Singers Assumptions

Peter Singer, author of “Singer’s Solution to World Poverty” proposes that American donate a substantial portion of their expendable income to feed children in order to end world poverty. Within Singer’s proposal, he makes various assumptions about world poverty and his reasoning to bring it to an end is based on American’s over-consumption of non-essential goods and services.

Within Singer’s article, he eludes to many unstated assumptions, of which I’ve chosen three to explore through further research. The first being, that Americans are morally responsible for ending world poverty. Secondly, Singer eludes that United States over-consumption of non-essential goods is purely negative and directly correlates with world poverty. Lastly, Singer tries to convince his audience that significant monetary donations by the middle class could end world poverty.

Singer’s assumptions of American’s moral responsibility for ending world poverty does not take into account American’s arguably primarily responsibility for individual and family financial security and sense of responsibility for domestic poverty and other issues. I plan to research American’s domestic priorities on poverty in comparison to their sense of responsibility for world poverty. Singer’s assumptions on American’s moral responsibility undervalue domestic responsibility as he focuses on providing aid to children