Over 1.4 billion people live on less than $1.25 per day (Singer 7). In impoverished nations, the life expectancy is below fifty, compared to the average of seventy-eight years in rich nations. The mortality rate of children is twenty times greater in “least developed” countries than in developed nations. Nearly 18 million people die every year from avoidable, poverty-related causes (UNICEF). On the other side of the spectrum, there were more than 1,100 billionaires in the world in 2007 (Singer 9). According to Singer, “[t]here are about a billion [people] living at a level of affluence never previously known except in the courts of kings and nobles” (9). Peter Singer insists in his book, The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty, that there is no reason why the rich should not give up part of their income to help the poor achieve a sustainable way of life. Looking at these statistics, who could say that he has an extreme viewpoint? With so many resources and so much money to give away, helping those in need takes no more than a simple action. Giving up some unneeded luxuries to potentially save more than one child’s life would not kill anyone. However, would that, in reality, benefit the impoverished? Ignoring the impoverished will leave them in their current situation; helping them excessively will cause them to rely on others. The real solution to this ongoing crisis lies in microloans.
Developed countries should not simply hand money to third world countries, as this gives no incentive to develop responsible government or fiscal policies. Dambisa Moyo, an international economist from Zambia, comments on foreign aid, stating that “aid is easy money” (Collier). If a person were to give a man in need a small sum of m...
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...y establish a business by loaning it money through microloans reduces poverty permanently.
Works Cited
Collier, Paul. "Dead Aid, By Dambisa Moyo." Rev. of Dead Aid, by Dambisa Moyo. The Independent 30 Jan 2009. Web. < http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/dead-aid-by-dambisa-moyo-1519875.html>.
Shah, Anup.“Poverty Facts and Stats.”Global Issues. 20 Sep. 2010. Web. 10 Jan. 2012. .
Singer
UNICEF
http://www.starvation.net/
http://www.realityofaid.org
World Bank
http://www.ilo.org/global/lang--en/index.htm#a3
O’Hanlon, Ellis. “Aid is not the only answer to Third World problems.” Irish Independent News.
Kiva
Erase Poverty
Collect Educate Advance (CEA)
"How aid works (or doesn't)." African Business Feb. 2009: 22+. Gale Student Resources In Context. Web. 16 Jan. 2012.
The United States continues to give around $550 billion in aid to other countries each year, making America the world's top donor by far (Richardson). While the United States government only supplies $252 billion to needy Americans each year. Former Assistant to the President for Communications, Patrick Buchanan said, "The idea that we should send endless streams of tax dollars all over the world, while our own country sinks slowly in an ocean of debt is, well, ludicrous" (Foreign Aid). The United States need to give money to support the domestic impoverished rather than supporting developing foreign countries because the poverty and homelessness in America is increasing faster than the aid necessary to reduce this trend. Part of the reason that the United States should aid the domestic impoverished is that some foreign countries cannot be trusted with the money given to them and in certain cases, the money intended to aid countries are harmful for that country’s well-being.
“The Singer Solution to Poverty” by Peter Singer and “Facing Famine” by Tom Haines, are both dealing with the same issues but the only difference between the two authors are that they use different tactics in which to address the problem and also attempt to get assistance from others. Although both authors intentions are the same, Haines has a much better strategy of getting the sympathy attention from his audience rather than making them feel guilty for living an average life. The author Peter Singer argues that there is no reason why Americans can’t donate money if they are able to afford luxurious material/products that are not essential to their lives and health. Singer 's solution is for Americans to stop using their money on things that
The imperfection of Singer’s solution to end world poverty exceeds its convenience in the average American. While the wealthy is targeted and responsible for the lack of donations to the less fortunate, singer gives poor supporting details in why the wealthy should donate a large portion of their wealth to only help a few individuals for a certain period of time.
In his 1972 essay “Famine, Affluence, and Poverty”, Peter Singer tackles what seems on the surface to be a fairly simple debacle. He opens his essay by discussing the lack of food, shelter, and medical care in East Bengal. It is a given that every human deserves, in the very least, food, a place to sleep, and basic medical care. Singer claims that the problems involving poverty around the world is not an inevitable problem. He alleges that if we all pitched in what we can, these problems could be abolished. But unfortunately many people do not want to give up what they have for the sake of others. For these people, Singer put forth his seemingly obvious argument. It goes as follows:
... aid across the world. As we have established that we do have an obligation to redistribute globally in a cosmopolitan perspective, distributing wealth however we may need to rethink what the best assistance is. Amaryta Sen conveys that before sending aid to the third world state, we would need to fully understand the limitation of freedom in the country. Redistributing wealth to global countries requires it to be evaluated by the economic shortage that they are suffering and to see whether it will be efficient in the long run. The more effective ways to contribute would be to international relief agencies or NGO’s that would pursue international development projects to help those in poverty or the alternative option by Tom Campbell’s idea of a ‘Global humanitarian levy’ which suggests a more appropriate taxation on all citizens to collectively aid those in need.
Did you have a cup of coffee today? Or maybe you went shopping for that new shirt for the summer? Your money could be going to a better cause. Of the 7.15 billion people on Earth today, approximately 2.4 billion people live on less than two dollars and day, and 1.4 billion people live on less than $1.25 a day. More than eight-hundred people go to bed hungry, and more than one million people do not have access to clean drinking water. The amazing stat is that over eighteen thousand children die per day from diseases that are preventable. Kids die from a multitude of cause such as diarrhea, malaria, malnutrition, and disease. (Abbate, Global Poverty, 2014) Each could be prevented with the money you spent on that nonessential item for yourself. Most people do not seem to do this because of the out of sight out of mind principle. Since we never get to see how our aid actually helps those across the world, individuals are less inclined to help. In his article ,“The Singer Solution to World Poverty” (Landau, 2012) Peter Singer provides a unique argument in that he believes that we are no different than a murderer because we had the capability to stop it and didn’t do so. We have the ability to give what we essentially waste to maximize the happiness of another person and reduce poverty around the world. There are many charities out there, that can take the little money that we have or need to give, and can distribute it to help a magnitude of people worldwide. In this paper, I am arguing that we should give what money we can to relief and aid organizations in order to reduce global poverty because it is our duty to maximize the happiness around us.
Singer, Peter; Miller, Richard "“What Duties Do People in Rich Countries Have to Relieve World Poverty”." Debate, Singer-Miller Debate from Center for the Study of Inequality and the Atlantic Foundation, Ithaca, April 4, 2003.
The neoliberal policies have benefited some people in generating great wealth for them, but controversially, the policies have failed to benefit the people who live in extreme poverty and those people are the most in need for financial support (Makwana, 2006). In the last 2 to 3 decades, the wealth disparity between nations as well as within nations has increased. Currently, one out of every 5 children in the United States is in a state of poverty, continual hunger, insecurity and lack of health care (MIT, 2000). This situation is becoming even more desperate. Between 1960 and 1980, the developing countries’ economic growth was 3.2 percent. Then it dropped significantly to 0.7 percent between 1980 and 2000, and this is the period when neolibe...
The writer behind “Singers Solution to World Poverty” advocates that U.S. citizens give away the majority of their dispensable income in order to end global suffering. Peter Singer makes numerous assumptions within his proposal about world poverty, and they are founded on the principle that Americans spend too much money on items and services that they do not need.
Accessed 06 March 2005. 11. Garten, Jeffrey E, “Don't Just Throw Money At The World's Poor” BusinessWeek, March 7, 2005.
In most cases, shortage of money is not the sole problem. Rather, poverty is a mere term summarised by a sophisticated factors of corruption, lack of infrastructure, civil unrest, government failure, and many more. Especially, donated money are regularly spent to run campaigns, provide wages to staffs, and to run the charities, with a very few of the amount being invested directly to help the poor. This socio-political scepticism can be worse as some believe that charity is merely a band aid fix to the deeper underlying problem that is continuously causing the poverty, and it only becomes the basis for local communities to be dependent on
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, also known as the silent killer, exists in every corner of the world. In fact, almost half of the world’s population lives in poverty. According to the United States Census Bureau, there were 46.7 million people living in poverty the year of 2014 (1). Unfortunately, thousands of people die each year due to this world-wide problem. Some people view poverty as individuals or families not being able to afford an occupational meal or having to skip a meal to save money. However, this is not the true definition of poverty. According to the author of The Position of Poverty, John Kenneth Galbraith, “people are poverty-stricken when their income, even if adequate for survival, falls radically behind that of the community”, which means people
Poverty is prevalent throughout the world around us. We watch television and see famous people begging us to sponsor a child for only ten dollars a month. We think in our own minds that ten dollars is only pocket change, but to those children and their families, that ten dollars is a large portion of their annual income. We see images of starving children in far away countries, and our hearts go out to them. But we really do not know the implications of poverty, why it exists, or even what we can do to help combat this giant problem in our world.
Ivan R. Dee, 2004. Moyo, Dambisa. Dead Aid. Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre, 2009. Rice, Xan.