What Should a Billionaire Give?

Peter Singer indicated that the estimated annual cost of meeting the Millennium Development Goals would be $189 billion by 2015. If each one of the top-10-percent of the rich gave 10 percent of their annual income, $171 billion would be yielded. In his article, Peter Singer said, “how easy it would be for the world’s rich to eliminate, or virtually eliminate, global poverty.”

Peter Singer was surprised by his statistical analysis about the donation capacity of the America’s Top 10 percent of income earners. So was I. It seemed that any problem could be easily solved just based on the donation of America’s Top 10 percent of the rich. Was it true? Would every one of the top 10 percent of the rich like to give 10 percent of their annual income to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals? No. Peter Singer’s statistical result is just a bundle of numbers. There is no reason to expect that each of the rich would like to give out their money.

Charity needs people who have donation capacities, but it also needs to respect people’s willingness about whether they would like to donate or not. To yield the $171 billion out of the rich, we must first guarantee that each of them will voluntarily give their money. There are 13 million people among them: some are looking forward to further developing their businesses, some are ready to taste luxury life, and some care more about their families, relatives, and friends rather than other unrelated people. Every one of them has their own different plans about how to spend their annual incomes. It is unreasonable to expect that each one of them to give 10 percent of their incomes to charities.

Forbes pinned down 946 billionaires in one report on March 8th, 2007. Zell Kravinsky, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Warren Buffett are famous not only for their fortunes, but also for their contributions to charities. However, they are only 4 of the 946, and they give their money into different fields. Gates and Buffett engage in stopping malaria, and Kravinsky prompts health care development. Some people donate their money to improve the education situation of the world, and some people give a lot to stop wars or help victims in wars. People have different ideas about who and what is important enough to get help. People donate their money to fulfill their own goals—relieving misery, solacing their consciousness, or improving some situations, but not certainly to fulfill the list of the Millennium Development Goals. Therefore, Peter Singer’s thought that global poverty could be easily solved based on the donation of the world’s rich is proved to be unreasonable again.

What should a billionaire give? This question should not be asked by Peter Singer, or by any other expert, especially should not be asked in such a famous magazine—The New York Times. No matter what unfair elements there are in business trades, billionaires earn their fortunes by taking risks, spending times, and giving efforts. They have absolute rights to arrange their fortunes by themselves—whether or not to donate their money, how much to donate, and to whom they donate their money. Billionaires have rights to make these decisions freely, but should not be urged to donate by any advocator, or by the goals of any charity. To some extent, donation is completely personal thing. What should a billionaire give? The question should be asked by billionaires themselves. They have their own desires and standards on donation. Of course, others have rights to discuss about whether they are generous or not. However, others should not take the billionaires’ own positions to decide how much or to whom they should give.

Source URL
Peter Singer
http://www.princeton.edu/~psinger/
http://www.princeton.edu/~psinger/faq.html
What Should a Billionaire Give--and What Should You?
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/04/11/what-should-a-billionaire-give-and-what-should-you/
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/17/magazine/17charity.t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&sq=what%20should%20a%20billionaire%20give%20peter%20singer&scp=1
The World’s Richest People
http://www.forbes.com/2007/03/06/billionaires-new-richest_07billionaires_cz_lk_af_0308billieintro.html
Education and Poverty

http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/00282/edu_poverty.htm

Antiquities: Whose Are They?

Antiquities, what values do they own? How are they taken away from their original locations? How do their original owners and current keepers debate on ownerships? To whom, on the earth, should they belong, their original owners, or their current keepers?

Antiquities may be admired for their beauty and for the craftsmanship of their creators, but their more important value lies on their academic worth. Once a scholar knows the provenance of an antiquity—the site where the antiquity is evacuated and the original owner of the antiquity, the scholar can place the antiquity in relation to the archaeological site and build up an image of the life to which the property was a part. So the values of an antiquity not only lie on its beauty and craftsmanship, but also its important role in representing history.

Artifact looting and war have historically gone hand-in-hand. In the 1700s, with the founding of national museums such as the British Museum in London and the Louvre in Paris, artifacts became big business. As colonial armies swept across the world, antiquities were unearthed, removed and sent back to capital cities for triumphant display. In the 29th and 20th centuries, with the rise of the middle class, individuals joined the nobility in the quest for ancient treasures. The competition among persons and museums sent prices of antiquities soaring, which prompted even more opportunists to go on the hunt.

At present, in the places where wars are going on, artifact looting are going on; in the places that everything seems peaceful, the antiquities black markets are surreptitiously thriving. Observers commonly rank illicit antiquities as the third-largest type of global black-market trafficking behind drugs and weapons. Illegal tomb-raids and smuggling are accompanied by bribes and corruptions in the antiquities black-market. Some international agreements have been forged to control imports, exports, and ownership transfers, but they are not backed by force of law.

Antiquities are taken away from their original locations due to the illegal trade, or are distributed into other countries during wars. Some appeal that the transferred antiquities should be returned to their original owners. Some believe that they should be conserved by their current keepers. The original owners say that they are saddened to go to museums abroad to see the antiquities of their cultures, while the current keepers believe that they can give the antiquities the best protection and conservation, do research, and dig out the values of the antiquities.

Antiquities, to whom do they belong, their original owners, their current keepers, both of them, or neither of them? As treasures of beauty, knowledge, and techniques, and as testimonies of cultures, customs, and histories, antiquities belong to ones who can best understand, cherish, and protect them, no matter the ones are original owners, current keepers, or any others.

Source URL
The Price of Age
http://www.museum-security.org/cranwell/index.html
Antiquities Black Market
http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2004-12/2004-12-22-voa28.cfm?CFID=282773863&CFTOKEN=29511986
Machu Picchu
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.sacredtrips.com/images/MPface.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.sacredtrips.com/machu_picchu.htm&h=424&w=300&sz=32&hl=zh-CN&start=5&tbnid=rjXngfH4XBflWM:&tbnh=126&tbnw=89&prev=/images%3Fq%3DMachu%2BPicchu%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Dzh-CN
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.andreweland.org/2004/6/5/photos/machu-picchu&imgrefurl=http://www.andreweland.org/galleries/peru/machu-picchu/machu-picchu&h=768&w=1024&sz=140&hl=zh-CN&start=1&tbnid=KwZNdipbNFl5cM:&tbnh=113&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3DMachu%2BPicchu%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Dzh-CN
Parthenon Marbles
http://www.parthenonuk.com/http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://lh3.google.com/_1NuOfU1Az64/Ry7am4ZqPRI/AAAAAAAAAy8/PxPBHv3rwqU/s800/IMG_1569.JPG&imgrefurl=http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/vZ8JYGZ9iwKWbpzkp-KLmw&h=600&w=800&sz=77&hl=zh-CN&start=3&tbnid=1IrwEEcozBmuuM:&tbnh=107&tbnw=143&prev=/images%3Fq%3DElgin%2BMarble%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Dzh-CN

United States-Mexico Barrier

The nearly 2000 miles international border between Mexico and the United States runs through four states—California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, with the west end--San Diego, California and the east end—Brownsville, Texas. Texas has the longest stretch of the border of any State, while California has the shortest. The region along the boundary is characterized by deserts, rugged mountains, urban cities, and two major rivers—the Colorado and the Rio Grand.

On October 26, 2006, with the stroke of a pen, President Bush signed the Secure Fence Act, authorizing the construction of 700 miles additional fencing along the Southern border. According to President’s announcement, it is an important step forward in the nation’s efforts to control the borders and reform the immigration system. One of Bush’s most encouraging words is “We're a nation of laws, and we must enforce our laws. We're also a nation of immigrants, and we must uphold that tradition, which has strengthened our country in so many ways.”

With the hope of strengthening safety of the border and controlling illegal immigration, the Secure Fence Act has caused a wide debate.

The proponents of the bill believe that the bill will benefit the United States in a lot of ways. They point out that most American citizens currently want less immigration, not more. The legal immigration is already too high. The border enforcement will be effective in controlling illegal immigration, and as a result, be helpful in controlling the whole immigration. They also emphasize that the United States should be careful who they let in on a temporary basis, and build a national database of employment so that every native or foreign employee can be tracked down. On the way towards this aim, the pass of the bill is an important step. Moreover, supporters of the bill take the barriers as an important way of tapering the transportation of illegal drugs manufactured in Latin America.

However, the proponents of open-border policies hold different ideas. They believe some of the illegal immigrants have been providing considerable contributions to the development of the United States. For example, agricultural work is one of the many types of work that illegal immigrants fill and could not be easily filled by United States citizens. Laredo’s Mayor, Raul G. Salinas says the illegal immigrants are “that are sustaining our economy by forty percent, and I am gonna close the door on them and put a wall? You don’t do that. It’s like a slap in the face.”

In addition, some experts on immigration polices point out that the efforts to curtail illegal immigration by means of border fence has done nothing but redirect the migration flows into the most desolate and desert areas of the border, thus increasing the mortality rate of illegal immigrants. Moreover, while failing in inhibiting illegal immigration, the fence prevents the migrants from returning.

Finally, there is also opposite voice from the neighbor country—Mexico that has complained the expanded fences along their shared border would damage the environment and hard wildlife.

Billions of dollars have been spent out in the border enforcement program. Some believe we actually haven’t solved the problem and there is no need to stay the course that is not working, while others think the pass of the bill is a vital step forward in the immigration reforming program. The debate on the issue of border fence is ongoing and may never stop. The government’s policy on this issue keeps changing periodically depending on both the result of the debate and the real national and international conditions.

Source URL:
United Sates-Mexico Border

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States%E2%80%93Mexico_border
United States-Mexico Barrier
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States%E2%80%93Mexico_barrier

The Secure Fence Act of 2006
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/10/20061026-1.html
Student Voices
http://www.pbs.org/weta/washingtonweek/voices/200610/1016nat0.htm
Experts’ Debate
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec06/immigration_10-26.html

Clashes between Species: Humans and Non-human Animals

Settlement buildings, business, and mining firms have been expanding into some national parks and important wild habitats where the indigenous wild animals are forced to live with their new neighbors—human beings. During these processes, the number and characteristics of the wild animals change to the extent that is out of humans’ imaginations

The native residents in South Africa are annoyed and confused by the local elephants’ increasingly aggressive behaviors. In contrast, Yellowstone’s visitors were stunned by the tameness of the blood carnivore grizzly bear who gathered at garbage piles near park hotels to gorge on leftovers and begged for handouts on the park roads between the late of 1800s and the early 1900s. Moreover, in the tropic rainforest regions such as Peru, people are bewildered—why the malaria can not be rooted out no matter what medicines, insecticides, or mosquito nets are used.

To uncover these riddles, humans should fix their eyes on the changes of the non-human animals’ habitats that have been caused by human beings. For instance, the shrink of elephants’ habitats force gentle elephants to become aggressive in order to gain and keep their territories. Humans’ living waste in grizzly bear habitats reduced bears into beggars that lost hunting skills and failed to live wildly in the early 1990s. When it comes to figure out why the mosquitoes are so formidable in Amazon region, flooding settlers and deforests are the answers. In what was untouched rain forest, new settlers farm fish and cut wood for charcoal. As trees fall, sunlight warms ponds and puddles, transforming them into mosquito breeding grounds.

Human beings explore non-human animals’ habitats at the price of the broken ecological balance, climate changes and diseases. Fortunately, humans are not blind any more. They have recognized the price, tried to lower it and looked for ways that can benefit both of humans and non-human animals by kinds of environment conservation activities.

Shrink of Elephants’ Habitats
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mag/2006/06/25/stories/2006062500080100.htm

Yellowstone’s Grizzly Bears
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/thegrizzly/conservation.html

Raging Malaria

http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/health-and-human-body/human-diseases/raging-malaria.html?nav=FEATURES

Individul Research Blog #1 - Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama was born on August 4, 1961 in Hawaii as a son of a Kenyan father and an American Caucasian mother who divorced when he was two years old. In 1983, Obama received his B.A. degree from Columbia University in New York City where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relation. In 1988, he entered Harvard Law School, became the Harvard Law Review’s first black president in 1990 and got his J.D. degree in 1991. In 1996, Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate and was reelected to the Illinois State Senate in 1998 and 2002. In 2004, he became the U.S. Senate. On February 10, 2007, Obama announced his president candidacy with a speech in which he pledged to “build a more hopeful America.”

Besides his relatively young age, what makes Obama stand out of other candidates also include his unique skin color, his novel small donors tactics and his excellent information analyzing ability shown in treating Iraq War.

As one of 2008 president candidates, Obama is the youngest one, but politically mature and experienced. Since getting his B.A. degree from Columbia University, he has been taking an active role in community organization, legislation, and foreign relation issues. Similar to his candidate peers, he also has a number of good records in improving the nation’s health care, child care, welfare reform, tax reform and safety defend policy.

Contrary to the white skin color of the other candidates, African-American candidate Obama probably has a different and deeper perception on the nation’s race issue. His memoir Dreams from my father, published in 1995, describes his struggles as a young adult to reconcile social perception in his multiracial heritage, which proves that race issue has been implanted into his mind since he was young, and has been deeply and systematically thought for a long time. When he was a state legislator of Illinois, Obama worked as a chief sponsor and voted for racial profiling law to require police to record the race of drivers they stopped, demonstrating his effort in pushing racial justice.

During the first half of 2007, Obama’s campaign raised $58.4 million, donations of less than $200 accounting for $16.4 million, more than any other Democratic candidates. He did not disregard small donors, building a unique roster of small donors who may give again and volunteer as the race continues. Obama’s small donor tactics has enrolled a great number of black and young voters who have become interested in president election for the first time. Therefore, to some extent, Obama’s small donors tactics has not only helped to raised campaign money, but also encourage more U.S. citizens to care about their nation’s future, take part in its political decision-making activities, express their own opinions, and show their supports to the country.

The other thing that protrudes him from his candidate counterparts is his constant and correct observation and analysis ability in facing Iraq War. Obama is one the few candidates who has been opposing Iraq War from its beginning till now. Before March 20, 2003, majorities of the U.S. citizens were misled by the multiple media. They were fooled by the pain of September 11th, rashly and unreasonably associated the disaster to Saddam Hussein, and emotionally believed Saddam Hussein should be destroyed immediately. After almost five years’ Iraq War, no massive destructive weapon is found in Iraq, lots of Iraqi people lose home, thousands of U.S. soldiers die or wounded, and hundreds of billions of dollars flow away. Now, majorities of American think U.S. force should leave Iraq and stop the war. Facts tell that Iraq War is unwise. But Obama has sensed the result before its beginning and made effort to inhibit it. On October 2, 2002, he addressed an anti-war rally in Chicago, saying “I don’t oppose all war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.”

When evaluate a president candidate, one might be easily leaded by his or her heart that is encouraged by the candidate’s promise or political advocacy. However, it should be known that president’s decision is nanosecond changeable. And so are the national and international situations. So when we choose a president, try to use our heads to find one who has a thorough perception on the country’s acute issue, who is able to group his or her people together for a common goal, and who can do analysis calmly and clearly and make judgments wisely. Compared to other candidates, Obama is closer to such a standard.


Useful Links

Obama on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama#_note-16

Obama’s Early Career
http://www.barackobama.com/about/

Obama’s Announcement for President
http://www.barackobama.com/2007/02/10/remarks_of_senator_barack_obam_11.php

Racial Profiling Law
http://factcheck.barackobama.com/factcheck/2008/01/14/obamas_strong_record_of_accomp.php

Small Donors
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/us/politics/17obama.html?scp=1&sq=small+donors+obama

Obama’s Antiwar Announcement
http://www.barackobama.com/2002/10/02/remarks_of_illinois_state_sen.php

Cost of Iraq War
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home