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What is the right amount of development aid? The international aim for rich countries to devote 0.7% of GNI to aid has become the accepted answer in many official quarters and a cause c?l?bre for aid activists. The origins of the target, however, raise serious questions about its relevance. First, the 0.7% target was calculated using a series of assumptions that are no longer true, and justified by a model that is no longer considered credible. Using essentially the same method but with today's conditions yields a goal of just 0.01%. We do not claim by any means that this is the "right" amount of aid, but only that this exercise lays bare the folly of the initial method and the subsequent unreflective commitment to the 0.7% aid goal. Second, we document that, despite frequent misinterpretation, no government ever agreed in a UN forum to actually reach 0.7% 'though many pledged to move toward it. Third, we argue that ODA/GNI does not constitute a meaningful metric for the adequacy of aid flows. The 0.7% target began life as a lobbying tool, and effective or not, stretching it to become a functional target no longer makes any sense, if it ever did.