The Way We Live Now: Spending ourselves to death. The way we're unable to comprehend simple arithmetic, you'd think we were all educated in America's public schools. Hmm, what's everything we have minus everything? Can we still afford a VitaminWater?

Guess what, Social Security is broke. Six years ahead of schedule! I'm no "classic" economist, but I think the problem was that simple math showed us that population trends would cause this to happen, yet politicians refused to do anything about it, and we, the mouth-breathing populace, applauded them for that intransigence, and now we're all fucked and like, huh? That's America for you!

The solution is to ignore it. Let's move on to more calming matters, like the widespread MTA budget cuts that will turn our commutes into even more of hellish, ratlike tunnel experience of waiting and wondering whether the next G train will pull in before we're forced to "scavenge" the backpacks of our fellow passengers for food.

The solution is to ignore that. No fare hikes, rah rah rah! Here's a feel-good story: Farmers in Illinois are buying back their land, from the broke ass banks. Haha, what did those banks event think they were doing? They did not do the math properly! Populism, swish!

The sad fact is that in our "What's yours is mine, what's mine is mine, provided I am rough and tough" system, the "little guy" does not always come out "on top." And when we're contemplating our looming collapse, on both personal and nationalistic levels, which are both as assured as the square root of 169, it will only pain us more to know that we, the mightiest nation on earth, can no longer afford to buy ourselves VitaminWaters whenever we like. We're too poor. Damn.

Should have checked the bank balance before we bought that $300 foot rub.