The Singer Solution To World Poverty: Response

“The Singer Solution to World Poverty” Summary/Response 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. In Singers article piece “The Singer Solution to World Poverty”, several scenarios are depicted. In one scenario, Singer reminds the audience of the Brazilian film Central Station where a retired woman named Dora writes letters for people who are illiterate. An opportunity comes into play and she is given the chance to earn
$1,000. However, Dora has to convince a young homeless boy to come with her, where she is told the boy will be adopted. Dora wants the use the money to buy a new television set, until she is informed on what was really going to happen to the young boy. Dora’s neighbor tells her that the young boy will be killed and his organs will be sold for transplantation. Dora then gets the boy back. In the second scenario, there is a man named Bob who had been fixing up a car his entire life so that he can sell it when the value is highest. Bob owns a Bugatti and works hard to keep it in perfect condition. He is planning to one day sell it so that he can live comfortably in retirement, which is fast approaching. The car is also not insured. One day Bob goes for a drive out to the railroad and parks near the siding and goes out along the tracks for a walk. While walking, Bob sees a train with no one aboard. Looking closer, Bob sees a faint figure of a child in the distance, which will probably be killed by the runaway train. Bob has two choices, he can stop the train by throwing his car in the way to divert or stop the train, or he can pretend that he didn’t see the child and save his car. If Bob stops the train, his prized, uninsured possession will be destroyed and so will any money that he could have got out of selling it. Bob saved his car in the end, pretending to see nothing else. The third and final scenario is to the normal people who wouldn’t immediately notice themselves as put into “situations” such as Bob and Dora.
This time it isn’t just a single person faced with a morally challenging situation, this time it’s just people. People that choose not to donate and help children with simple illnesses so they ultimately die due to starvation and lack of strength. Singer believes that if everyone would donate $200 it “would help a sickly two-year-old transform into a healthy six-year-old”. In Singer’s article, he lists two different organizations, Unicef and Oxfam, along with the numbers so that everyone reading will be persuaded to also donated to help children in need. Singer then goes to say that middle-class Americans can certainly donate more than $200. In fact, Singer says that Americans should donate in amounts more like $20,000. Singer comes to this reasoning because “a household with an income of $50,000 spends around $30,000 annually on necessities, according to the Conference Board. . .” Singer believes that whatever is left should be donated to children in need via the two toll free numbers he listed in his
article. I believe that Peter Singer had the right idea about helping children out. However, this article was written in the New York Times in September of 1999. The economy has drastically changed since the 90’s. It is believed to be far more difficult to have a single income household. Jobs are getting harder and harder to find and people are finding it harder to make ends meet. According to the Board of Labor, statistics show that the unemployment rate in 1999 was 4.2%, however last year’s unemployment rate was 8.1%. Therefore, the economy was not the same and unemployment rates have almost doubled. It isn’t easy to just give away everything that you work for. I find myself very conflicted by this essay, for a few reasons: what about people with children? People who got pregnant with multiples and didn’t expect it? What about parents that want to start funds for their children to go to college? Singer sets off scenarios to readers on how you could be changing and helping a child, but there are also scenarios that counteract his. I fully understand that Peter Singers heart was in a good place, but it just isn’t really practical. I have a family of six and I know that it is hard. Times have changed. I believe that this article could still be valid if the audience was changed. Singer directed his audience to middle-class American’s, whereas today is should be aimed towards people in the upper class.

Works Cited
United States Department of Labor. (n.d.). Retrieved September 22, 2013, from http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNU04000000?years_option=all_years&periods_option=specific_periods&periods=Annual+Data