How much are we morally obligated to aid each other in poverty? With this question comes many different theories. The most famous of these theories come from philosophers by the names of Thomas Pogge, Garrett Hardin, and Peter Singer. These three philosophers have very different arguments to support their views on how much we are morally obligated to aid the needs of others. These arguments include the duties we should have in facing the global problem of poverty. There are positive duties which are what we do to help such as giving and charity, and then there are negative duties which are things we do to not harm or cause their suffering. This paper will focus on describing the ideas and arguments of each of the philosophers and conclude with …show more content…
First to be discussed is Thomas Pogge. Pogge’s main argument is that it is a mistake for us to think that giving to the poor is a charity. Pogge believes that it is our moral duty to help aid in poverty because somehow it was us that caused the poverty to begin with. In Pogge’s “‘Assisting’ the Global Poor” he puts quotes around the word assisting almost as if saying it in a sarcastic manner. He does this because he believes that ‘assisting’ wouldn’t merely be enough because it is our moral duty to help rebuild what we, ourselves, have destroyed. But how, according to Pogge, are we as rich nations harming the poor? Pogge considers John Rawls Purely Domestic Poverty Thesis or PDPT. This theory states that the causes of poverty lie within the country itself and Pogge objects this claim. He counter argues that the country-specific causes mix with global causes to make the extreme poverty we see today. Pogge states that the PDPT is partially true because the country-specific causes are the political figures who …show more content…
Though it might seem cruel and unreasonable, there is a clear example of what he speaks of in today’s society. This example is government welfare. We as a nation put our hard earned tax dollars into aiding the poor of our own nation, and in turn the people in need keep growing and growing. In fact according to Tanner, in 2012 the poverty rate grew to the highest it has been in decades though the United States puts nearly a trillion dollars into government welfare (Tanner 1). In Singer’s point of view, welfare is good because it is giving to the needy with little cost to the people, but is it really helping if the poverty rate is increasing? I argue that this is not the answer. It is clear that helping people really causes more suffering because it teaches them that they don’t have to work for their basic needs because people will just give it to them. If we take a look at Hardin’s theory, he argues that if we give handouts that it will help the people suffering to survive longer thus reproducing to create more people in poverty. If we take a look at the welfare system today, the more children you have, the more money they provide you with. But when will it stop? When the tax payers have to give so much into welfare that it starts to cause suffering on the working class people? According to Tanner, welfare provides $61,380 per year to a family of three (Tanner 1). Now if you step back and look at
“The Singer Solution to Poverty” by Peter Singer and “Facing Famine” by Tom Haines, are both dealing with the same issues but the only difference between the two authors are that they use different tactics in which to address the problem and also attempt to get assistance from others. Although both authors intentions are the same, Haines has a much better strategy of getting the sympathy attention from his audience rather than making them feel guilty for living an average life. The author Peter Singer argues that there is no reason why Americans can’t donate money if they are able to afford luxurious material/products that are not essential to their lives and health. Singer 's solution is for Americans to stop using their money on things that
O?Beirne, Kate. ?The State of Welfare: An old and tricky question resurfaces.? National Review 54.2 (February 11, 2002): 1--2. Online. Information Access Expanded
One of the most pressing matters the world is facing today is the problem of poverty. There are many things that should be done about poverty, yet much of the world is split, on one side people wanting to help and on the other side people not knowing how to go about it. In Garrett Hardin’s “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor,” Hardin present this case to us using the lifeboat as an analogy for nations on earth. Hardin asserts that all nations on earth are viewed as a series of lifeboats adrift at sea. Each lifeboat has a Foreign limited carrying capacity and limited resources. The richer lifeboats have more capacity, more resources, are better managed, and are self-sufficient. Whereas the poorer lifeboats are overcrowded, and their resources are overburdened, so much so that passengers are abandoning poor lifeboats in hopes of being rescued by the richer lifeboats or at least to be aided threw handouts. With limited resources, and very little capacity, what are the passengers on the rich lifeboats to do? Morally, the just thing to do would come to the aid of the passengers in the water and allow them to board the
Singer starts with the base of assumption that suffering and death from lack of the essentials of food, water, shelter, and proper medical assistance are bad. I find no problem with accepting this assumption as it is consistent with most widely accepted moral theories. Singer continues by stating “if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it”(Singer, Pg.231). Like his first statement, this one is easy to swallow. No moral code, save for maybe ethical egoism or nihilism, would attempt to refute either of his premises. His final conclusion is that if it is in our power to stop suffering and death from lack of the essentials, without sacrificing anything of comparable moral worth, we are morally obligated to do so. This essentially removes the current definition of charity, making giving money to famine relief, not a supererogatory act, but a moral duty of all people who have the ability to do so. Singer admits that this would drastically change the way people live their lives. Instead of living with any disposable income, people would be giving money to those who are living under bad or unsurvivable conditions. But wi...
Singer is wrong in his belief that people will willingly give up their fortunes for others. If everyone is forced to donate a lot of money, less will do so willingly or even at all. Clearly, while Peter Singer made important and valid points in “The Singer Solution to Poverty”, his ideas just aren’t realistic and must be tweaked in order to be translated into the real
The unsustainable growth of welfare is becoming a big issue in the United States. The government is spending money it does not have to support people it cannot afford. Welfare only adds more debt to our country. Welfare could be a wonderful aid if people used it with justice, but welfare only creates lazy dependent people. Welfare should only be a resource someone can turn to when you are out of all your options, and are in desperate need of help. In this day and age it has turned into a way of life for some people. Too many Americans would rather turn to government assistance than to get back on their feet themselves. Welfare is being taken advantage of.
In The Cause Against Helping the Poor, Garrett Hardin argues that each nation must protect their own resources and leave others to fend for themselves. Perhaps the strongest argument that Hardin gives for this claim relies on the belief that helping the poor will only ruin our environment and hurt the future generation. Furthermore, we are justified in protecting ourselves, which makes no moral difference in protecting those who are closer to us. In this paper, I will argue that we have a general obligation to help those in need, but the obligation is stronger for those closest to us.
In the face of media campaigns and political sanctions, the question about whether we owe the global poor assistance and rectification is an appropriate one. Despite television advertisements displaying the condition of the poor and news articles explaining it, the reality is the majority of us, especially in the Western world, are far removed from the poverty that still affects a lot of lives. The debate between Thomas Pogge and Mathias Risse regarding our obligation to the poor questions the very institution we live in. Pogge created a new framework in which the debate developed. He introduced a focus on the design of the institutional global order, and the role it plays in inflicting or at least continuing the severe poverty people are exposed to. Whilst both Mathias Risse and Thomas Pogge believe that the “global order is imperfectly developed. It needs reform rather than revolutionary overthrow”, they differ on whether or not it is just and entitles the global poor to assistance. Pogge believes that the global order is unjust as it “helps to perpetuate extreme poverty, violating our negative duty not to harm others unduly”. Risse believes that the institution is only incompletely just and can be credited to improving lives of the global poor. According to him, these improvements contribute to its justifiability and negate any further obligation we have to the poor. Through assessing their debate, it seems that one’s obligation to the poor depends on one’s conception of duty, their unit of analysis, and whether improvement rectifies injustice. On balance, it seems that we do indeed owe the poor, only we may lack the means to settle it.
... aid across the world. As we have established that we do have an obligation to redistribute globally in a cosmopolitan perspective, distributing wealth however we may need to rethink what the best assistance is. Amaryta Sen conveys that before sending aid to the third world state, we would need to fully understand the limitation of freedom in the country. Redistributing wealth to global countries requires it to be evaluated by the economic shortage that they are suffering and to see whether it will be efficient in the long run. The more effective ways to contribute would be to international relief agencies or NGO’s that would pursue international development projects to help those in poverty or the alternative option by Tom Campbell’s idea of a ‘Global humanitarian levy’ which suggests a more appropriate taxation on all citizens to collectively aid those in need.
In discussing Singer’s argument, it is important to explain his definition of global poverty. Singer clearly states that extreme poverty is “not only a condition of unsatisfied material needs” but also a “degrading state of powerlessness” (6). Singer’s argument asserts that citizens of affluent nations are behaving erroneously because they fail to contribute to the end of poverty they know to exist in impoverished countries. He postulates that the common person has the ability to point fingers at others, while he or she nevertheless ought to do as much as they can. Singer's argument is a direct criticism of a capitalistic system where extreme wealth exists next to extreme poverty. For Singer, the ethical call to assist in eradicating poverty rests in a person’s ability to help another. In his full argument, Singer considers three premises. The first is common knowledge that suffering and death is inherently bad. Singer’s argument for the Golden Rule is encapsulated in this premise: “doing unto others, as you would have them do unto you” (16). No sane person would like to suffer; therefore, it is only moral to help those who are suffering. Singer contends in the next premise that individuals ha...
Singer believes that we have a moral obligation to help the global poor that is as strong as our obligation to save a child drowning in front of us. His theory states:
Philosophy Public Affairs 32, no. 2 (1995). 4 (2004): 357-383. Singer, Peter; Miller, Richard "“What Duties Do People in Rich Countries Have to Relieve World Poverty”."
In most cases, shortage of money is not the sole problem. Rather, poverty is a mere term summarised by a sophisticated factors of corruption, lack of infrastructure, civil unrest, government failure, and many more. Especially, donated money are regularly spent to run campaigns, provide wages to staffs, and to run the charities, with a very few of the amount being invested directly to help the poor. This socio-political scepticism can be worse as some believe that charity is merely a band aid fix to the deeper underlying problem that is continuously causing the poverty, and it only becomes the basis for local communities to be dependent on
Poverty has conquered nations around the world, striking the populations down through disease and starvation. Small children with sunken eyes are displayed on national television to remind those sitting in warm, luxiourious houses that living conditions are less than tolerable around the world. Though it is easy to empathize for the poor, it is sometimes harder to reach into our pocketbooks and support them. No one desires people to suffer, but do wealthy nations have a moral obligation to aid poor nations who are unable to help themselves? Garrett Hardin in, "Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping The Poor," uses a lifeboat analogy to expose the global negative consequences that could accompany the support of poor nations. Hardin stresses problems including population increase and environmental overuse as downfalls that are necessary to consider for the survival of wealthy nations. In contrast, Peter Singer's piece, "Rich and Poor," remarks on the large differences between living conditions of those in absolute poverty with the wealthy, concluding that the rich nations possess a moral obligation to the poor that surpasses the risks involved. Theodore Sumberg's book, "Foreign Aid As Moral Obligation," documents religious and political views that encourage foreign aid. Kevin M. Morrison and David Weiner, a research analyst and senior fellow respectively at the Overseas Development Council, note the positive impact of foreign aid to America, a wealthy nation. Following the examination of these texts, it seems that not only do we have a moral obligation to the poor, but aiding poor nations is in the best interest of wealthy nations.
In recent discussion about helping the poor, one controversial issue has been whether to help or not to help. On one hand, some say that helping the poor is very simple and doesn’t take much. From this point of view, it is seen as selfish to not help the poor. On the other hand, however, others argue that by helping others you are in fact hurting yourself at the same time. In the words of Garrett Hardin, one of this view’s main proponents, “prosperity will only be satisfied by lifeboat ethics.” According to this view, we are not morally obligated to help other countries. In sum, then, the issue is whether to help poorer countries or not.