Singer's Solution to World Poverty

Peter Singer, author of "Singer's Solution to World Poverty" proposes that American donate a substantial portion of their expendable income to feed children in order to end world poverty. Within Singer's proposal, he makes various assumptions about world poverty and his reasoning to bring it to an end is based on American's over-consumption of non-essential goods and services.

Within Singer's article, he eludes to many unstated assumptions, of which I've chosen three to explore through further research. The first being, that Americans are morally responsible for ending world poverty. Secondly, Singer eludes that United States over-consumption of non-essential goods is purely negative and directly correlates with world poverty. Lastly, Singer tries to convince his audience that significant monetary donations by the middle class could end world poverty.

Singer's assumptions of American's moral responsibility for ending world poverty does not take into account American's arguably primarily responsibility for individual and family financial security and sense of responsibility for domestic poverty and other issues. I plan to research American's domestic priorities on poverty in comparison to their sense of responsibility for world poverty. Singer's assumptions on American's moral responsibility undervalue domestic responsibility as he focuses on providing aid to children in other countries.

Singer's second underlying assumption of American's consumption patterns of non-essential goods having a purely negative effect on world poverty doesn't consider the entire global economic picture. While American's consume more goods than any other country in the world, there are economic benefits experienced internationally because of the goods that are being exported to the U.S. Additionally, if American's consumed less goods and services, the U.S. economy would suffer and could cause job loss for Americans and international workers that manufacture these goods. I plan to research the economic affects of American consumption on the global economy.

Singer also argues that monetary donations from America's middle class could end world poverty, and that Americans should donate a large portion of their expendable income to non-profit organizations to aid children in poverty.