Singer and Poverty

With the growing problem of wealth inequality Peter Singer offers a solution, although it is somewhat controversial. His solution is that everybody who has any money to spare should give it to charity in order to alleviate global suffering, While this solution certainly seems like it could work, there are quite a few flaws. For one, it is a pretty unrealistic solution. Almost nobody in today's society would even want to give up all of their extra money to someone else. Many would prefer to split that money between things they want and charitable donations. In fact, the US donates more money to charity as a percentage of income then any other country. In addition, it makes no sense within our current economic system to even attempt such a solution. In any mixed market economy it makes no sense to give all of our money to charity because then there is no way to support most of the industries within the economy.

I think that the appropriate response to the crisis brought to light by Singer is somewhere along the lines of what we have been doing so far. Of course, there are still many problems in the world. But, the solution isn't to spend every cent not spent on necessities on charity. The solution, in my opinion, is to further encourage charitable contribution without saying that you need to give x amount in order to actually make a difference.