They needed to be reminded on the day where the world celebrates the birth of a child whom Rome and Herod try to assign to the role of'surplus population, ' that the frightened men who rule the world in the name of scarcity should not be followed, but saved.
But subsistence farmers, who, with their families, are perhaps 85% of the population, still find it hard to amass the necessary surplus in good years to see them through the bad.