How much is my "fair share?"

I'm a softhearted guy.  I'd like to solve all the problems of the world, but I'm pretty wrapped up in my comfortable suburban life; two kids heading off to college in the next couple years.  I think that maybe once they're gone I'll get more involved in helping solve one of those big problems.  I currently do not feel able to make a tangible big change in my life to devote my time and markedly attack these big problems.  My extra time today goes to running the high school music department fund raiser and making sure I'm able to go to my kids' quiz bowl competitions.

Lots of talk today in the news about Muslim extremists and terrorism.  My basic belief about people is that they are good.  Raised Catholic and largely agnostic, I know that I'm ignorant about many of world's religions.  I relish opportunities to visit my friends from around the world and see the similarities of how they raise their families and how I have raised mine. Seeing little family views of religion  in their lives reaffirms my belief that their religion, though different from mine reinforces the goodness in the world.

I believe that extremists - be they Catholics / Protestants in Northern Ireland  (a short generation ago) or ISIS in Syria (today) grow from intolerable situations.  These situations can turn a small number of people from normal law abiding, family loving individuals to horrible evil people who do terrible things.  The vast majority are innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire.  I would like the society I live in to help mitigate the problems that are occurring in the world and giving rise to these extreme groups.  

I think step one really should be to help resolve the ongoing humanitarian crises.  Some of the largest today are in Syria, Sudan and South Sudan. (page 9).  The UN has sized that problem this year at $19.8B (October 2015) OK, I know you have to take everyone's view with a grain of salt, but I'm going with - there's a real problem here (it may only be $15B problem, it may be a $25B problem, but it's a real problem).

I find it interesting to take a big problem and break it down into smaller more digestible pieces.  How much of this problem is mine to resolve?   What's my "fair share?" For $20B...  What if every person took their share and wrote a check?  My portion (7.3B people in the world) is $2.71 ($10 for my family of four).  That doesn't seem right to me, my country is a wealthy one.  I think we should fund a proportional piece of the immediate need.  The US represents 22.4% of the world GDP (if you believe the IMF).  Thus our portion is $4.4B.

The individual person's portion in the US (by population) is $13.94 (318.9M people).  Actually, that's regressive.  We should do it by income (my belief).  Let's take a guy making $100K a year - he should be on the hook for his portion of the GDP X the size of problem: (100K/17.3B) X 4.4B = $25.62.  That's a tiny amount for me as an individual.  I can do that and more  I know the US is going to step up to some of its responsibilities there (thus by one way of looking at it relieving me of some of my responsibilities), but we've got 30 state governors saying, "Not in my state, there could be terrorists in their midst."  Plus, even if the US meets its minimum "fair share" there are plenty of other countries that are not.

I'm pragmatic.  I know that governments and world agencies are often terribly inefficient and even corrupt. The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has a 501c3 charity, but I couldn't find it rated for quality.  The Freakonomics guys suggest givewell.org for judging charity quality.  The givewell people suggest Doctors Without Borders.  I also have a question out to a Syrian friend of mine about what he thinks.

As we approach the end of the tax season, I'll be writing a check for more than my fair share of this problem.