World Population--at Marginal Utility?

Post 1 for the 10th/11th week of Philosophy 202

In my last entry I commented that few people would wish to follow a philosophy that the philosopher doesn't follow. I still find this to be true, but now, after learning that Singer does follow his own philosophy to some degree--how much does somebody need to follow a philosophy in order to be a leader? That question has no one answer that I can state myself--because there are many variables including--leader of how many, and what sort of pre-existing morals does the group follow, is there a better choice for leader--that play into the game. This initial line of thought, however, did lead me to ponder is it possible for us to fully live my Singer's strong argument, of giving until marginal utility is reached?

In America the answer is probably a resounding "No". We could give and give and give--but have we really reached marginal utility when the resources the government devotes for our use, and uses to protect us, already surpass/reach the amount of resources one individual should use? No matter how much we said we would cut back on the ecological footprint quiz, which we took earlier in the semester, we still learned that if everyone consumed that way--we would need three Earth's to support the human race. That is not a marginal utility! 

Then there seem too immediately obvious choices: go off the grid, renounce the government and live like you are in a third world country. That entails no job, which means not sending any money to those who are in need. You do less harm--but what good do you do? You don't contribute nearly as much to the destruction of the planet, but neither do you contribute to those suffering. 

A second option, if one is determined to live at marginal utility, would be to cut back a large amount on the amount of services and government facilities provided for an individual. This would severely limit the economy, as it would cut millions of jobs. That clearly won't work. 

Obviously if we as Americans are to live at marginal utility, somebody has to find a better road than the two that immediately popped into my mind, my premise that leaving such a large ecological footprint is equivalent to not living at marginal utility has to be rejected, or we just have to accept that we only live at a certain degree of marginal utility. 

Of course you can always reject Singer's argument that living at marginal utility and devoting extra resources to those who can benefit most, as an unsound argument. 

~Jessica