This is a problem we have today in Greece, but it's a problem that also crops up in any major city when the economy Biff Tannen's face-first into a manure pile. During the 1980 New York City transit workers' strike, between 15-20 percent of the city's workers couldn't do their jobs at all. People too poor for cars get screwed, but so do the drivers. Earlier this year, when London's subway workers threw down their wrenches, or urine pails or whatever, the city suffered an eleven-mile traffic jam on one of its main roads.

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"Even for Piccadilly, this is a circus."

But hey, at least your car and my taxis are air conditioned! My office, on the other hand, doesn't have AC anymore -- despite housing a fancy new media magazine. We had to cut back expenses, and it was either the AC or the Creative Director's kidneys, and we need him because, like everyone still working in Greece, he also doubles as the cleaning staff.

The police force doesn't do too well without paychecks, either. It was awesome at first -- those lucky car-having folks could park wherever they wanted, because no one was out there to hand out parking tickets. Then the meter vigilantes, the least intimidating of all vigilantes, started putting stickers all over the offending drivers' windshields. It seems like a noble gesture in theory, but filling the roads with half-blinded motorists didn't exactly help make things safer.

And before you start mocking my country for our burnt-out traffic lights and sticker-crusted windshields, you should take a sobering look at Detroit, AKA "the Greece of North America," as absolutely nobody calls it. They're living with 50-minute response times, police stations that close down at 4:00 p.m. and a drop in police salaries big enough that some criminals admit to feeling bad for their badge-wearing nemeses.

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We were only joking about Robocop before. Detroit can't even afford Humancop.

On the upside, violent crime dropped in both Detroit and Greece last year, so maybe all those cops weren't doing us much good anyway. It would be nice to have streetlights again, though. At least to keep the bats away.

That's a joke ... probably (who can tell? It's awful dark out there).

Almost every basic service is understaffed and in dire need of supplies. When you're getting a head wound treated and the nurse tells you to shut your eyes real tight because the disinfectant might blind you and they've run out of protective masks, you start to truly appreciate how bad things have gotten. But things like MRI machines being repaired with rubber bands are to be expected when your country is going through a crisis, right? So you suck it up, make an appointment with a private ophthalmologist, and are informed that your eyes are fine. Hooray! The dizziness is probably just due to malaria. B-boo?

See, the government used to spray pesticide every summer to counter mosquitoes. They can't afford to do that anymore, so hello there, supposedly extinct diseases.

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"You tested positive for dodopox. I'm sorry."

We've also seen a surge in HIV infection rates and drug overdoses, but looming economic collapse isn't all doom and gloom. If the Great Depression is anything to go by, financial meltdowns can save lives too. Mortality rates in the U.S. dropped by 10 percent in the 1930s, in part because no one could afford to drive their deadly, deadly cars. Death rates from heart disease jumped up by 20 percent, though. Hey, like the old philosopher Phil Collins said, it's a game of give and take. He was talking about love, but it easily applies to mortality rates.

Others find stranger ways to adapt. People all around me started getting invited to orgies, threesomes, all manner of "adult playdates." It was like living through the last days of Rome, but with antibiotics and better booze. It wasn't just the standard surge in sexiness that comes with any economic collapse. Some people were trading participation in these bacchanals for luxuries they couldn't afford. I asked around, and was told that those who couldn't live without dinners at fancy restaurants and Prada bags had simply found other ways to pay for them. Orifice ways.

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Deep pockets can get you deep ... other things.

Another silver lining: people have finally found an excuse to pursue their dream careers. When the safe bets aren't safe anymore, why not try your dream out? You're starving either way! A friend of mine left her accounting career to become a yoga instructor. I'm finally venturing into game design. It's already paying off. Soon we won't be a bankrupt nation; we'll be a starving artist nation. It's basically the same thing, but it sounds way sexier at parties.

Unsurprisingly, suicides and crime have spiked. My best friend, a PhD in geology who works as a glorified garbage collector in the morning and teaches university classes in the evenings, walked up to his car to find that someone had crashed through its roof while attempting suicide. Was the (miraculously alive) guy going to pay for damages? Well no. See, he was attempting suicide because of his debts. Really takes the fun out of "It's Raining Men."ju

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"It's Raining Men, Hallelujah." -- Leonard Cohen

Roughly 10,000 suicides in the United States, the European Union, and Canada from 2007 to 2010 can be blamed on the Great Recession. And the death toll is much greater in the countries that respond to "hard times" by cutting public benefits. My government did, and now we're going Eyes Wide Shut for handbags and the hot new dance craze is malaria. Suicide may not be excusable, but it's sort of understandable.

A riot itself is mostly kind of sad to behold. You've got nurses, doctors, teachers, workers, and students marching all hungry and malarial on one side of the street. And on the other side, you've got a stressed and overworked police force that's supposed to beat them if things go wrong. It's old hat for all parties by now.

Even my mom, a tiny woman over 50, has gotten to the point where being shoved by a riot cop doesn't faze her. Not even a blink. She didn't even get angry at the guy when it happened -- she figured that if the only way the man could get a salary was to push retired teachers around, he was probably having a rough life already. Unless he was one of those cops not getting a paycheck mentioned earlier, in which case he's doing all this shoving pro bono. That would be a pretty dick move.

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Or maybe he was paid sweet TEMs by one of her former students.