>Sir please give some of your money to the lazy unemployed"My taxes already pay for workhouses where they can go to get food and shelter, if they're willing to work">Many would rather die than do that"Ok then"Literally nothing wrong with what Scrooge said here
He could have simply said noInstead he equated any hardship by any person with the willfully shiftless to justify another angle of his money grubbing
>>151888426yes but the charity bros took time out of his day and business so I think he's allowed to respond harshly
>>151888513It's on Scrooge for giving them his time in the first place.
>>151888533In this version at least it was on his clerk who let them in. Scrooge was not involved in that.
they should have bribed him for a donation with a gold bar.
>>151888172>arguably the greatest adaptation of a Dickens' novel is the one with the goddamn Muppets Legitimately how did they accomplish this feat?
>>151888573This is also accurate to the novel
>>151888513>>151888573Since it's his business he can say "no and now get out"He protracted the interaction to bellyache and cope about his miserliness
>>151888172Back then rich people didn't pay taxes destined to improve the lifes of the poor. That only happened from the 30s to the early 80s until Reagan/Thatcher imposed neoliberal economics
Scrooge crying about how's the real victim because he pays taxes is a very realistic depiction of rich people.
>>151888700It's a very realistic depiction of people in general.Plenty of poor people wouldn't want to pay for other poor people, however little it might be.They'll just use different excuses.
Important to remember a few things, many of which at least partially excuse Scrooge (who is still a dick):>transition from rural feudalism to industrial age wage slaveryIt used to be you could survive the winter in your rural community, where everyone would pitch in to assist struggling neighbors and your local lord or rich manor owner would throw their neighbors a lavish feast. In the middle of Industrial age London, this was not in any way feasible as everyone earned only enough money to survive day to day.>but what about taxes? the government?Taxes went to funding the military and not much else. Government social programs were abysmal, and remained abysmal until they got so bad that London saw outbreaks of cholera, TB, and serial killers which drove social reformers to demolish slums, invest in water infrastructure, install street lights, and invest in modern police initiatives. But this was well after Scrooge's time, so again he's not to blame.>but he sounds so meanHe is being mean, but those were industrial age values and honestly they weren't much different than prior medieval values. If you wanted to eat in medieval England, the farm is always hiring. If you wanted to eat in industrial age England, the factory and workhouse is always hiring. But it was brutal work with zero concern for safety, and this had not yet been properly recognized. Still "just get a job" was the typical attitude.The whole story was about awakening industrial age England to the consequences of their modern value system, and it worked spectacularly. The entire point of Scrooge is nothing that comes out of his mouth is actually "wrong" in the zeitgeist of the time, but is objectively wrong if you actually think about it. That's why sequences like Ignorance and Want are so important despite often being left out, as that is the real future of the country if nothing is done. Scrooge will always die, but England will live on - increasingly impoverished.
>>151888172>Literally nothing wrong with what Scrooge said hereThat was the point Dickens was trying to make.On the outside, there's nothing extraordinary about Ebenezer Scrooge. He's not particularly rich, just solid middle class. He pays his taxes like any law-abiding citizen, and pays his employee Bob Cratchit what was considered a decent wage for the time. He is in every sense an Everyman character that Dickens' readers could've identified themselves with.It's what's on the inside where Dickens twists the knife. Scrooge's miserliness isn't one of money, but of spirit. He simply doesn't see his fellow man as worthy of any consideration beyond what is imposed by the law. So he refuses and mocks charity, shuns his nephew's offer of hospitality, and ultimately has to be forced to see that the "fair wage" he's paying Cratchit won't cover the medical expenses his son Tiny Tim needs to live.
>>151888806>Bob Cratchit what was considered a decent wage for the timeI do wonder how some readers at the time would have felt about the Cratchit's because for the time, they weren't exactly poor, and it's more of an interpretation people have gained in hindsight due to our modern luxuries.
>>151889286I'm sure the reading types could sympathize with a modest family that-while not destitute-was seriously threatened by a chronic medical conditionLife still hasn't changed in that regard lol
>>151888172Are you retarded? Do you not understand how a story works? The point wasn't that Scrooge was in the wrong for not giving charity to organizations he sees as having no benefits, but it's the way he said it that gives clues to the readers/viewers that he's an angry, bitter soul who only sees people as a means of profit. It's to provide context for what sort of person he is and why he went on the journey of redemption.
>>151888658Thank you. I've seen so many adaptations I've never gotten around to reading the original story.
>>151889286I was thinking about this last night. Cratchit was a clerk, which means he was educated and middle class. Lower middle class, but still.Which really goes to show not how far we've come, but how wide the gap between rich and poor was in those days. In modern times, most of the so called lower class is obese and addicted to smartphones.
>>151888621Barring the removal of the scene where Scrooge's Ignorance and Want manifests as filthy orphan kids, but most adaptations axe that anyway.
>>151888172This only makes sense if you understand the conditions of Victorian workhouses, and I don't.
>>151888806I never thought about it this way. Good take!
>>151888621>how did they accomplish this feat? It's The MUPPETS
>>151889398>a modest family that-while not destitute-was seriously threatened by a chronic medical condition>Life still hasn't changed in that regard lolIt has in non-Anglo countries. I don't know why the Anglosphere insists on not taking care of their sick and instead enriching a handful of pedos at their expense. There's just something extremely perverse about the mentality and morality systems of Anglo Protestantism that you just don't see in Catholic, Orthodox or even Muslim countries.
>>151892049>I don't know why the Anglosphere insists on not taking care of their sick >There's just something extremely perverse about the mentality and morality systems of Anglo ProtestantismSay what you will about perfidious Albion, but they have had a universal healthcare system in place since the late 40s.It's the Yanks who still get weirdly squeamish at the prospect.
>>151890394>By the 1830’s the majority of parishes had at least one workhouse which would operate with prison-like conditions. Surviving in such places proved perilous, as mortality rates were high especially with diseases such as smallpox and measles spreading like wildfire. Conditions were cramped with beds squashed together, hardly any room to move and with little light. When they were not in their sleeping corners, the inmates were expected to work. A factory-style production line which used children was both unsafe and in the age of industrialisation, focused on profit rather than solving issues of pauperism.https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Victorian-Workhouse/
>>151888172Scrooge is a miser. He's not just trying to keep money, he's doing so because it delights him. He's as crazy as any hoarder, but over the course of the story is cured of his miserlynessScrooge is usually portrayed in adaptations wearing fine clothes, but a true miser wouldn't even spend money on himself because he is insane>>151888513he doesn't actually do anything, that's why he employs Cratchitt>>151888684>>151888806>>151888796good points well made>>151890394the UK was an at-will employment state with next to no protections; it was an at-will eviction state too, so if you lost your job (for no reason or any reason) your landlord would often make you homeless too and then you were fuckedthe workhouses took in destitute people (including whole families) and provided food, lodging, medical care (including geriatric care, after a fashion) and (for children too young to work) education, in return for work; but the system was far from universally administered so different workhouses had very different standards, and the big workhouses in London were notoriously badit also created a perverse incentive not to work, since a lot of employers offered no better conditions and it was for some attractive to go into the workhouse (or to place family members, young or old, inside - for example if the breadwinners of the family - yes, both - were emigrating to a colony and hoped to send for their kids at a later time); particularly if you needed a doctor and couldn't otherwise afford onethe situation was so bad that, after the formation of the metropolitan police and other professional police forces in the 1830s and 1840s, the public began setting up convalescent homes for police officers who fell sick, were injured etc, since otherwise - they'd end up in the workhouse, which everybody saw as dreadful for what were, then, beloved public servants doing a necessary and often dangerous job (London still had shoot-out bank robberies into the 1890s)
>>151892793>focused on profit rather than solving issues of pauperismthat is how you solve pauperism you stupid liberal
>>151892347The Brits have instead doubled down on their terrible nanny state instincts: taking guns away from people, spying on people everywhere they go, banning free use of the internet, even controlling how people can cook their food.The Canadians are killing people, too, and calling it health care. Anglos can't seem to provide social welfare to people without also tipping into an Orwellian system of social control.
>>151892899Perhalps the Economist, sycophont to anything that purports to start with efficiency, puts thing into perspective.Spain give a whole months unemployment benefit for Christmas. But therefore pays less every other month.The UK gives 30 Pounds more at Christmas becasue it wants to give soemthing but is fearful of giving too much. Making everyone feel unhappy because it's such an obviously penny-pinching gift.
>>151893204Doesn't Spain have a shitty economy and as a country hasn't been relevant to the world in over 400 years?
>>151892049Most Catholic and Orthodox countries and every single Muslim country is significantly worse than the Anglo ones.
>>151888172you could add that the time period this took place in was a time of deflation for England; so all prices and rents were effectively going down. Cratchit and his coworkers were all effectively getting a raise, just by their salaries staying the same. So it was redundant, or extra, when Scrooge increased their salaries at the end of the story.
