Peter Singer: giving as if we really believe all lives are of equal value

Wow. Peter Singer wrote a wopper of an essay on giving, values, and poverty in the Sunday NYT Magazine. Read it and weep, all you who (like me) believe in the basic idea of the equal worth of all human life, but don't actually live as if that idea is true.

He concludes this way:

"For more than 30 years, I’ve been reading, writing and teaching about the ethical issue posed by the juxtaposition, on our planet, of great abundance and life-threatening poverty. Yet it was not until, in preparing this article, I calculated how much America’s Top 10 percent of income earners actually make that I fully understood how easy it would be for the world’s rich to eliminate, or virtually eliminate, global poverty. (It has actually become much easier over the last 30 years, as the rich have grown significantly richer.) I found the result astonishing. I double-checked the figures and asked a research assistant to check them as well. But they were right. Measured against our capacity, the Millennium Development Goals are indecently, shockingly modest. If we fail to achieve them — as on present indications we well might — we have no excuses. The target we should be setting for ourselves is not halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty, and without enough to eat, but ensuring that no one, or virtually no one, needs to live in such degrading conditions. That is a worthy goal, and it is well within our reach."

Much more to be said about how he gets there, and yet the basic point is his reasoning is devastating. And humbling. Please read it now, or soon.
Anon, and Peace,
Chris

Comments

[Daniel Nairn]

I finished the article with the same impression. He has a knack for laying the facts of our global inequality as bare as they can be.

[Tom Blodget]

I also thought it was an eloquent bullseye. I had written an essay along these lines, but without the numbers having been handily crunched for me.

I would appreciate anyone reading this to visit my site http://www.careforeachother.org and then write me with further suggestions about the likelihood of the success of the inspired campaign might be.

Thanks

Tom Blodget