For how else can people survive on mere subsistence alone?
A sympathetic viewer might interpret them as a comment on the trans-Atlantic economy of the colonial era, with its harvest of wealth for the few and mere subsistence for the many.
HOW do three men, trapped in humdrum jobs that sentence them to lifetime membership in the fraternity of unnoticed people, turn mere subsistence into meaningful existence?
In between, for people who do not have a hedge-fund account and yet want to retire on more than mere subsistence, there are pensions and 401(k)'s.
Was the promoter a thief - one who stole inventive ideas in return for mere subsistence?
After all, if a country can support begging, then it must be generating income beyond mere subsistence.
But good budgeting means having a budget in the first place, having a surplus beyond merest subsistence with which to plan, bulk buy, meet the emergencies which crop up constantly.
The money, Justice Wilk said, "provides more than mere subsistence to destitute people unable to prepare food at home.
There he "worked on the roads for a mere subsistence for several months, then started as a fruit vender.
It must certainly not be forgotten that 80% of Mediterranean fishing is small-scale and tied closely to the areas concerned, whose socio-economic equilibrium verges, more often than not, on mere subsistence.