What a mean-spirited lot. Of course some ways of ridding oneself of one’s money are morally superior to others. The logic of that line of argument, though, leads to giving all your spare cash to the Mother Theresa trust, rather than spending it on an iPod or an $8 (or whatever it is–don’t ask me) cup of Starbucks coffee. That is a fine course of action–was in fact urged on us by our Savior. If that is what you in fact customarily do, please read no further.

The really, really nice thing about having cash to spare is, as best I can recall, the wonderful feeling that YOU CAN DO WHAT THE HECK YOU LIKE WITH IT. Buy the iPod, go for a Swedish massage, get likkered up, give it to a blogger you find congenial… And if not exquisitely moral, this is not utterly selfish. It all, directly or indirectly, helps keep the economy fizzing. Which, so far as my meagre understanding of economics can tell me, giving all your money to the poor actually doesn’t.

Speaking of the economy: it’s buzzing. The quantities of cash swilling around in the USA are imagination-beggaring. Larry Page and Sergey Brin are pulling down $43 million a week each. If one of them were to flip a million or so in Kevin Holtsberry’s direction (or mine! please!), what business would that be of anyone else’s? What–We struggle and sweat to make money so that toffy-nosed self-righteous moralists can tell us how to spend it? Pshaw! Ptui! Fiddlesticks! Or, as my wife would say, in the most contemptuous syllable (if it is a syllable) that I have ever heard drop from a pair of human lips: Ts!

Get those checkbooks out.

[How’s that, Kev? We agreed 15 percent, right?]