ON SURVIVAL - Predator and Prey -

" There is enough for the needy but not for the greedy."
M.K. Gandhi ( 1869 - 1948)

Brutus to Cassius in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar:

" Let me tell you, Cassius, you yourself are much condemned to have an itching palm"

" For greed all nature is too little"
Seneca.

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The federal minimum wage has remained frozen for almost a decade. In Connecticut where the writer resides the minimum wage currently is $7.40 an hour. On an 8 hour day this amounts to $60.00.

Every time there is an appeal for an increase economists of various hues and politicians of diverse stripes raise Cain that one should not interfere with the law of supply and demand. And that any increase will bankrupt businesses resulting in massive lay offs. Attrition is the pass word.

When on rare instances an increase was grudgingly given the economic Armageddon that was predicted never came to pass.

Here is a slither of a dialogue between two of the fishermen from act 11 of Pericles.

Pericles (495 - 429) the Athenian statesman, philosopher, writer and orator demonstrates the fallacy of the old saw that " change is the only constant in life."

Nothing really changes.

Second fisherman: "Nay, Master, said not I as much when I saw the porpoise, how he bounc'd and tumbl'd?. They say they're half fish, half flesh.. Master I marvel how the fishes live in the sea."

First fisherman: " Why, as men do on land: the great ones eat up the little ones. I can compare our rich misers to nothing so fitly as to a whale. A' plays and tumbles, driving the poor fry before him, and at last devours them all at a mouthful. Such whales have I heard on O' the land
who never leave gaping till they swallow'd the whole parish, church steeple, bells and all"

Echoes of $6,000.00 shower curtains, Enron and $ 4oo million " going away gifts " to C.E.Os.

So be it deep in the jungle, deep down in the ocean or above on flat land on which you and I dwell, the devil it seems always takes the hind most.

K.B.Chandra Raj