So, you take a pay cut because someone said it’ll make the business better — in fact, business will be so good, you’ll end up making more money. But despite a loss of income, you keep spending money on rent, medical expenses, saving for retirement, and so on, as if nothing has changed. In fact, you even buy a couple of new cars.

But  a funny thing happens: Your debt soars and the business doesn’t do better — it does worse –  so you really need the money you lost in the pay cut.  (And of course, it was foolish to buy those cars.) But you’re told that you don’t deserve a raise!

If you want government to be run like your household, the scenario above pretty well describes the sort of household the Republicans have been running. The Republican-led government created a big tax cut and two unfunded wars  — and now their solution is cutting Social Security and Medicare?

Let’s get one thing straight: The wrangling we’re seeing over the so-called fiscal cliff is really just a skirmish in the larger war against the social safety net, dating back to the creation of  Social Security in the 1930s.

The conservative game plan for decades has been to manufacture crises like the current one by cutting revenues to the federal government. Restore taxes to a sensible level — and  stop fighting foolish wars — and the crisis goes away.

And let’s stop talking about the revenue solution as though we’re raising taxes. Let’s call it the end of a tax holiday for the wealthy.