I have met many older and supposedly wiser people whose views break down into exactly what she said. The only difference is that they are able to disguise and fog it with much more complex sugar-coated phraseology.

I know just what you mean. I think of that every time I hear people say that the poor have it better when the rich have more money, because then the rich will need more gardeners. Too bad this nice thought breaks down when one gets to the part about health insurance vs. rent vs. groceries, because the work is seasonal and part-time.

It also leaves out the common infrastructure of the community. Mr. Lileks has lovely steps due to his tax break. The tax reductions came from somewhere. A park that is a tax-supported, governmental responsibility is operating under reduced hours somewhere, limiting access to all Americans, so that Mr. Lileks can have lovely steps. The people working for the parks department who would have taken care of that park and provided services to all the tourists who might have visited (and had health benefits for their families as part of their contracts) have been laid off because of funding cuts. We won't discuss wages and benefits to some very obvious Federal employees, many of whom are now employed in Iraq.

Also, the Federal aid to the states has suffered from starvation, and the states will either have to cut services far more vital to Mr. Lileks or will have to raise their taxes, thus taking away some of his money for things from which he may not benefit directly. Does he care if that state-supported bridge collapses as long as nobody he knows was driving across it at the time? If somebody else's house burns down because the fire department couldn't afford the extra equipment and training it needed, does it matter as long as it's in another neighborhood and doesn't affect the resale value of his property?

The funny part about this is, people like Mr. Lileks think that these things will take care of themselves if left alone, and that no one will really starve or die of a ruptured appendix or of untreated tetanus, and that everyone will have the opportunity to learn to read and solve equations. Yet they don't work in a business that functions as a non-profit and does extensive or exclusive charity work. I do. We talk to each other, we non-profits; we kind-of have to, because we can't afford to duplicate efforts among businesses that are short of cash in the best of times. And I know that there are thousands of good causes, with fine work being done, very frugally, using funds derived from grants and aid from taxes. Not line item taxes, but monies granted for specific projects, planned and justified. Tax cuts are making those sources dry up. Where are the rich people who will of course step up and fund them? They are building lovely steps and hiring gardeners. Unless you're Bill Gates and as rich as Croesus, if you don't see it, you don't fund it, and you don't go looking for it either.

It's like an engineer of my acquaintance once said, at a down-sizing party: They won't understand what the positions were for until the work isn't being done anymore, and by then it will be too late.

Yes, I've heard it put more pleasingly. Mr. Lileks made himself sound like the soul of hospitality, reserving verbs like "sniffed" and "snapped" for his opponent (and doesn't that make her sound like a bitch, though?). But the essence of his argument is, "I've got mine and to hell with you." The fog that disguises this essence is fog that rises from the moats surrounding the little castles of the mind that we have begun to live in: manorial, and ultimately isolated from those not of our estate.