Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Are we all murders?

            As I was googleing a connection to make to the book for my connection I decided to instead on taking some advice that had come to me in a discussion in class today. I clicked on my news tab on my toolbar and it said that there were 1,652 new articles. Of them I search philosophy and believe it or not an article popped up about Peter Singer. I read it and found it to be very interesting. The Australian philosopher explains an idea that I am now very interested in. His explained, in more words, that all of the people in the world could be saved by money or services we could help them with. And to be abrupt about it, all of us buying another house or car for the summer are essentially murderers. He uses a very powerful extended metaphor to help explain his theory. He explains that one wouldn’t walk by a toddler drowning in a pond, so why should we ignore the people and children who are suffering in other countries? Just because they are not dying right in front of our faces? As a result he is proposing a  progressive tax system that would “force” people to pledge between 1% and 2% of their total income to a NGO’s of their choice. I think that in a perfect world this would be a great idea and help many people in the best ways possible though to get something like this passed and approved is much easier said than done. 

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