Daniel Handler, better known as author Lemony Snicket, has a lot more money than you do, probably. And even though he gives some away, it's never enough:

My wife and I recently became obsessed with a Web site where you plug in the amount of money you made in a year and find out where you stand. If your salary equaled the amount of money my wife and I gave Planned Parenthood one year, you'd be in the richest 1 percent in the world, which is pretty great. Still, there would be 60 million people richer than you, and that's a lot. They wouldn't fit in your home, for example, even though you'd have the sort of home that only the top 1 percent of people in the world can afford.

We can sympathize; as frequent self-Googlers, we can only imagine the joy of constantly being reaffirmed that you're extremely loaded. Must temper the sting of knowing that some other people have more. Still, Handler isn't an easy touch: When a San Francisco philanthropist asked him to donate $5 million toward the preservation of a local historic building, Handler winced.

This is why, maybe, there are so many noble causes and so few of them are well financed: we all want other people to write the checks — they're richer than we are. I wrote the guy a check anyway, of course, and it was for a lot of money. At least, I think it was a lot of money. You'd have to ask those other people, the hundred thousand who make more than I do and the 60 million who make more than I gave to restore the historic building: isn't this a lot of money? Then why does it feel as if I bought him a beer?

We have no clue! But we'd like Daniel Handler to buy us "a beer." We're in need of preservation too! Cut us a check, Snicket.

Adjusted Income [NYT]