Rich v. Poor
Take a moment and picture a child half naked in the streets. His body has been harshly neglected. Little to no calf muscles exist. His ribs are plainly countable. One, two, three up his left side. You can do the same to his right. Malnutrition only vaguely begins to describe his condition. The worst of anorexia doesn’t even compare to this child’s inhumane state. As for shelter, he lives in a dilapidated hut. Food is a luxury, as the child may be fed only three or four times a week. He’s expected to die by the age of five due to severe malnutrition and disease. This is the grim portrait of an Ethiopian child in absolute poverty. His life doesn’t allow for the basic essentials of food, shelter, or clothing.
In today’s world poverty is not only viewed in terms of average income/wealth, but as the lower end of distribution regarding income, education, health accessibility, nutrition, productivity, participation in politics, etc. Thus, poverty is defined as the “economic condition in which people lack sufficient income to obtain certain minimal levels of health services, food, housing, clothing, and education generally recognized as necessary to ensure an adequate standard of living” (Funk & Wagnall 1). Adequate, however, depends on the standard of living for each country.
There are two different types of poverty today—relative and absolute. Nearly half of a billion people live in relative poverty—“meaning that some citizens are poor, relative to the wealth enjoyed by their neighbors” (Singer 218). To put these figures in terms one can relate to, it’s estimated that about 10% of human life resides in relative poverty. This is a substantial amount, but their condition is quite well ...
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...ay, “prevent something very bad from happening, without [thereby] sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance…” (Singer 229), and we should.
Works Cited
* Hardin, Garret. “Living on a Lifeboat.” Contemporary Moral Problems. American Institute of Biological Sciences, 1974: 246-257.
* “Poverty.” Funk & Wagnall’s New Encyclopedia. 1992: 1-2.
* Quadrini, Vincenzo.; Ríos-Rull, José-Víctor. “Understanding the U.S. Distribution of Wealth.” http://newfirstsearch.oclc.org
* Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Quarterly Review v. 21 no2. Spring. 1997: 22-36.
* Singer, Peter. “Rich and Poor.” Practical Ethics. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993: 218-246.
* Speth, James Gustave. “The Plight of the Poor: The Unites States Must Increase Development Aid.” Foreign Affairs v. 78 no3. May/June. 1999: 1-3.
Pogge, Thomas Winfried Menko, and Keith Horton. "Famine, Affluence and Poverty." In Global ethics: seminal essays. St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2008. 1-14.
...themselves. By adding further conditions or exceptions we could address specific objections and create more narrowly defined obligations. Further modifications of PP’ would not generally eliminate obligations, but it would allow choices to be made. In particular, for the affluent, doing nothing remains off limits so they would still be required to do what they can to alleviate suffering in places where they are in agreement that help is warranted. This derivation from the original argument plausibly supports the basic argument made by Singer that we ought to do everything in our power to help those in need so long as we need not sacrifice anything significant.
Peter Singer organizes his arguments into an outline form allowing a reader to take individual thoughts, adding them together giving a “big picture.” Within the first few pages, Singer shares two guiding assumptions in regards to his argument to which I stated above. The first assumption states “that suffering and death from lack of food, shelter and medical care are bad” (231). Singer steps away from the typical writing style; he states the assumption yet he does not give a personal comment in regards to the assumption. He chooses to do so because the assumption itself is surely uncontroversial; most people would agree, but to those who don’t agree, there are so many possibilities at which to arrive to this assumption that, after all, if they don’t yet comprehend its truth, it would be hard to convince them of its accuracy. Speaking for myself, if I encountered an individual that does not agree to the assumption that death by avoidable causes is bad; I would not hesitate to declare them of being heartless. There are many cases, whether across oceans on foreign land or areas to which we live, where people are dying because of inescapable, unfortunate reasons. Within such cases, even a possible little voice in the back of the head can lead one to wonder who has the responsibility of helping those who are enduring such unnecessary deaths. This sense of wonder leads us to Singer’s second assumption; “if it is in our power to prevent something from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it” (231). To better clarify what this assumption is looking for, Singer points out that “It requires u...
· Singer, Peter, Practical Ethics: Second Edition. 1993, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK. Pgs: 298-306
Hardin presents “lifeboat ethics” which is a metaphor for the gaps between the rich and the poor. Imagine a lifeboat: only a fifty people can fit inside. The people in the boat are the rich while the surrounding sea represents the poor people. The poor being placed in the sea represents them drowning in poverty. About ten more people could possibly fit into the lifeboat, making the maximum capacity of the boat sixty, ignoring the safety factor
Individuals who lack basic requirements for human existence – such as sufficient food, shelter and clothing – are said to live in poverty. In absence of basic needs it is almost impossible to have proper housing, edible food, proper infrastructure and education including health facilities. There are two basic kinds of poverty: absolute poverty which states that basic conditions must be met in order to survive in a healthy manner. Whereas relative poverty deals with people who are poor compared to people around them but have enough to fulfil their basic amenities (Giddens, 2009). Poverty can manifest itself on (many) different life domains (width) and
Shafer-Landau, R. (2013) Ethical Theory: An Anthology (Second Edition). West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Singer’s utilitarian theory points out his main arguments for his statement “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” (375). He supports this by suggesting that were are morally obligated to prevent bad no matter the “proximity or distance” , “the number of other people who, in respect to that evil, are in the same situation we are” and that we ought to prevent hunger by sacrificing only their luxuries, which are of lesser moral importance (378). This meaning that we shouldn’t limit our aide to only those that we can see or that we know because morally there is no different between our obligation to them and our obligation to those overseas. Also, we should limit our aide to what we think ...
In this paper, I will argue against two articles which were written against Singer’s view, and against helping the poor countries in general. I will argue against John Arthur’s article Famine Relief and the Ideal Moral Code (1974 ) ,and Garrett Hardin’s article Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor ( 1976); I will show that both articles are exaggerating the negative consequences of aiding the poor, as well as building them on false assumptions. Both Arthur and Hardin are promoting the self-interest without considering the rights of others, and without considering that giving for famine relief means giving life to many children.
Mayhew, Robert. The Journal of Ethics , Vol. 1, No. 4 (1997) , pp. 325-340
Today it is estimated that more than 35 million Americans which is approximately 14 percent of the population live in poverty. The numbers are high and only continue to get higher. Statistics have shown that poverty is increasing. Millions of people die annually because they lack the resources and food to live a daily life. There exist many programs that offer projects to help or at least to reduce the percentage of poverty, but they lack the financial support. Many people from the middle class are on the borderline of poverty and if the economy does not improve, they will reach poverty. This is very upsetting especially if most of us are middle class. Poverty can happen to anyone, it all depends on society and the economy. According to the definition of relative poverty, poor people are the ones who do not have what is needed the most. Without a foundation to live a decent life is has become difficult to...
Poverty, also know as the “silent killer” (Causes of Poverty), exists in every corner of the world. The death rate of poor children is a staggering number; about 9 million die each year. Some view poverty as people not being able to afford an occupational meal or having to skip a meal to save money. This isn’t true poverty; poverty is where people live on $1.25 or less a day. According to Causes of Poverty, 1.4 billion people live like this. Even more shocking than the last statistic is that half of the world’s population lives on $2.50 per day.
Poverty is generally defined as a state of deprivation in well-being. The conventional perspective connects well-being basically to control over commodities, so the poor are individuals who do not have sufficient income or consumption to place them above some adequate bare minimum threshold (Lyman et al, 2004). Poverty is also tied to a particular type of consumption, for instance people may be considered health poor, house poor or food poor. The poverty dimensions can often be determined directly. For instance it can be measured by assessing malnutrition or levels of literacy (Alla...
As one of the biggest problems facing the world today, poverty continues to have significant negative implications for the society. The effects of poverty are extremely severe and far-reaching, so much so that it was one of the top Millennium Development Goals agreed upon at the Millennium Summit of the UN back in 2000 (Hatcher, 2016). To understand the effects that poverty has on the society, one must critically analyze the societies in which poverty is rampant, as well as analyze poverty from the relative perspectives that it presents. The core aim of this paper is to develop a holistic understanding of poverty and elaborate on the diverse ways in which it continues to affect societies across the world.
Poverty is a global epidemic that contributes to the deaths of millions each year. However, poverty is more prominent in some areas around the world than others. The Oxford dictionary defines poverty as the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support, but it’s so much more. Poverty can be defined as being hungry, lacking shelter, being unable to go to school, being unable to see a doctor, or being powerless and having a lack of freedom. The reason behind the many descriptions of poverty is that poverty has many faces, and its definition changes depending on the place and time, however the effects of poverty on the poor are always the same.