look like? However, as this idea unveiled my own inadequacies as an altruistic individual, I began to wonder why capitalism does not encourage this altruism from all economic classes.…
Have you ever thought that you are happier than many children in the world? On the other hand, they do not have enough good conditions to live and develop themselves, including poverty. How will they struggle for their lives with their small hands? They probably need our help to rescue them out of danger. “The Singer Solution to World Poverty”, which is written by Peter Singer, is a solution to save children's lives. Singer persuades the reader to participate in helping children who lack food, get many diseases, and do not have good living conditions. His argument is that all of us should contribute to saving the children’s lives According to “The Singer Solution to World Poverty”, this solution totally has the ability to be done by our help; however, I am not completely persuaded that I will help children by following Single’s solution.…
To give or not to give? This is the central question brought up in “The Singer Solution To World Poverty,” an article written by utilitarian philosopher, Peter Singer. Singer’s “solution” is that Americans need to take all of their money that is not devoted to the basic requirements for life and give it to organizations that are working on saving impoverished children across the globe. In his piece, he uses two imaginary situations to draw a conclusion about the moral position of Americans who do not donate their surplus money to save the poor. In the first, a woman nearly trades a boy’s life for a material possession, and in the second, a man allows a child to be hit by a train in order to save his car. Singer compares these two concocted characters to the unwilling, selfish Americans. He uses these horrific situations to influence his audience’s emotions and make them feel guilty for not donating their extra money; Singer’s accusations make his audience question their ethics and morals by equating them to child murderers. He even goes as far as to say that in order to live a “morally decent” life, we…
Peter Singer brings to light a very important global problem, poverty, and offers an extreme solution to solve this problem. Peter Singer argues that the solution to world poverty is living simply and giving all excess household money to charities. Singer uses effective examples to get his point across, but gives an unreasonable solution. He gives the example that the failure to donate money will directly result in the death of children in need. "Whatever money you're spending on luxuries, not necessities, should be given away." (Singer)…
Peter Singer immediately encourages acceptance of his first moral standpoint with his comment: “If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it” (413). At first, what he is asking seems very straight forward, but on closer examination, he is asking for a complete shift in our thinking and our existence. He supports this with the idea that distance makes no difference in our moral obligations. The old adage that charity begins…
In his article, “Famine, Affluence and Morality”, philosopher Peter Singer observes that that there are millions of people around the world who are leading misery lives and suffering death, because of famine , war, lack of shelter, and adequate medical care. He states that although rich nations have contributed great sums of money for these causes, they are still not giving enough in comparison to their Gross National Product (GNP). He points out that many nations only contributes about one percent of their GNP.…
Within his work, Peter Singer presents an argument that the people who live in affluent countries, the developed world, must drastically change their way of life and their conception of morality in order to help those in need. He begins by giving us an example of a case of famine, Bengal 1971, where people have been suffering and no one was doing anything to even try to alleviate the problem, this includes the government. I have summarized his arguments in the following ways: 1. Suffering caused by the lack of food, shelter, and medical care services is bad, and 2. If we can prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing something…
Lisa Esposito addresses the strong negative connection between poverty and the health of the parents and children affected by it. She blames stress-filled homes, unstable nutrition, and toxic environments among other things as the reason low-income families are unable to keep themselves healthy. She uses facts and expert opinions to try to raise awareness and attempt to push people toward better health. Esposito clearly takes the side of those in poverty by constantly repeating they are forced into their unhealthy lifestyles. For example, Esposito points out the paradox of poor people being increasingly hungry, yet statistics show more obesity present in poor people. Her rebuttal is the fact that often times the cheapest food is usually full…
Melbourne, Australia native, Peter Singer, was born in 1946. Today, singer is known as one of the most controversial philosophers. Singer has taught at campuses such as Princeton, the University of Colorado and the University of California. Singer has had a long career as an animal rights activist and currently is a professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. Singer also writes books and was published in The New York Times.…
1. Does Singer think there is an ethical difference between saving the girl in the puddle and saving a person's life in Bengal by giving a donation? With the understanding of reading the textbook, Singer feels that if it is in your power of to prevent something very bad from happening, then you ought to do so, without morally sacrificing anything else.…
Writer Peter Singer’s article “The Solution to World Poverty” develops a persuasive argument to encourage and make people understand the importance of donating to help save kids life within their means, Singer adopts a guilt-ridden tone in order to sway the audience into donating money to help the kids of Brazil. Singer achieve his purpose through the use of imagery, syntax, and rhetorical questions. Singer beings his article by describing a Brazilian film in where a homeless boy is persuade into going to an address where he will be killed for his organs however the Woman who took him there did not know about the final result for the boy instead she was more drawn into the money that she would receive. When telling the story Singer uses parenthesis…
Across the United States, everyday lives would change dramatically if Peter Singer’s theory was set in place. He brings to the reader’s attention that there is a difference between duty and charity. This thought…
The Poverty Clinic by Paul Tough focuses on the relationship between childhood trauma and health. The findings in The Poverty Clinic are consistent with the theories in the ‘health onion.’ Monisha Sullivan’s health issue derives from a quantum of factors. Factors of which include lifestyle, outside influences, situational factors, community and environment factors. All of which falls under the frameworks of the ‘health onion.’ Health issues are no longer reliant only on the biological processes, but also on what influences our lives and how we live it.…
Singer’s goal in his article is to inform people of the famine of a Bengal, starving country, how they can decrease the starvation of a society if contributions were given by all individuals or those with the greater financial statuses. Singer suggests that it should be moral to help those in need without causing the same effect upon them. Singer gives three counter-arguments that explain his ideas on the fact for his moral reasoning. Singer states, “he shall argue that the way people in relatively affluent countries react to a situation like that in Bengal cannot be justified; indeed, the whole way we look at moral issues—our moral conceptual scheme—needs to be altered, and with it, the way of life that has come to be taken for granted in our society” (Singer, 1972). Singer’s argument can be summed as:…
Giving your money to the poor or to charity organizations may sound easy enough, but in practice it is basically impossible. Peter Singer, in his recent NY Times article, “The Singer Solution to World Poverty,” argues that the rich should donate whatever luxuries and whatever money they don’t’ need all to the less prosperous. Many would argue both for and against such a viewpoint, and such a “solution” would require evaluation of its pros and cons before application.…