It could be argued (and in fact it often is) that sacrificing American wealth for the benefit of the world is pointless because giving money to the impoverished just allows them to mate and make more impoverished people, that the leaders in the communities with people with problems are thieves who will just end up stealing the assistance and using it for their own purposes, that poor people are lazy, and that they don't have jobs simply because they are parasites, and that if everyone were more giving instead of using their money to buy stupid luxury goods that the first-world economies would then collapse, and then everyone would be poor. What do you say to that?

I disagree with each of these points, with a great deal of social research supporting this oppositional position. It's likely for the good if someone wishes to use their money to help develop a parcel of real estate, invest interest in good companies, start a new research program, or purchase bonds to help local governments fund quixotic missions to bring in tourists in levels comparable to Branson Missouri. When you have giant piles of liquidity lying around like a reified Scrooge MacDuck it becomes somewhat disgusting to watch people choose to indulge themselves over and over when we as a society clearly have the ability to make the world a better place. I'm not saying I wish to take away the rights of rich people to buy themselves diamond mouth retainers or brobdingnagian yachts; enjoying one's life is important- but EQUALLY important is making things better by performing unpleasant functions like paying taxes (national atrocities aside), or foregoing the occasional caviar for the starving undereducated baby pandas with multiple sclerosis.

Until the economic crisis people didn't seem to be willing to talk about the bank accounts springing forth from Lichtenstein, Switzerland, and the Virgin Islands. These tax shelters had become more popular for the wealthy than Ayn Rand editions or designer cupcakes. Today we see a few changes in attitude but it will take a great deal more to slow the epidemic outbreaks or employer abuses and manufacturing shortcuts in the third world that put the larger population so at risk.

Personally I try to remember that happiness research (like Gilbert's) suggests that if you are going to spend some money on something fun, that "Experiential Spending" on trips or activities yields much greater life satisfaction over time than other purchases like antique cabinetry or kitchen refurbishments.