The Singer Solution To World Poverty Summary

Tom Shi
Final Draft
Dr. Smalley
10.11.2012
Even Little Bit Helps: My solution to world poverty

Try to imagine when you became a homeless child who is facing death because of starvation, would not you want a piece of bread from a kind man? In the article "The Singer Solution to World Poverty" Peter Singer talks about whether we should save poor children or not by donating money. In his article, Singer helps us realize our response for the deaths of children in poor families by asking the reader to consider hypothetical situations and put these moral issues into real life. In the long run, simply donating money to poor countries do not solve the problem. In my opinion, we should help the poor children to make their own living, by spending
The example is about close-to-retirement Bob, who chooses not to throw the switch that would have directed the train to another track and saved child's life. In the same manner, it is very wrong of us for not calling the charity number listed on P299 after seeing it, because we chose not making the phone call while we could have saved one child's life by making it. According to the author "Now you, too have the information you need to save child's life. How should you judge yourself if you don't do it?" In our real life, it is understandable that people prefer to do nothing, because I did not call that charity neither. However, our problem is that we tend to rely on the majority, because nobody will blame the majority. In this case, some people might ask "then why should we donate our money to the charity while the majority is not willing to do so?" The author calls this "follow-the-crowd ethics-the kind of ethics that led many Germans to look away when the Nazi atrocities were being committed. We do not excuse them because others were behaving no better." However, I do not agree with Singer's opinion that we should donate everything beyond necessities, where Singer says "An American
For example, we can spend our money on popularizing education and health care in poor countries, so we are helping poor children to create their own survival abilities. In the end, we should clarify the value of 200 dollars: it might be nothing for rich people to spend that amount on a luxury dinner (some of the top restaurants charge even more than that) in this case the value of $200 might be tasty foods and a comfortable environment. Now, let's save this $200 and give it to an oversea aid organization assuming the money is directly spent on saving one sick child's life. In this case, the value of $200 is certainly more than a good meal. Therefore, we should definitely donate part of our extra income, but not everything beyond necessities. Furthermore, the money should be spent popularizing education and health care in poor countries. When you see your $200 has made a little difference in the life of a poor children, don't you feel happy? and don't you think that together as a whole we can make world better so we should start