Cliff Notes.

After hearing so much about the fiscal cliff I thought it might be a good idea to find out what is already at the bottom of that cliff. To avoid the fall I took the descendalator down. (There doesn't seem to be any elevator or escalator.)

I have discovered that there are a lot of people already down here. Some of them were born here and have never seen the top. Others slid down slowly, aided by alcohol, drugs, depression, or lack of a good education. Falling on top of them were people who lost their jobs or homes in one of the several recessions that have occurred in the last fifty years. I have also found quite a few military veterans who returned from the battlefields to find no jobs and a long delay for treatment of their PTSD.

The foot of the cliff is also littered with businesses. Most of them were small companies that had been under-capitalized and had lasted only a few years, but there are also the remains of some larger firms that were stripped of their assets by corporate raiders. There are also a few former financial institutions that thought they were too big to fail.

I have looked for signs of anyone who might provide assistance or leadership. There are a few former labor leaders, but hardly any losing football coaches, ousted office holders, defrocked clergymen or fired executives. They all seem to have found a way to avoid falling over the cliff.

The biggest problem facing dwellers at the foot of the cliff is not falling bodies but pollution. The water falling over the cliff is from sewers, polluted streams, and wells that have been poisoned by fracking. The cleanest source is water from melting glaciers, but it is raising the level of the waves that lap at the base of the cliff. Soon there will be no beach left for us to stand on.

Sending this report was easy, thanks to the electronic revolution that has put so many of us out of work. But scientists still haven't discovered the Star Trek knack of transmitting people electronically. So would someone please lower a rope to me? I promise not to let anyone else climb on it.