The Poverty Issue Research Assignment Paper (Essay Sample)

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The poverty issue
Peter Singer believes that a person should give up their luxuries and wealth so as to help others. He believes that the poverty problem can be solved if everybody gave up their money and property and donated the money spent on the luxuries to the less fortunate. In his mind, Singer believed that each l should give until they were no longer able to or until people stopped suffering from poverty. He felt that those who did not help the people in need were negatively responsible for their woes and suffering, hence not living a morally upright life. Although his philosophy seemed simple, some people still did not agree with it. Garret Hardin, one of the leading ecologists from Stanford University, believed that by helping the poor and the less fortunate, people would not only be hurting them by making them dependent on others, are also destroying the entire society (Freiman and Christopher 26). He believed that the best way to help the poor was not to help them. He was a strong believer in education, not charity. Hardin also felt that donations would make the poor remain poor as they had no reason to work since the wealthy people provide everything to them by the affluent people. Personally, I feel that Peter Singer is right because everyone should help others out in a disaster if they have the means available to do so.
Peter Singer believes that the Westerners live in a state of extravagance and luxury compared to other parts of the world. I agree with him because many people can live comfortably on thirty thousand dollars a year. That would enable them to provide for their necessities. Other luxuries like big screen televisions are not necessary, so people should donate extra money to the poor (Kanbur and Ravi 163). His philosophy is simple, if all individuals gave away what they do not necessarily require, there would obviously be more resources available to donate towards the nations and people who were fortunate than ourselves.
Peter Singer has two principles. The stronger one states that if we have the power to prevent a bad thing from happening without sacrificing anything of utmost moral importance, we are morally obligated to do it. Peter states that most people from affluent countries have a moral responsibility to give to a marginal utility if it does not put them in the same situation as those who we are assisting. (Freiman and Christopher 26). The principle requires us to prevent the bad things and promote the good stuff. He gives a good example that if he saw a child drowning while walking past a shallow pond, he had to wade in and save the child, which would involve getting his clothes muddy. It would be insignificant, however, because the death of the child would be a bad thing. His weaker principle, on the other hand, states that one gives what they consider morally significant and does not need going to a marginal utility. For instance, this means that instead of upgrading your car, phone or smartphone, we ought to use that money to salvage the lives of children in need. With the advancement and improvement in technology, our standards of living have improved significantly. In fact, research suggests that most Americans spend almost one-thirds of their income on the unnecessary things. He raises concern that many innocent people are dying all over the globe due to the lack of money, while others are spending these funds fulfilling their worldly desires.
In addition to this, Peter Singer also suggests that we should help people regardless of their proximity or distance. For instance, he felt that it did not make any difference if the individual we can help happens to be a neighbor’s son ten yard away or a Bengali whose name we do not know, millions of miles away. The fact that the person is physically near us makes it easier for us to help them, but this does not necessarily allow us to assist them rather than the one who is thousands of miles away. If we accept any principle of equality, impartiality or universality, we cannot afford to discriminate against people merely because they are far away from us (Seider and Scott 245. Admittedly, it is possible that we placed better to assist those who are closer to us. From a moral point of view, the globalization of the world has made a significant, although there is still an unrecognized difference to our moral obligations. Expert supervisors and observers, permanently positioned in drought-prone areas or sent by drought relief organizations, can send our aid to refugees in Bengal just as efficiently as we could get it to a person in our neighborhood. There is simply no reason to discriminate against people due to their geographical grounds.
Mister Singer is right. He suggests that the fact that there are thousands of other individuals in a similar position to himself, concerning the Bengali refugees, does not necessarily make the situation different from another situation where he was the only person who could prevent something bad from happening (Seider and Scott 285). He, however, does admit that there may be a psychological difference since a person feels less guilty about doing nothing if they can point to o...