Peter Singer Poverty

“It is a tragic mix-up when the United States spends $500,000 for every enemy soldier killed, and only $53 annually on the victims of poverty”, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This fact indicates how poverty is an issue that needs more attention because of it’s significant impact on the people in the world. Peter Singer, an Australian humanist and philosopher, addresses the dilemma of poverty world-wide in his essay, The Singer Solution to Poverty. Singer argues how it is wrong for an individual to live well without giving substantial amounts of money to help people who are hungry, malnourished, and dying from easily treatable illnesses. In the matter of defending and qualifying Singer’s argument, people should be more aware of the issue of poverty.
This person may be spending ridiculously large amounts of money on useless, fanciful items that would come to benefit less in his life. Thus, lies the conclusion that the person is stuck in the world of materialism. Singer believes that not giving to the poor and needy person is as bad as the killing them. In a way, Singer is correct in his theory. When a person does not give to the poor and spends his money on extra items to satisfy himself, a poor, unfortunate person dies of hunger in Africa. The money that person used on himself could have been used to feed a poor man in Africa, who perished in starvation. Interestingly enough, the person spent the money on something he WANTED, not something he desperately NEEDED. It was not food or shelter the person yearned for, it was a material possession he wanted because of his selfish desires. According to the Millennium Project established by the UN, more than 800 million people go to bed hungry every day, 300 million are children. If more people were well-aware of this fact, they would put more effort into helping people with these kinds of problems. The most effective method to publicize recognition of the issue of poverty would be if ignorant-wealthy people were put in the circumstances of being poor. It would be then, when they would experience the harsh reality of the life lead by
There are limitless options in helping poverty. Helping just one person in need is enough, however one must ask: How many people are willing to help? To make a world-wide difference on poverty, many people must be willing to help. Abdul Edhi, a well-known philanthropist of Pakistan, lives the simplest life one can imagine in Pakistan. He raises and funds massive amounts of money for the poor, yet he, himself, lives a simple, plain life. He sacrificed most of his worldly pleasures to dedicate himself to helping the poor. If there were more people like Edhi, imagine how much change will come to the world. People who are oblivious to poverty, do not have much knowledge about poverty, and how it plays an important role in affecting other issues as well. People need to be more aware of poverty in that sense because poverty affects numerous other places as well. Poverty negatively affects education, economy, society, and most importantly, the people of the country. When a person is poor, he has trouble providing education for himself because he is too busy thinking about how to feed his family and himself. He desperately needs a job, but works as a laborer instead, since this job requires less skill. He asks for some people in society to help him, but they are too absorbed in their own work to even notice his cries for help. This explains how poverty really affects