The Fiscal Cliff came about when House Republicans failed to limit the debt ceiling during the 2011 debate with the White House. In exchange for raising the ceiling, the politicians agreed to kick the can down the road and invoke automatic across-the-board spending cuts if an agreement were not to be reached by December 31, 2012. That's a few weeks from now. To make matters more urgent, several "temporary" tax cuts are set to expire on that date and one significant new tax hike is set to start the next day.

Add this all together, plus a mindlessly simple graphic that evokes the conclusion of Thelma and Louise and – voila! – you get the Fiscal Cliff. 

The murmurs of the potential sacrifice of the 401(k) plan have been steadily growing for several years, starting with tabloid-like scary headlines on newsweeklies following the market debacle of 2008/2009. For the most part, though, news of the death of the 401(k) was greatly exaggerated, and employee accounts in America's favorite retirement plan have come roaring back from the depths of March 2009.

But once a drumbeat starts in D.C., it's very difficult to quash it. There were even mumblings of bringing back pensions, but the financial fiascos of states' budgets exposed them for the Ponzi Schemes they are.

Now a new clarion cries, calling upon all good employees to give up their dreams of a secure financially independent retirement in exchange for… Aye, there's the rub. In exchange for what?

Alas, we've been down this road before. In 1986 Ronald Reagan raised taxes. A lot of folks complained back then about not getting the promised spending cuts in exchange for Reagan's trade. Not a lot of folks complained about feeling the hurt of those tax increases. After all, they only impacted the "rich."

Plus, we were in the middle of the greatest peace-time expansion ever and on the way to winning the Cold War without firing a shot. Why, if it wasn't for Big Hair and Boy George, the 1980s were almost the perfect time to live.

What I didn't realize at the time – I was too busy adopting artificial intelligence techniques to picking stocks – was that those tax cuts didn't really just impact the rich. Sure, if you just looked at the headline numbers, that's what you saw.

But if you went beneath those numbers, you'd have seen an unprecedented mass extinction of retirement plans as the giving cap was reduced from $30,000 to $7,000. Funny thing, at the time I felt $7,000 was unrealistically low. I was just a tad too young to understand it once was much higher.

I know what you're thinking. Did I save the full shot or only a fraction of it? Well, to tell you the truth, in all the excitement of the 1980s I kind of lost track myself. But being that this was America, at the time the most powerful economy in the world, with a stock market that would raise my savings clean up, you've got to, yourself, ask one question: Did I feel lucky?

At the time, no, I didn't. If anything, I thought I wasn't saving enough. I was naively unaware that, had my firm been a little smaller, its owner might not have felt the need to create a 401(k) plan. And so here I sit, the beneficiary of not only his fine stock picking, but for a greater part my own, well on my way to the retirement lifestyle my wife and I have dreamed of.

And it almost wasn't, thanks to the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which only raised taxes on "the rich" – something, despite calling Wall Street the home of my career, I'm pretty sure even President Obama wouldn't call me.

But, here we are today, on the cusp of repeating the same mistakes of history we made in 1986. Do I fear for myself? Not really. I think I've carried out my lifetime plan fairly successfully and, although not fully implemented, I'm close enough that, on the margin, any tax debacle won't make or break me.

On the other hand, I fear for the young, especially my children. Unlike myself in the 1980s, the twenty-somethings of today may not have the same opportunity I did to independently build a comfortable retirement nest egg. Yes, I made some sacrifices my peers didn't, but I have plenty of peers who made a living in the ether of higher tax brackets that were able to eventually catch up if not surpass me. They were lucky. They lived in an era where one could learn from one's mistakes and still have time to make amends.

Twenty-somethings are still twenty-somethings and, for the most part, are condemned to make the same mistakes of all twenty-somethings. I fear what they won't have, and possibly will never know they'll never have, is the luxury to, like their predecessor cohort, atone for those mistakes.

So I admit, my "compromise" of last week was insensitive and, in the end, frivolous. Raising taxes, specifically in a way that jeopardizes young adults, can present dire consequences. Thirty years from now, I wouldn't want to be responsible for some anguished seasoned citizen, whose lamented cries bemoan the lost opportunities of a new lost generation. 

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, could you live with yourselves knowing that? Or are you just content to know your actuarial tables don't extend that far, so you just don't care?