In the two articles discussing the poverty in the world, many differing opinions were stated by the authors. Chitra Divakaruni seems to be more of a realistic person, while Peter Singer has more of an optimistic look about helping the poverty situation in the world. He believes that to end world poverty, it would be just as easy as everyone who has anything to spare donating a heap of money to organizations. He says that "the formula is simple: Whatever money you're spending on luxuries, not necessities, should be given away." Divakaruni doesn't believe that it would be this simple. She has had close experience with poverty, and seems to understand more about the impoverished than Singer does.
I would say that I definitely have a reader bias between these two articles. I am slightly more of a non-moral person, who doesn't have a strong, raging urge to help others, as terrible as that sounds. This made me automatically want to disagree with whatever Singer said, because he wanted desperately to help the impoverished, even if it was at a cost to us. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with helping those living in poverty, but I just feel that most of Singer's ideals were unrealistic and had not been thought through very well. His idea to just have every American donate all of their annual income that isn't spent on necessities can never evolve into anything more than a daydream. That is a lot to ask of us. Most of us can't give up every luxury in our lives. What we do with our money is our business, and he shouldn't be flat-out telling us not to "buy that new car, take that cruise, redecorate the house, or get that pricy new suit." Divakaruni, on the other hand, seemed to be just a wee bit more realistic. She points out that kids in other countries would probably rather be working in harsh conditions than to have leisure time, but no money for food, shelter, or clothes.
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