Working for Tomorrow

Tonight we are going to wander off into a little bit of a political direction. As a child, I loved to read Aesop's fables. One fable that I took to heart was the story of the Ant and the Grasshopper. In it the moral of the story was that you must work hard in order to survive the hard times. This is especially true in today's economic environment. As small business owners, we must continue to work hard and not quit. As the political climate has changed, I have found another version of the fable of Ant and the Grasshopper and hope that we will never see this situation come to fruition in this wonderful country of ours.

In case you do not remember reading this as a child, here is a short version of the old Aesop's Fable:

"In a field one summer's day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to it's heart content. An Ant passed by, bearing along with a great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest.

'Why not come and chat with me,' said the Grasshopper, 'instead of toiling ad moiling in that way?'

'I am helping to lay up food for the winter,' said the Ant, 'and recommend you too do the same.'

'Why bother about winter?' said the Grasshopper, we have got plenty of food at present.'

But the Ant went on it's way and continued its toil. When the winter came, the Grasshopper had no food and found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants distributing every day corn and grain fro the stores they had collected in the summer.

Then the Grasshopper knew: IT IS BEST TO PREPARE FOR THE DAYS OF NECESSITY."

As in a home based business or a small business, you may find that some months you will bring in large amounts of income. The object is to be sure to always put away some of that excess income in anticipation of the lean times because there will be lean times in business. Do not spend all of your income now, because you will need it down the road. The sheer nature of economics dictates that there will be peaks and valleys in profit for all types of businesses.

If we are not careful in the coming years, the following modernized version of the Ant and the Grasshopper fable may come to be true:

"The Ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The Grasshopper thinks the Ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering Grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the Ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.

CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering Grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor Grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the Grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.'

ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the Ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, 'We shall overcome.' Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray to God for the Grasshopper's sake. President Obama condemns the Ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the Grasshopper's plight.

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the Ant has gotten rich off the back of the Grasshopper, ad both call for an immediate tax hike on the Ant to make him pay for his fair share. Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Ant Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The Ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the Grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the Ant's food while the government house he is in, which as you may recall, just happens to be the Ant's old house, crumbles around them because the Grasshopper doesn't maintain it.

The Ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again. The Grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and once peaceful, neighborhood. The entire Nation collapses, bringing the rest of the free world with it."

I hope to never see that occur in the United States of America.

Until tomorrow...