Peter Singer's Argument In Famine, Affluence And Morality

The concept of social inequality tackles the existence of unequal opportunities for people of different status and positions in the society. While it normal to have a form of stratification in the society, there are situations that remain dire and need urgent intervention to try and bring about a balance. There are various dimensions of social inequality including income, wealth, power, and ethnicity. Social inequality has adverse effects on citizens of a particular nation especially on the quality of life due to unequal access to important social amenities. In Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains, the author has a particular focus on several aspects of life in Haiti. While the book covers on several thematic concerns, the issue of social inequality takes a major portion of the author’s attention. Particularly, Mountains Beyond Mountains highlights the economic inequality and disparate provision of healthcare services in Haiti, its impacts on the affected people and the possible solutions to this social inequality.

During the Great Depression, many people were desperate for a job, food, shelter, and security, all of which are standards expected in the modern world. However, in the midst of an economic crisis, the people who had stability despised those who could not achieve a steady way of life. Farmers who hoarded the food that could keep people alive would not help those in need. By selfishly withholding aid, the farmers failed humanity in a way, “that topples all our success,” showing that what they did was not right (Steinbeck 349). When faced with the injustice of people being too poor to afford what they need to survive, those who had resources were morally obligated to help feed those

In Singer’s essay, “The Singer Solution to World Poverty,” the author begins by presenting the reader with the heartfelt scenario of the cost of a child vs. the cost of a new TV. Singer discusses how child trafficking with the intent of organ harvesting is the equivalent of purchasing a brand-new TV because in both cases one can improve conditions for children around the world, either by saving their life or by donating money to help them. Next, Singer goes into the narrative of a man named Bob. Bob has his entire life savings put into a precious Bugatti. However, Bob must make the choice to save his car or to flip the lever and save a child stuck on the railroad tracks. This is, in a way, a decision people face every single day. As a society,

In “Attention Whole Foods Shoppers” by Robert Paarlberg, the main emphasis in the article is that there is a struggle to feed people, particularly in South Africa and Asia due to economic and population issues. His focus is on the lack of involvement of countries around the world that do have food. Throughout the article, Paarlberg talks about how organic agriculture is not going to feed the world and exposes myths about organic food and industrial scale food. By challenging common assumptions and being ethical he effectively claims that the solution to solving these global hunger problems is foreign assistance. Paarlberg shows Pathos, Ethos and Logos through the thought of unravelling worldwide starvation by being realistic of the view on pre-industrial food and farming.

Who wouldn’t want to find a solution to end or reduce poverty in the world? A utilitarian philosopher, Peter Singer stated his own solution in his essay called “The Singer Solution to World Poverty”. Singer’s solution is simple: people shouldn’t be spend their money on luxuries, instead they should donate their money to overseas aid organizations. Peter uses two characters in his essay in hope to get to the hearts and minds of the people, and encourage them to donate. Singer argues that most wealthy people have the solution to end poverty in their hands to end poverty, but most of them don’t do it. Peter’s solution works for people who have enough money to spend on luxuries, but it fails for people who live based on their weekly income. Therefore, Singer’s successful essay gives ideas on how to save money monthly to donate, but it fails when the author urges people where and how much to donate instead of giving them the freedom to choose.

Singer’s argument exhorts us to give based on the controversial principle of comparable moral significance, to donate any income beyond that which is marginally necessary. Singer justifies this based on the knowledge that the suffering of a poor person should be no less significant to that of an affluent one (Singer, 1972). Thus,

Money: the root of most social problems and one of the few matters that almost everyone has an opinion on. Peter Singer’s “The Singer Solution to World Poverty,” a newspaper article, is no exception. Singer argues that one should donate all unnecessary money to the less fortunate because of the morality of the situation. However, though the goal is noble, his commentary is very ineffective due to its condescending tone, lack of hard facts, and overall extremism.

The article is thought provoking. It alerts the reader to new less commonly known facts on poverty such as the fact that it takes more money to only combat causes of poverty instead of actually strategically preventing it from happening in the first place.

Peter Singer argues, in “Rich and Poor” that it is out obligation morally to help people that are in extreme poverty. This is what I believe the three main topics to be. The first is that we owe it to the people in need to prevent something bad if we do not have to sacrifice anything of significance. The second thing he really talks about is absolute poverty, and absolute effluence. The second topic is very simply put, absolute poverty is bad. Lastly, Singer argues that we can actually make a difference without sacrificing a lot. By the end of “Rich and Poor” Singer concludes that we owe it to others to prevent absolute poverty. Throughout this paper there are many problems that I have found to be true.

“Poverty is like punishment for a crime you didn't commit” this quote was said by Mahatma Gandhi and it relates so well with this article “It is Expensive To Be Poor”, answer the question yourself, Is it expensive to be poor? This article is titled like that to get the audience's attention early and have them thinking ahead of reading. The author Barbara Ehrenreich is building a pre thought when she does this which helps support her claim. “It is Expensive To Be Poor” by Barbara Ehrenreich is an article posted on “The atlantic” “which is where you can find your current news and analysis on politics, business, culture, and technology”. Knowing what “The Atlantic” offers for readers this gives Ehrenreich a detailed look at who she is writing to. The article talks about poverty within america and the issues and resolutions connected to the economy. In “It is Expensive To Be Poor” Ehrenreich claim is that people in poverty are not in that situation because of self habits but because they simply do not have money at the moment. she explains that anyone

Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population was an influential essay that proposed a systematic theoretical approach to population. Malthus had collected empirical data and proposed that human population growth increases at an exponential rate. Whereas, the production of food increases at an arithmetic rate. This means that in the long run arithmetic food growth coupled with an exponential growth of human population would lead to a future where humans have little to no resources to survive on. To avoid this Malthusian catastrophe, Malthus argued for controls on population through preventative and positive checks. Preventative checks consist of efforts to lower the birth rate and positive checks are checks used to raise the death rate. Positive

The poor are not responsible for hungry lives, without water and electricity. There are deep inequalities and fundamental deficiencies of social organization. The problem of hunger is not only a question of food production (the bigger, the better) but also of access to food and equity. There are no winners and losers. With these degrees of exclusion, we 're all losers. Social cohesion is weakened, and conflict situations are created, generating violence and sick societies.

In this paper I will be arguing against Peter Singer’s views on poverty, which he expresses in his paper “The Singer Solution to World Poverty”. Singer argues that all people with wealth surplus to their essential needs are morally obligated to prevent the suffering of those in dire situations. I will argue that you can not hold people morally obligated to prevent the suffering of others, and that people can only be held morally obligated to prevent suffering that they themselves caused.

Our lives are, to some point, based on luck. You can be lucky to have successful parents with a lot of fortune or unlucky to be born in a poor neighborhood where you’re struggling with rob-bery and drive-by shooting. Eusebius McKaiser writes about the good and bad luck he has been dealing with through life, in the article “Don’t blame poverty on the poor” in the Mail&Guardian newspaper. A lot of people make the mistake to blame people for their own failures, and perhaps they could have done something differently, in order to be more suc-cessful. But they might not have had the same opportunities, as a wealthy upper-class man by virtue of genetics, neighborhood and the luck they have been given.

“Food entitlement decline theory” has been criticized for its focus only on the economic aspect of famine and its failure to recognize the social and political aspect. First he fails to recognize individuals as socially embedded members of households, communities and states. Second, he fails to recognize that famine causes by political crisis as much as it is the result of economic shocks or natural disasters (Devereux, 2001). Those scholars who criticized Sen argue that importing food in a situation of existing insecurity could be the answer to minimize the food problem and to save lives (Steven Engler, et al,