Economic crisis creates a cultural divide between ‘ants’ and ‘grasshoppers’

[babylonsister]

Economic crisis creates a cultural divide between ‘ants’ and ‘grasshoppers’
By RICK MONTGOMERY
The Kansas City Star


Two-and-a-half millennia before anyone thought of bundling toxic derivatives, Aesop knew what bugged people.

The foolhardy grasshopper in the ancient Greek fable “The Ant and the Grasshopper” enjoyed his summer singing while the ant worked in earnest, “toiling and moiling” to store up food. Winter came and the grasshopper, starving, took to begging from the ant colony.

Even today, “it goes to the very marrow of American society,” said Randall Miller, a scholar of political and cultural history. “Work hard. Take responsibility for yourself. Don’t expect others to bail you out for your own bad decisions…

“But who’s the government going to help in this economic mess? The grasshoppers!

“I sense something building, a cultural phenomenon. A lot of resentment has surfaced, and the people in Washington are feeling it.”

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