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"rich Americans are deluding themselves when they think that their mere richness isn't almost by itself, something that makes it especially hard to be called good."

Sandra Bullock, who most likely qualifies as a "rich" American, recently gave $1,000,000 to Tsunami relief. Assuming that she saved lives with that effort,or alleviated hunger or sickness, does she still have the same chance of going to heaven (assuming there is one) as the camel does of getting through the eye of the needle because she could have given $2,000,000? $1,000,000 probably did a lot of good and she probably had a lot of pull to try to make sure the money went where it would indeed to good.

Isn't there a sense where "richness" makes it easier to be called good, since even a small % of a rich person's income, donated to charity, does a lot of good, whereas a less well-off person's contributions to charity, necessarily must be smaller absolute amounts and thus can't do nearly as much good?

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Your point is good, Sandra Bullock very may well have donated two million. Maybe the amount people *should* donate can be evaluated kind of like the way progressive tax is worked. At a higher bracket you rely less on your money for basic survival needs so you should be expected to donate more, but if you're poor then almost all of your income will go to basic needs and therefore you donate little to no percent of your income. Just an idea.
But in a more pratical viewpoint, she *did* donate money. I think that realistically speaking its more important to focus on people to actually *start* donating reasonable amounts of money instead of seeing how much money they should give before they get to heaven. Of course what constitutes a reasonable amount of money will be debated but more importantly its that money actually starts getting donated. Of course, that is contingent on whether one believes the money should be donated in the first place.