We went to the fiscal cliff and all I got was this stupid T-shirt

By Jim Mullen

It seems we are about to fall off the “fis­cal cliff.” Didn’t we already do that? What hap­pened in 2007 and 2008 when the value of our homes got cut in half? What was that? A fis­cal speed bump? A fis­cal slap on the back of the head? What­ever euphemism you want to use, falling off the fis­cal cliff is a pretty short drop for most of us after that.

What was it when we had to bail out the banks and the auto man­u­fac­tur­ers? A fis­cal para­chute that failed to open? Falling into a fis­cal wood chip­per? Buy­ing the fis­cal farm? Eat­ing the fis­cal puffer fish? Chok­ing on our own fis­cal vomit? Fail­ing the fis­cal physical?

Boy, if we fall off the fis­cal cliff, hor­ri­ble things will hap­pen. That col­lege I already can’t afford to send my kids to will raise its prices. That used car I already can’t afford to buy will be even more expensive.

If we jump on the fis­cal hand grenade, if we stick our fin­ger in the fis­cal elec­tri­cal socket, if we touch the fis­cal third rail, peo­ple who are out of work now will still be out of work. How will they even know we hit the fis­cal bridge abut­ment at 100 mph? Unless some­one tells them, they won’t notice much of a difference.

If the fis­cal dam breaks, if the fis­cal China syn­drome occurs, if the fis­cal cherry bomb explodes, if the fis­cal pan­demic spreads, if the fis­cal Water­loo arrives, how will the peo­ple whose homes are already under the fis­cal water be able to fis­cally tell? They still won’t be able to pay their fis­cal bills.

It’s almost as if you can make any­thing sound bad by putting the word “fis­cal” in front of it. Don’t eat the fis­cal break­fast bur­rito; the fis­cal “Three Ami­gos” wasn’t as funny as they told me; don’t bring home a fis­cal report card. But peo­ple who lost money when Lehman Broth­ers, AIG and Cit­i­group tanked won’t know if they’re get­ting fis­cally water­boarded. Things will be pretty much the same for them.

A colum­nist in a major news­magazine said, “It’s a bad time to be rich.” Yes, as you can well imag­ine, it must be hor­ri­ble to have a lot of money.

You may have noticed that the rich are always com­plain­ing about it. It’s a won­der they don’t give away all that money so they can be wildly happy like the rest of us. No doubt they’re wish­ing they were poor now, like all the lucky peo­ple who get to won­der where their next pay­check is com­ing from. The wealthy are miss­ing all the fun of decid­ing which bill to pay first — the one for rent, the car loan, heat­ing oil, med­ical or food — and which not to pay at all. Boy, I wouldn’t want to be rich right now; it really must stink.

If only there were some way to avoid this fis­cal Bataan Death March, this fis­cal Mount St. Helens, this fis­cal Super­storm Sandy, this fis­cal Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina, this fis­cal San Fran­cisco earth­quake, this fis­cal Pom­peii, this fis­cal Titanic, this fis­cal Kraka­toa. What could we pos­si­bly do? What can any­one do? Cut the Defense Department’s bud­get by a third, solv­ing the prob­lem overnight and still leav­ing us with the biggest mil­i­tary in the world by far? Stop, that’s crazy talk.

If you and I fall off a real cliff, we die. If our econ­omy goes over a fis­cal cliff, not one polit­i­cal career will die. The dif­fer­ence is that when you and I die, some­one, some­where, might care.

(Jim Mullen’s newest book is called “Kill Me, Elmo: The Hol­i­day Depres­sion Fun Book.” You can reach him at JimMullenBooks.com.)

Posted by Guest 1 Columnist on Dec 6 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.