Poverty

In "Live Free or Starve", Divakaruni explains that although the United States may have good intentions to help those in need, sometimes we don't fully consider all of the factors involved. Specifically the author details how Congress passed a bill to eliminate business with Asian companies that use child labor. While one living comfortably here in the United States could assume that child labor is cruel and unusual (which it often is), we don't especially think as to what would happen if the children working were kicked back on the streets. Without pay, most kids will starve to death; it happens all too often. The author I believe made her best point when she stated, "...and when many of these children turn to the streets, to survival through theivery and violence and begging and prostitution... are we ready to shoulder that burden?" Unless we can back up our bill with guarenteed aid to these children, I don't think we are in a postition to affect their lives. I think I was biased in some ways towards the children because I think starvation is one of the worst things that can happen to humans, so in that way I looked upo this bill more harshly.

In Peter Singer's arguement of how people always have a direct choice to help kids who are starving, I wasn't so convinced. Singer argues in his "Bugatti" example that Bob, who doesn't save the life of a child to protect his car, that we are all faced with basically the same challenge but in a different format. He argues that we all have Bob's choice, but we just can't see the actual child we could save. We should send money to help some kids, that is plain and true, but it doesn't compare on a level to condemming a child to death like Bob. In the example, Bob basically gives the child the death sentence. We in America are helping children who desperately need it and not instead deciding through our generocity who dies and who doesn't. That is mainly why I disagreed with the author. The biased I found in this for me was the fact that he described us all as being in Bob's situation and I found this just wrong. We all do not have the option to let a kid live or not. Our donations could help the kid and even if we donate it could be too late, so I don't think the example applies to the situation at all.