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Poverty, Facts, and Political Philosophies: Response to “More Than Charity”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Peter Singer
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Extract

Andrew Kuper begins his critique of my views on poverty by accepting the crux of my moral argument: The interests of all persons ought to count equally, and geographic location and citizenship make no intrinsic difference to the rights and obligations of individuals. Kuper also sets out some key facts about global poverty, for example, that 30,000 children die every day from preventable illness and starvation, while most people in developed nations have plenty of disposable income that they spend on luxuries and items that satisfy mere wants, not basic needs.

Type
Debate: Global Poverty Relief
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , March 2002 , pp. 121 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2002

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References

* I am grateful to Paula Casal for helpful comments on a draft of this responseGoogle Scholar.

1 For an example of Oxfam's politically aware thinking that is already seventeen years old, see Melrose, Diana, Nicaragua: The Threat of a Good Example? Oxford: Oxfam, 1985Google Scholar).

2 See, for example, my response to the claim that giving aid would only worsen the population crisis and lead to a greater disaster in the future, in Singer, , Practical Ethics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 235–41Google Scholar. Fortunately the factual claims on which that objection was based have proved erroneous.