Hunger and Poverty Essay

In Peter Singer’s 1972 post titled “Famine, Affluence and Morality”, he conveys that wealthy nations, for example the United States, has an ethical duty to contribute much a lot more than we do with regards to worldwide assistance for famine relief and/or other disasters or calamities which may happen. In this document, I will describe Singers objective in his work and give his argument with regards to this problem. I will describe 3 counter-arguments to Singer’s view which he tackles, and after that reveal Singer’s reactions to those counter-arguments. I will explain Singer’s idea of marginal

In a piece by Peter Singer entitled, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” Singer argues that Americans should prevent atrocious situations to arise but, we also should not sacrifice something of equal importance while doing so. Moreover, in the piece by John Arthur, “World Hunger and Moral Obligation: The Case Against Singer,” Arthur disagrees with Singer; he believes that we should help the poverty-stricken but, it is not morally imperative to do so.

For most Americans, the word poverty means insufficient access to to housing, clothing and nutritious food that meet their needs for a healthy life. A consequence of poverty is a low socioeconomic status that leads to being exposed to poor nutrition. Since food and dietary choices are influenced by income, poverty and nutrition go hand in hand. There are many important factors that threaten the nutritional status of poor people. The number one factor is not having enough money to buy food of good quality and quantity. Not having enough money can have a profound impact on the diets of low-income people. Limited financial resources may force low income people to make difficult decisions about what kind and how much food to buy. Limited

In “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” Peter Singer claims that “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.” Additionally, Singer believes that distance is no excuse for allowing something bad to happen; thus, we ought to help people on the other side of the world the same way we would help a neighbor – even though we may feel further inclined to help our neighbors. Moreover, Singer states that people should help as much as possible, without putting themselves or their dependents at risk of suffering. Peter Singer is correct in stating that people with the capacity to prevent something bad from occurring should do so; however,

Jimmy carter once said, "We know that a peaceful world cannot long exist, one-third rich and two-thirds hungry." With the world now more interconnected than ever there might be a solution to world hunger by distribution of wealth. Peter Singer, in his article titled, Famine, Affluence, and Morality, takes this concept of unity that we have on a global scale and tries to tackle the issue of world hunger. Before we dive into the article we will focus on utilitarianism to help us understand his perspective better. Following, we will analyze Singer and his theory, by strongly arguing that famine should be given moral worth. A stance is made that if you are aware of suffering that is going on elsewhere than it is your responsibility to do something about it. He points out that it doesn’t matter if anyone else is helping nor does it matter the distance. Singer does make some good points, however, these do not come without objections.

Accepting the three premises seems to require us to reconsider the meaning of charity and duty. The obligation to give as much as we can becomes a matter of duty not charity. This upends the notion where charitable giving to those in need is praiseworthy, but failure is not to be condemned. By the force of Singer’s argument, failure to give is wrong because we must do everything in our power to direct every extra resource to those suffering from death and starvation. This changes our conception of giving from optional to obligatory. For example, it would wrong to buy a new shirt or enjoy a fine meal instead of giving to famine relief. Singer’s conclusion is simply This

“Hunger”, by Lan Samantha Chang, is a cautionary tale of an immigrant Chinese family in this complex story about unrelenting hunger, oppression, love and loss. Narrated by Min; the deeply unhappy and obedient wife of Tian, a gifted violinist, finds work as a music teacher in New York, but ultimately fails to land a permanent job at the school. Driven by personal failure and his unrelenting hunger for the violin Tian cruelly forces his two daughters, Anna and Ruth to play the violin, so they can follow in his footsteps. Tian’s inability to separate himself from his violin ends up destroying his family. Chang uses Tian’s obsessive hunger for the violin as a symbol of his identity, showing us that we must be careful

Everyone should have the right to live a stable life with all the necessary essentials, which include food, shelter, and medical care. Unfortunately, not every individual in our world has access to either one or all of these essential life elements. In Peter Singer’s essay, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”, Singer emphasizes the importance of giving back to those who are less fortunate. Singer in particular claims that those who are affluent individuals should feel morally obligated to donate to humanitarian causes.

Peter Singer’s central idea focuses around how grim death and suffering from lack of food, shelter and medical care really is. He further argues that if we can prevent something this unfortunate from happening, without sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought to do it. In other words, as privileged citizens, we ought to prevent all of the death and suffering that we can from lack of food, shelter and medical care from happening by giving our money and resources to charity (Chao, 2016, in-class discussion). In the terms of this argument, death and suffering from poverty are preventable with the

The United States is known as a the wealthiest country on the planet. There are many poor people in this country that can't afford to buy food for their families; many are homeless. “While hunger affects people of all ages, it's particularly devastating for children even short-term episodes of hunger can cause lasting damage" (“Child Nutrition Programs"). Child hunger in the United States is caused by poverty, unemployment, food insecurity, and food shortage; however there are many solutions to this problem like FRAC strategies, food banks, summer feeding programs, and backpack feeding programs.

This web page's goal is to introduce the visitor to the problem of world hunger and provide ways to access more information through books and other web sites. The page was created as a final project for an Environmental History class held at the University of Vermont spring semester 2000.

Singer provides the statistical data to strengthen his argument and claims that one third of annual income of the Americans is spent on unnecessities (Singer, “The Singer Solution” 1). In Unger's research, Singer found out that $200 could save one child's life ( Singer, “The Singer Solution” 2). What is $200 for us compared with the children’s lives? It is nothing. The author emphasizes that we spend the same amount of money when we dine out at an expensive restaurant. Instead of going to restaurant, we could do something better with our money and save a child. But there are a lot of suffering children all over the world, who also deserve to live. The author, furthermore, encourages people does not stop at $200 and to donate all excess money from their income: “the formula is simple: whatever money you're spending on luxuries, not necessities, should be given away” (Singer, “The Singer Solution” 4). He provides direct phone numbers of such organizations as UNICEF, Oxfam America that engaged in helping the needy people, thereby showing us that we have all possibilities and information to alleviate needless suffering (Singer, “The Singer Solution” 2). Thus, Peter invokes readers to give up going to restaurants, as well as to give up buying other luxuries so that one child’s life will be saved. He concludes that if we do not sacrifice our

Peter Singer is often regarded as one of the most productive and influential philosophers of modern times. He is well-known for his discussions of the acute social, economic, and political issues, including poverty and famines. In his “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”, Singer (1972) discusses the problem of poverty and hunger, as well as the way this problem is treated in the developed world. Singer believes that charity is inseparable from morality, and no distinction can be drawn between charity and duty. The philosopher offers possible objections to his proposition and relevant arguments to justify his viewpoint. The modern world does not support Singer’s view, treating charity as a voluntary activity, an act of generosity that needs

Addressed in his essay “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”, Peter Singer’s full assertion is that, it is morally wrong for people to spend money on morally insignificant things instead of spending money to prevent suffering and dying from preventable diseases and famine. He begins his argument with the first premise: “suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad.”(231) Such premise is direct, simple, accepted by most people in the society. Peter Singer hence take such assumption as accepted by the readers and quickly moves to his next premise.

World hunger has been a constant problem throughout the ages. It is a problem that should be able to be solved easily, yet there are still 1.02 billion undernourished people worldwide. With the world population being 6.7 billion people, and the Earth producing more than enough food for this amount of people, why is it that there are hungry, malnourished people all around the globe?