Philosophy 220
The Life You Can Save
“Acting Now to End World Poverty”

I will first explain Peter Singer’s argument on how he wants us to donate to the developing countries where 1.4 billion people live in extreme poverty around the world. Peter Singer argues that people who live in developed nations like the United States should act now to end world poverty.
Peter Singer’s argument is that there are 1.4 billion people in the world who live in extreme poverty and barely making it to meet their most basic human needs such as food, house, and water. Based on his research the poorest people live on $1.25 a day. He argues that our obligation to the poorest people in the world is not only to donate an amount of $200 but also to donate as much as we can; but not to the point of sacrifice our own child’s life to save a child in the developing countries. Children die in the poorest countries because of the lack of sanitation and no safe drinking water from diseases such as measles, malaria, and diarrhea. In developed nations these diseases are almost never fatal. Then, why children die from diseases that are curable? The answer is that their parents can’t afford to health care. Children are malnourished and are the most vulnerable from these diseases.
Peter says we spent money on things we take for granted and we don’t even noticed if they were there or not. He adds that the life you can save of a child in a developing country by donating $200 is not just enough as you might think is. Each of us should do more than just saving a life of one child because there are more children, we can save by cutting down on things we really don’t need such a new shoes.
In Peter’s first premise, he asks us how could suffer and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care not be extremely bad? He wants us to put ourselves in the shoes of these children or their parents who