What Should a Billionaire Give – and What Should You? By PETER SINGER

December 17, 2006

What is a human life worth? You may not want to put a price tag on a
it. But if we really had to, most of us would agree that the value of
a human life would be in the millions. Consistent with the foundations
of our democracy and our frequently professed belief in the inherent
dignity of human beings, we would also agree that all humans are
created equal, at least to the extent of denying that differences of
sex, ethnicity, nationality and place of residence change the value of
a human life.

.....

Obviously, the rich in other nations should share the burden of
relieving global poverty. The U.S. is responsible for 36 percent of
the gross domestic product of all Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development nations. Arguably, because the U.S. is
richer than all other major nations, and its wealth is more unevenly
distributed than wealth in almost any other industrialized country,
the rich in the U.S. should contribute more than 36 percent of total
global donations. So somewhat more than 36 percent of all aid to
relieve global poverty should come from the U.S. For simplicity, let's
take half as a fair share for the U.S. On that basis, extending the
scheme I have suggested worldwide would provide $808 billion annually
for development aid. That's more than six times what the task force
chaired by Sachs estimated would be required for 2006 in order to be
on track to meet the Millennium Development Goals, and more than 16
times the shortfall between that sum and existing official development
aid commitments.

If we are obliged to do no more than our fair share of eliminating
global poverty, the burden will not be great. But is that really all
we ought to do? Since we all agree that fairness is a good thing, and
none of us like doing more because others don't pull their weight, the
fair-share view is attractive. In the end, however, I think we should
reject it. Let's return to the drowning child in the shallow pond.
Imagine it is not 1 small child who has fallen in, but 50 children. We
are among 50 adults, unrelated to the children, picnicking on the lawn
around the pond. We can easily wade into the pond and rescue the
children, and the fact that we would find it cold and unpleasant
sloshing around in the knee-deep muddy water is no justification for
failing to do so. The "fair share" theorists would say that if we each
rescue one child, all the children will be saved, and so none of us
have an obligation to save more than one. But what if half the
picnickers prefer staying clean and dry to rescuing any children at
all? Is it acceptable if the rest of us stop after we have rescued
just one child, knowing that we have done our fair share, but that
half the children will drown? We might justifiably be furious with
those who are not doing their fair share, but our anger with them is
not a reason for letting the children die. In terms of praise and
blame, we are clearly right to condemn, in the strongest terms, those
who do nothing. In contrast, we may withhold such condemnation from
those who stop when they have done their fair share. Even so, they
have let children drown when they could easily have saved them, and
that is wrong.

Similarly, in the real world, it should be seen as a serious moral
failure when those with ample income do not do their fair share toward
relieving global poverty. It isn't so easy, however, to decide on the
proper approach to take to those who limit their contribution to their
fair share when they could easily do more and when, because others are
not playing their part, a further donation would assist many in
desperate need. In the privacy of our own judgment, we should believe
that it is wrong not to do more. But whether we should actually
criticize people who are doing their fair share, but no more than
that, depends on the psychological impact that such criticism will
have on them, and on others. This in turn may depend on social
practices. If the majority are doing little or nothing, setting a
standard higher than the fair-share level may seem so demanding that
it discourages people who are willing to make an equitable
contribution from doing even that. So it may be best to refrain from
criticizing those who achieve the fair-share level. In moving our
society's standards forward, we may have to progress one step at a
time.

For more than 30 years, I've been reading, writing and teaching about
the ethical issue posed by the juxtaposition, on our planet, of great
abundance and life-threatening poverty. Yet it was not until, in
preparing this article, I calculated how much America's Top 10 percent
of income earners actually make that I fully understood how easy it
would be for the world's rich to eliminate, or virtually eliminate,
global poverty. (It has actually become much easier over the last 30
years, as the rich have grown significantly richer.) I found the
result astonishing. I double-checked the figures and asked a research
assistant to check them as well. But they were right. Measured against
our capacity, the Millennium Development Goals are indecently,
shockingly modest. If we fail to achieve them — as on present
indications we well might — we have no excuses. The target we should
be setting for ourselves is not halving the proportion of people
living in extreme poverty, and without enough to eat, but ensuring
that no one, or virtually no one, needs to live in such degrading
conditions. That is a worthy goal, and it is well within our reach.

Peter Singer is the Ira W. DeCamp professor of bioethics at the Center
for Human Values at Princeton University. He is the author of many
books, including most recently "The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices
Matter."