Poverty Response

In the articles "Live Free and Starve" and "The Singer Solution to World Poverty" both authors discuss the same issue, however they voice very different opinions. The author of the first article, Chitra Divakaruni, states that the United States' role in helping starving and poor children, "although well intentioned, are nonetheless misguided." Divakaruni argues that by trying to interfere too much with the poverty of other nations, we could actually harm their citizens more than help them. Divakaruni supports her argument by bringing up a bill that the House passed which forbade the import of goods from factories using forced or indentured child labor. Divakaruni stresses that although this idea may seem like a huge step towards abolishing forced/indentured labor, it also brings about a string of new problems, such as drastically higher rates of unemployment, then leading to more starvation, thievery, violence, ect. By bringing up this point, Divakaruni emphasizes that our nation does not fully understand the issues of another country and also that what may seem beneficial in our eyes, could actually be disastrous for others. Divakaruni's opinion is that the United States should not interfere unless fully willing to take on the responsibilities of the results. Singer's opinion is quite the opposite. In his eyes, every single person in the United States should, and needs to do everything in his/her power to help the children living in poverty. Singer conveys his ideas by giving scenarios and then comparing them back to an average life. Singer also uses rhetorical questions to get his readers to re-consider their morals, such as "what is one mounth's dining out compared to a child's life?" and "now you too have the information you need to save a child's life. How should you judge yourself if you don't do it?" These questions are intended to push readers into thinking about the amount of impact they could have on bettering an unfortunate child's life. Singer is trying to sway his readers (unlike Divakaruni) to making the decision of interfering and helping the poor as much as possible. In my opinion, both authors' opinions are too extreme. It should be our goal and priority to help those in need (in the ways that they would prefer) however it is also extremely unreasonable to ask any person (not to mention EVERY person) to hand over all their savings. It is true that U.S. citizens spend a lot on luxuries, and whereas most people can cut back, it shouldn't be asked of them to donate every cent not spent on necessities.