Okay, let's break down the 2007 numbers.

U.S. GDP is about $13 trillion. Thus, $1.1 billion represents roughly 3 seconds of our annual output.

Saudi Arabia's GDP is about $366 billion. Their $6.5 million donation represents roughly 9.4 minutes of their annual output.

Who is giving more in the "give until it hurts" sense?

To be clear, I'm not slamming the U.S. here. I think the comparison is ridiculous.

Rich countries give more, and that should not be poo-pooed. They also tend to give lower percentages of their wealth, because they are so wealthy that smaller percentages are still staggeringly large sums. They should not necessarily be criticized for that; it's just a statistical fact.

But one cannot then turn around and criticize poorer countries for giving less, especially using invalid comparisons like per capita giving. In some countries, people live on $1 a day. Are you really going to try to compare their charitable donations to Americans with a per capita income of $40,000? They could give 100% of their money away and in an absolute sense they'd still look like penny-pinchers compared to even the least generous American. All you're really doing is highlighting just how mind-numbingly large the wealth gap is in the world.

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Man up.