Politics & Power Quote by Robert Orben

“Back problems” lands as a neat bait-and-switch, the kind that makes you laugh first and then notice you’re laughing at a wound. Orben borrows the language of personal health - a culturally safe complaint, almost quaint - and flips it into a ledger of overdue obligations. The joke works because it exploits a cliché: back pain is the great equalizer, something “everyone” can relate to. Then he reveals the real epidemic isn’t spinal; it’s financial.

The intent is classic Orben: crowd-pleasing wordplay with a sting. By stacking “back taxes, back rent, back auto payments,” he turns a single punchline into a rhythm of piling bills. Each item is mundane, unglamorous, and instantly legible - not Wall Street abstractions, but the stuff that keeps a household from breathing. The repetition mimics the experience it describes: you don’t just have one overdue payment; they accumulate, they echo, they follow you.

Subtext: in America, stress gets medicalized because it’s easier to say your back hurts than to admit your life is in arrears. The body becomes the acceptable alibi for economic strain. Orben’s “More than ever before” parodies alarmist headlines and public-health rhetoric, suggesting a society that can diagnose symptoms endlessly while treating debt as a personal failing rather than a structural condition.

Context matters: Orben’s career sits in the era of mass media one-liners - jokes built for TV couches, banquet podiums, and Borscht Belt timing. Under that lightness is a recurring American theme: prosperity as performance, and the quiet panic of keeping up.