Individuals Are Morally Obligated To Help The Poor

Peter Singer, an Australian moral philosopher, argued that individuals are morally obligated to help the poor. He states that “if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it” (Singer 1). This means that we should donate as much of our resources, whether it be time, money, etc., as possible to those less fortunate without causing oneself to be in the same situation as those you are trying to help. You do not want to donate too much of your money to the extent where you cannot afford to support yourself and those dependent on you. Everything you have left after providing for your own needs should be donated to those who need it more. Singer also argues that proximity and the amount of people do not change our obligation stating “the fact that a person is physically near to us, so that we have personal …show more content…
According to Ernest Van Haag, it does not matter if there is discrimination among who is executed or if a few innocent people are wrongly executed because for those who are actually guilty receive their retribution. Haag states that “[e]ven if poor or black convicts guilty of capital offenses suffer capital punishment and other convicts equally guilty of the same crimes do not, a more equal distribution, however desirable, would merely be more equal” (Haag 231). It would not make the death penalty any more just, only equal, and justice is more important than equality. As long as guilty people are being executed, it does not matter if others who have committed the same crime are. Even though some innocent people are executed along the way, the advantages outweigh the costs. Haag also argues that the death penalty works as a deterrent to some prospective murderers who are not deterred by imprisonment because the death penalty is irreversible; once you are gone that is