Wow! They aren't even trying to hide it anymore.

[ZiprHead]

In Defense of Scrooge, Whose Thrift Blessed the World

In the 1840s, Dickens didn’t see how businessmen like his hero were already lifting mankind from poverty.

We meet Scrooge on Christmas Eve, when he is visited in his cold, dingy “counting-house” by his nephew, who urges him to stop working: “You’re rich enough.” The young man begs his uncle to join him in making merry on Christmas Day. Concerned about finding himself “a year older, but not an hour richer,” Scrooge answers that he will keep Christmas in his own way, by working.

It should be understood there is nothing unethical about Ebenezer Scrooge. In his view business “is the even-handed dealing of the world,” and “there is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty.” His great failing, in the words of his former fiancée, whom he gave up to marry his business, was that he had become a prisoner of “the master-passion, Gain.”

The article then goes on to say that societal gains in the late 1800s were because of people like Scrooge. The Correlation/Causation Fallacy in a nutshell.

Even as Dickens’s Ghost of Christmas Present pulled back his robe to reveal the children who embodied Ignorance and Want, the wealth accumulated by Scrooge was already beginning the long drive that would do more to end ignorance and want than all the governments and charities that ever existed. Scrooge’s wealth accumulation would have benefited far more people than anything he gave to charity after his reclamation, and many times more than government would have helped had they taken his wealth and spent it.

Here we have The False Dilemma Fallacy. There were only two options in the Scrooge story and society.

The article is a simplistic defense of vast wealth accumulation in a time of great poverty. Basically a rehash of supply side economics.

That the article was written by Phil Gramm, the US senator who gave us these:

Gramm became a member of the Senate Banking Committee in 1999, serving as chairman until 2001. He cosponsored the 1985 Gramm–Rudman–Hollings Balanced Budget Act, which sought to reduce the U.S. federal budget deficit. He also supported deregulation, sponsoring the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 and the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act. The latter act repealed provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act which had separated banking, insurance, and brokerage activities.

bringing us The Great Recession should not be surprising.

 

[Worldtraveller]

Historically, economically, morally, and ethically inaccurate. Sounds about right. Also not surprised it was published by the WSJ.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

I don't care much about the "family gathering" aspect of Christmas, but I do hate the obligation to give gifts, and it's totally unnecessary stress especially on people who can't make ends meet.

 

[lpetrich]

Seems to me that some people would eagerly support reparations for rich people.

 

[lpetrich]

I don't care much about the "family gathering" aspect of Christmas, but I do hate the obligation to give gifts, and it's totally unnecessary stress especially on people who can't make ends meet.

Then give gifts that are not much of a financial burden, like things that one doesn't want anymore.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I don't care much about the "family gathering" aspect of Christmas, but I do hate the obligation to give gifts, and it's totally unnecessary stress especially on people who can't make ends meet.

Yup, gifts are almost always sub-optimal spending. If the recipient actually felt the item was worth the price why didn't they buy it themselves? (Yes, there may be a matter of different income levels--but in that case the recipient would be better off with the cash than the item.) The only gifts that make sense are gifts of service.