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Rhetorical Analysis Of The Singer Solution To World Poverty

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“The Singer Solution to World Poverty” by Peter Singer raises a thought provoking question to his audience—to give or not to give? Singer believes that acquiring luxuries is equivalent to letting poverty-stricken children starve to death. Extreme hypothetical scenarios of people who choose money and luxuries over a child’s life are prevalent throughout Singer’s argument and to further prove his point, he creates parallels between those people and people who don’t donate and claims that there is no moral distinction between the two. Singer’s straight-forward, but rather demanding proposition states that the money used to indulge in luxuries should go towards people in need instead. In an ideal world, Singer’s “solution” would be simple and noble. …show more content…

Singer’s formula states that “whatever money you’re spending on luxuries, not necessities, should be given away” (Singer 16). But do luxuries and necessities mean the same thing to different people? Is saving money for your children’s college fund a luxury or necessity? What about wanting to save money in case a medical emergency comes up, or you are laid off from your job? Giving away 70% of your earnings annually is extreme and too demanding as people’s motivation to earn and save money is so that they can live a comfortable life. Additionally, Americans are endowed with unalienable rights through the Declaration of Independence. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” (UShistory). American’s are protected by these rights and are entitled to choose what they want to do with their money because they have worked hard for it. On another note, giving away money annually will eventually make the American economy crash as the economy relies on the money spent on our day to day necessities and luxuries. While only spending money on necessities, small family businesses and even large corporations that carry luxury items will all eventually cease to exist. It will disrupt the natural economic cycle and drastically increase unemployment

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In Singer’s “The Singer Solution to World Poverty,” he argues the importance of donation to poor people, which could mean the difference between life and death for children in need. He gives an example for Bob, who has an opportunity to save a child’s life, but he could lose his worthy car. He makes a comparison between people who are capable to donate money to save children lives and people who have no chance to help or donate under certain situation such as Bob. He also encourages people who are in the middle class to donate at a minimum of 200$; furthermore, he thinks that people should donate more like 200.000$ when they consider the level of sacrifice that they would demand of Bob’s situation. He gives some estimates for the amount of donations that people should give to overseas.

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Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” lays out a strong argument on why we are morally obligated to help those in need if we can. He first lays down a platform by saying that suffering and dying from starvation is bad, which most reasonable people would agree with. He builds on this by saying that if we can prevent something bad without causing any harm, then we are morally obligated to do it. This argument, much like the first, is one that would be widely accepted since most people wouldn’t want something bad to occur if they can prevent it.

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Peter Singer argues that prosperous people should donate their excess money to the overseas aid groups. When saying this, he believes Americans should stop spending their money on luxuries such as a TV, a computer, a car, and videogames. Instead of spending money on items such as that, he thought we should start sending money to those who are starving in other countries and need our help. There are pros and cons to Singer’s argument and both can be greatly supported.

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The Singer Solution to world poverty, which was written by accomplished utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer, is a literary work that was written with the purpose of inspiring readers to forsake all excess in their lives and devote their nonessential income to charity. Mr. Singer is widely regarded for his cut and dry philosophy and his direct approach to literature which is clearly displayed in this work. In this work he deftly attacks the topic of world poverty and first world charity head on, similar to a no holds barred cage match. While the essay’s argument is logical to the point of simplicity and has powerful appeals to pathos, his aggressive tone and demand that the reader give up the entirety of their wealth diminishes his position

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Peter Singer himself writes, “We can give to organizations like Unicef or Oxfam America” (Singer, 737). If the wealthy people were to help the poor out, there is no reason to bother in using children of the poor to feed the wealthy. The money that will be provided can go into making shelters in which those children can live happily. There is no reason for those who do not trust organizations, to be selfish. They themselves can create their own organization, give children shelters and their parents a job as well.

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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 piece is written by Peter Singer, an Australian professor of bioethics at Princeton University.

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Another example from Singer was inspired by another philosopher, Peter Unger, who in his work Living High and Letting Die created several imaginary examples about whether it is wrong to live well without giving money to help people in need. This example is about a man named Bob who invested most of his life savings in a very rare and expensive car, a Bugatti. Bob gets vast amounts of pleasure from driving the car, and with the car’s rising market value, it provides a profitable investment which can allow him to retire comfortably. One-day Bob is

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The Singer Solution to World Poverty Peter Singer, a professor of bioethics, wrote an article featured in The New York Times Magazine. “The Singer Solution to World Poverty” which explored Singer’s idea of taking all money which is not being used for necessities, from people across the world. This idea would, as Singer purpose, is supposedly supposed to solve the World’s poverty issue. However with an issue this complex, a solution is not always going to black and white, thus it is important to weigh the pros and cons before rejecting or endorsing this idea.

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In addition to Singer’s criticism of affluent nation’s reactions, he proposes that the moral scheme of our society be changed, an argument I agree with to some extent. Singer puts forth two versions of how affluent nations and individuals can prevent suffering and death. The first, his “strong version”, requires one “to prevent bad things from happening unless in doing so we would be sacrificing something of comparable moral significance [which] require[s] reducing ourselves to the level of the marginal utility” (Singer 241). The controversial parts of Singer’s strong version are “comparable moral significance” and “level of marginal utility”. Those phrases are the reason that the strong version is an ideal view instead of a realistic.

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There can be no doubt that people should be morally free to live their own lives and pursue and develop their own interests, to a certain degree at the very least. This necessitates then that a person is morally permitted to dedicate one’s time, energy, and money to activities that don’t directly have an impact on famine relief or similar worthy causes. For example, it could frequently happen and has happened whereby certain pursuits and recreations have beneficial and favourable outcomes and consequences that could not have been foreseen. My argument lies with the issue that if people are not free to follow their intellectual interests when it is not obvious what positive impact they might have, or whether they would have any positive repercussions at all, humanity in general could be worse off than we actually are. This is tied to Singer’s argument if people are obligated to do as much as they possibly can, to aid famine relief, they would have to give up many of their own special projects and interests in order to do so.

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This paper is regarding the article “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” written by Peter Singer. In this article Singer gives a critique on how famine can be prevented by individuals in rich countries helping the ones who are in need of the famine relief. Singer believes that we have moral obligations to act in a certain way like to become committed to helping others in need. My views contradict to Peter Singer’s theory as it challenges the demanding and less demanding principles of Singer through analyzing and comparing them. Peter Singer argues that people, especially the ones that live in wealthy countries must alter their inception of morality and act upon that.

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The world of today is highly advanced, allowing individuals to lead whatever life they so choose. Some humans, however, are not as fortunate. Billions today do not have the luxury of leading their own lives, for they barely have a biologically functional life at all to lead. Poverty, along with the lack of shelter and proper medical care, affect these unfortunate billions and cause suffering and death on a daily basis. Australian philosopher Peter Singer thereby rouses an argument calling on everyone to donate their excess and material wealth to charities in order to end this global suffering.

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To have money is a dream come true for a majority of people, however nothing comes without consequence. There are undisclosed principles as to what you should/should not do, what you need to be aware of, and what can happen to you or your loved ones. My mother, without fail, would always say to me “Never discuss how much money you have to anyone!” Today that couldn’t be more true. Would you want the 318.9 million people in the U.S to know you have more than what they could make in +4 generations?

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