The Singer Solution To World Poverty, By Peter Singer

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Abstract of The Singer Solution to World Poverty “The Singer Solution to World Poverty” by Peter Singer, argues that one should prioritize needs over wants and the money spent on one’s wants should be donated. To justify his claim, he presents two brief cases; one from the film “Central Station,” and the other from a book, “Living High and Letting Die.” The film is about a girl, named Dora, who is financially unstable and is homeless. She chooses to give an innocent child to a family in return for $1000, even though she knows that the boy is not in safe hands. He uses this story to trigger moral thoughts within the reader’s mind and set the tone for the rest of the article. In case two, Singer paraphrases Peter Unger’s narration about the…show more content…
Singer’s first objection states that there’s a difference between the case of Bob and our case: Bob is the only person who can save the life of the innocent child on the railway track whereas there are thousands of Americans who can afford to donate at least $200 to charities but choose not to do it. However, he responds by claiming that if thousands of people chose to do the same thing as Bob did under that circumstance, then it would just result in thousands making the wrong decision. Thus, according to Singer, these people are just living by the “follow-the-crowd” ethics, similar to that of Germans who turned a blind eye to Nazi crimes. In the second objection, he states that people debate whether it is valid if everyone decides to give more than their “fair share” then one doesn’t need to give as much of their share to save lives. He refutes it by saying that “ the money we can give beyond that theoretical ''fair share'' is still going to save lives that would otherwise be lost” (Singer 4). He defends himself by saying that we should still give away any money that is additional to the money we use for our needs to lessen the suffering of the destitute since their situations is direr and severe than ours. The last argument states that although according to psychology, we may not be altruistic but morally not giving the “surplus wealth” is not ethically justified (Singer 5). He claims that such argument can be

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