Singer aims to establish charitable giving as a moral obligation for those with more money than is needed to meet basic living costs . He devises a thought experiment with an apparent conclusion that strongly favors altruistic behavior and uses it to assert his belief that everyone should give away absolutely everything they can afford. He links the choice not to give to charity as comparable in moral misery to the act of allowing a child to die in front of you, lest you lose your precious, even if unnecessary, luxuries. Singer proceeds, using some statistics, to attempt to outline how much the average American is capable of giving. He then concludes by addressing the most likely objections to his argument, such as the possible response that no one is obligated to exceed their "quota" of contributions to the needs of others, including to compensate where others fail to meet their moral obligations. Singer creates the analogy of a man named Bob, whose prized Bugatti will one day provide him with a more than comfortable retirement. A modification of the infamous trolley problem, the circumstances of the thought experiment require Bob to decide between allowing a child to be killed by a train, or diverting the train so that it instead destroys his luxury car, saving the unknown child from every possible damage. . If Bob were to choose his car over the child, he would be considered morally reprehensible. Every child's life is intrinsically more precious than the car. Singer argues that this choice, between allowing the deaths of innocent children and sacrificing luxury items, is one that nearly all Americans face every day. According to him, since many Americans live above poverty and spend excess money in... middle of paper... is given a broadly inclusive definition according to Singer's argument, they make up an ignorable part of the world economy . It's hard to predict how things would play out if Singer's extreme altruism became the norm. While the conclusion Singer produces appears to follow logically from his thought experiment, its adequacy for actual real-world application requires much more justification. However, if we hypothetically assume that the desired positive outcome will always be the result of our charity, Singer's argument still relies on several utilitarian assumptions; that is, we consider the lives of strangers to be of equal value to those of our loved ones, and that we should regard saving a life as a greater good than marginal increases in the quality of life of a moderately healthy and financially secure populace. individual.