Needs Vs. Wants

After reading Peter Singer's, Solution to World Poverty, I felt guilty. It was insane to see how ridiculous the scenarios he wrote about and how they apply to everyone in our society. While there are people like us who live in a wonderful town and are somewhat privileged, their are people around the world who do not get to experience the same lifestyle as us. Singer's argument really struck with me because he focused on the fact that the privileged people in our society need to be giving back to the community and helping the less fortunate rather than turning a blind eye to world hunger and poverty. While Singer's argument hit me with guilt, I believe that some of his argument is valid and the other part is incorrect.

In his article, Singer believes that people with excess money that are being spent on items that they do not necessarily need should instead be given to help end poverty and world hunger. I think that Singer is right in everybody should be giving money to various organizations in order to help end these problems in our country. If the privileged people in society continue to not realize the importance of donating to this cause, the world will experience and even greater economic and social gap. People will continue to be hungry, without a place to stay, and without the proper care to survive. If people continue to not donate and help solve these issues then more and more people will die each day because another family wanted to buy a lake house or a new car.

With all this being said, there are some points to Singer's argument that I do not agree with. While I believe that everybody should be giving a portion of their money to help end world hunger, I believe that people also have the right to spend some their money on things that they want because they have earned the right to do that. People have earned the right purchase that new car or buy that bigger TV because they worked hard for it. If people had to give all of their excess money to help these world issues, then people would not work as hard and care less about their job. I also believe that when people are giving their money to these issues, there money should be used in a way that gives them the most "bang for their buck". Their money should be spent in a way that helps the most amount of people possible.

While Singer's argument is convincing and fills you with guilt, you have to look at the whole picture. Yes, everybody should be giving some of their money to help end world hunger and poverty but it should not be all of their money. It is also very hard to make everybody give some of their money. Their will always be people who will not want to give any of their money away and it would be very hard to create some sort of law where you have to give money to these charities.