The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty

by Peter Singer

I first came across Peter Singer in 2006, via an article he wrote in the New York Times Magazine. He was discussing the “Golden Age of Philanthropy.” Warren Buffett had just pledged $37 billion to the Gates Foundation and other charities, which on an inflation-adjusted basis, Singer noted, was “more than double the lifetime total given away by two of the philanthropic giants of the past, Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, put together.” Singer posed some simple questions: What should a billionaire give to charity? What should we (non-billionaires, ostensibly) give? And how do we calculate these numbers? What struck me about Singer’s arguments was that the amount in question, for him, wasn’t theoretical. It was calculable. There is an amount of money one needs to live a decent life—to pay for a reasonable amount of rent, clothes, food, and leisure. And if you have more than that amount, he posited, you should give it away—because you don’t need it, and someone else does.