Save the Children!!

Singer's article felt like a big guilt trip to me. He kept bringing up dying and starving children, as if the knowledge of their existence would shame me into going to the website of one of the charities he mentioned and giving away half of my money just to save the life of some poor, dying baby. I felt like he was telling me and all the other readers that we were essentially child-murderers if we chose to keep all of our money. Like, he actually talked about a guy hypothetically killing a child to save his expensive car. And then he tells readers to reach for the phone and donate $200 before reading on. According to Singer, I'm a murderer unless I give money? Which, okay, maybe I should be donating some money to charity if it really will save a kid's life. But why? Because some idealistic Australian man told me that I'm selfish if I don't? I feel like donating to charity should be done because you genuinely want to, not because you feel like you're going to be human garbage and a child-killer if you don't.

His article almost discourages people to give money because of how unrealistic and accusatory it is, in my opinion. Maybe his goal was to create such an unrealistic set of standards for how people should give money that it would just get people thinking? By going to the extreme and saying that people should donate everything not spent on necessities, maybe people will feel okay donating just those $1000 to "save five children." Of course, you don't know where your $1000 will go. Maybe it will pay someone's 500K+ salary, or maybe it really will go help some suffering children somewhere. Anyway, I'm not trying to diss donating to charity. I think it's incredibly admirable to give away money to help those in need (and there are a whole lot of people in need!), because humans are selfish and giving up your hard-earned dough can be challenging. What isn't admirable is making people into hypothetical child-murderers in order to get them to give up half of their cash.

Also- I don't think Singer ever mentions the idea of donating your time instead of your money to help impoverished people.