The city of Fall River, Massachusetts (most renowned  for its famous axe-wielding citizeness, Miss Lizzie Borden) defaulted on its municipal bonds early in the last century and was managed by a creditors’ committee for twenty eight years. The creditors eventually got their money back. We should be so lucky.

Fiscal armageddon impends. Within the last year, four (4) California cities have declared bankruptcy, following in the illustrious footsteps of General Motors. So has Harrisburg. Beautiful Detroit has already been seized by the mandarins of Lansing, who have appointed a fiscal guardian. As we all know, trends sweep from West to East, so how long can it be before the more civilized metropoli of Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Altoona, Bridgeport, and their ilk follow suit.  Why? Because all these burgs suffer from the identical fundamental fatal fiscal fallacy: refusing to stop giving money to their overpaid laborers and bureaucratic drones when they retire. Notice that I say “when they retire,” not “when they stop working,” because, indeed, they never started. After thirty years of leaning on shovels or shooting paper airplanes at wastebaskets, chatting on their cell phones while filing their nails rather than their files, they head off into the Florida sunshine, secure in the knowledge that some poor shnook like you will continue to toil in the hot sun, toting barges, lifting bales, and struggling to pay the usurious real estate taxes and income taxes and sales taxes that fund their pensions and benefits.

But what happens when you all join the ranks of the unemployed? You will stop paying all those taxes! And then what happens?

The cities run out of money. The states run out of money. The Feds print so much money that nobody will accept it. Soon, very soon, ALL the governments will collapse financially, go through bankruptcy, and quit paying pensions and retiree health benefits.

Just think of the new opportunities this change will afford you!

To begin with, you will all have the opportunity to sleep once more outdoors in the fresh air. While the average grate may not appear very comfortable, a few copies of the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Philadelphia Enquirer, or whatever your local rag is, provide a comfy mattress. If your are judicious in your choice of grate, you can enjoy warmth in the winter as the fumes from the subway waft through your couch de papier avec ink, and coolth in the summer as passersby pee on you.

Your diet will expose you to a variety of comestibles, as you plunge your greedy hands into the best garbage cans you can find (once again, your choice of venue is important here. Dumpster diving is much better behind the Palm than behind Emma’s Greasy Spoon). At the same time, you will find it much easier to exercise, since you will need to beat off your compatriots to secure the finest morsels for yourself, and run swiftly from the minions of the law who will attempt to ticket you (no, I am not making that up).

During the 1930’s, there was a popular ditty, discovered written on a jailhouse wall, that somehow continues to ring true today, and I suggest that you internalize the sentiment encapsulated in its title:

HALLELUJA, I’M A BUM!