Ebenezer Scrooge: Conservative or Liberal?

[MrRadish]

I know people that plug money into slot machines for years, and are very happy when they get some of it back.
:chuckle:

:sigh:

Yes, because the only reason to support a social system has nothing to do with whether it's the right thing to do, it's just that it might someday benefit you financially. That's some free-market logic for you right there...

 

[genuineoriginal]

Ok, but what's that to do with anything here?

Conservative: It is my pocket, so I am the one to put my hand into it.
Liberal: It is your pocket, but I am the one to decide that the government should put its hand into it.
:deadhorse:

 

[Arthur Brain]

:sigh:

Yes, because the only reason to support a social system has nothing to do with whether it's the right thing to do, it's just that it might someday benefit you financially. That's some free-market logic for you right there...

Good point Mr Fop. I think we should have a safety net for the poor and regardless of whether I'd be in a position where I needed to personally claim benefits myself I'd be in favour of it regardless.

 

[Arthur Brain]

Conservative: It is my pocket, so I am the one to put my hand into it.
Liberal: It is your pocket, but I am the one to decide that the government should put its hand into it.
:deadhorse:

Instead of these subjective terminologies, how about you get on with explaining how a society sans a welfare/benefits system will take care of its poor?

 

[genuineoriginal]

Good point Mr Fop. I think we should have a safety net for the poor and regardless of whether I'd be in a position where I needed to personally claim benefits myself I'd be in favour of it regardless.

If you believe that, use your resources to open a soup kitchen.
Put YOUR money where you want it to go, and stop trying to put MY money where you want it to go.

 

[genuineoriginal]

Instead of these subjective terminologies, how about you get on with explaining how a society sans a welfare/benefits system will take care of its poor?

It is not the government's responsibility to help the poor and needy. It is an individual responsibility to help them.

Deuteronomy 15:11 For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land.​

 

[Arthur Brain]

If you believe that, use your resources to open a soup kitchen.
Put YOUR money where you want it to go, and stop trying to put MY money where you want it to go.

I'm not trying to put your money anywhere GO. I'm simply stating that I support a safety net for the poor. I'm still waiting on what you would set up if the welfare system were done away with....

 

[MrRadish]

If you believe that, use your resources to open a soup kitchen.
Put YOUR money where you want it to go, and stop trying to put MY money where you want it to go.

That might (might) make more sense if all individuals were completely independent of each other and obtained their money and possessions through totally isolated means. They don't, though. The debate over levels of taxation could be described as disagreement over just how much of a debt people owe to society.

 

[Arthur Brain]

It is not the government's responsibility to help the poor and needy. It is an individual responsibility to help them.

Deuteronomy 15:11 For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land.​

So hows that gonna work if you do away with all benefits for those out of work then GO? You think they're all gonna get taken care of by individuals in society no matter where they live? You think everyone's gonna have a post visitation Scrooge attitude towards the needy or something? What safeguards are going to be in place for those who don't get any charity?

 

[genuineoriginal]

how much of a debt people owe to society.

You mean how much of a debt people owe to the government.

 

[genuineoriginal]

So hows that gonna work if you do away with all benefits for those out of work then GO? You think they're all gonna get taken care of by individuals in society no matter where they live? You think everyone's gonna have a post visitation Scrooge attitude towards the needy or something? What safeguards are going to be in place for those who don't get any charity?

When did the government become a safety net for the poor choices people make and the misfortunes that happen to people?

 

[Traditio]

He was classically liberal. Taken to a grotesque extreme because of his totally warped sense of ethics.

The reason why this is a funny comment is because classic liberalism is nothing but laissez-fairre capitalism. :rotfl:

 

[Arthur Brain]

When did the government become a safety net for the poor choices people make and the misfortunes that happen to people?

When are you going to get around to explaining how doing away with a benefits safety net and reliance upon individual charity will somehow avail the poor? This is not about people's 'poor choices' but rather how society treats the destitute and unfortunate.

 

[The Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
Scrooge's assertion that the poor should die and reduce the surplus population: Conservative.

That is a liberal agenda.

If so, why are the guys who cheer about the uninsured being turned away from emergency rooms at the republican debates?

 

[Buzzword]

Bingo! Of course the word abortion is never mentioned in the text, but its implications certainly are.

It seems to be the liberal mindset (then as well as now) that certain kinds of suffering in this world can easily be remedied by the taking of life via abortion. One must follow their train of thought on the matter...if you don't have a baby, then that baby will have no way of possibly living in poverty. It is a depraved way of thinking. It is destroying human life in the name of public charity. It is "decreasing the surplus population."

Do you not agree that much of the suffering going on in the world today would be alleviated by a reduction in the number of people competing for a very finite amount of resources?

Overpopulation is already happening in many areas of the planet, and in the U.S. it's really only a matter of time before some type of winnowing, whether more abortions, more contraceptives, or outright sterilizations, starts occurring because we simply can't feed and house everybody.

VC, what makes you think it's "comfortable" to be on benefits in the first place? And why, if you believe in the goodness of people, would it require the lifeline to be removed before people actually seek work? What if there's a lack of jobs or a significant time lapse before employment is gained? What are folk supposed to do in the meantime? Beg for handouts from 'society' and hope for charity for some food to eat? Loads of people in the UK lost their jobs due to the latest recession and I was one of them. If the benefits system wasn't in place then I would have had no money to eat once savings were depleted, no money for rent and would have ended up on the streets.

One thing I'd like to mention in the midst of the giant welfare debate:
"The unemployment rate becomes a deceptive measure of prosperity when the majority of employed adults still can't earn enough to live on."
-Nan Mooney, (Not) Keeping Up With Our Parents

Employment is no guarantee of prosperity or even survival, now that businesses, from corporations to mom 'n' pops, have figured out that they can squeeze the maximum price the customer will tolerate while paying employees the minimum they will tolerate.

Too many young couples and families in the U.S. are finding this out the hard way, especially college-educated young adults who "did everything right" in their adolescent years.
They enter adulthood saddled with college debt and uncertainty, many working multiple jobs and still never breaking even, to say nothing of paying toward retirement or even emergency savings.

The character Ebenezer Scrooge can be examined from the point of view of the employer-employee relationship rather than the liberal-conservative dichotomy.
From this perspective, Scrooge is squeezing blood from a rock from his "customers" (he's a moneylender who thrives on the debt of others) and employees alike, all to fill his own pockets with nary a care about anyone else.

He sounds like a Fortune 500 CEO.

 

[Cracked]

Well VC, I don't see Scrooge as either conservative or liberal in the story as I've never associated it with politics of any sort. It's essentially the story of an embittered self centered miser who goes through a spiritual transition and comes out the other side a kind and altruistic soul. I've always seen it as a moral tale so perhaps if you can expound on why you identify the pre visit Scrooge as a liberal we can go from there?

PS: Bah humbug etc....

lain:

The thing is, considerable portions (or at least vocal portions) of Christianity directly equate political position to good or evil. What is lost upon them is the idea that one could be a "embittered self centered miser" as a liberal, or a conservative, or something else. Myopic, childish, black and white thinking restricts their ability to see that. It is absolutely ridiculous to state that conservatives are "embittered self centered misers," just as is it to say the same thing about liberals or libertarians, communists, etc. But, because all liberals are evil (as they are taught), we must equate all evil things to them.

 

[Cracked]

How does taking my money from me allow me to fulfill "whensoever ye will ye may do them good?"
That sounds more like "whensoever someone else will ye must hand over your money so someone else may do them good."
:mmph:

It is more complicated than that, but you can't tell a hardcore conservative or liberal that.

 

[Lighthouse]

Working Bob hard and paying him the lowest wage he'd accept is a fundamental part of unregulated capitalism. The highest prices consumers will accept - the lowest wages the workers will accept = maximum profit. He also complains about how having to give holiday pay to his workers is unfair, which sounds to me to be rather like the sort of thing employers come out with when confronted by trade union movements.

Also, he said that the government ought to take care of the poor in the sense that they should send them to prison. I'm not sure that counts.

You're supporting my point. Bob was part of the problem as well by not seeking better and more gainful employment.

And as VC pointed out, Scrooge proposed that the poor should die and thus decrease the surplus population.

Bingo! Of course the word abortion is never mentioned in the text, but its implications certainly are.

It seems to be the liberal mindset (then as well as now) that certain kinds of suffering in this world can easily be remedied by the taking of life via abortion. One must follow their train of thought on the matter...if you don't have a baby, then that baby will have no way of possibly living in poverty. It is a depraved way of thinking. It is destroying human life in the name of public charity. It is "decreasing the surplus population."

I'm not the only one who reads his posts in Sam Elliot's voice, am I?

Bob Cratchit is a perfect example of somebody to whom no welfare was available and therefore had to work, even though his employer exploited him horribly and he had a sick child who he could barely afford to keep alive. If there were a welfare state then he'd have the option of refusing to work for Scrooge unless he were paid and treated better, but as it was - it was submit to his boss' unreasonable demands or allow his family to die.

You're wrong, as VC pointed out.

Incidentally, I also don't really understand why opponents to welfare make such a distinction between 'the state' and 'the people'.

The people are better suited to apply the money to the actual need and keep others from "working the system," etc.

Absent excessive corruption or elitism, a democratic state is made of the people; it's just a particular way of organising them. If you're a taxpayer, voting that the government increases taxation in order to fund benefits for the poor is, in effect, giving money to the poor yourself, albeit with a greater national effect.

We the people should not be okay with giving money to the poor, but rather to the needy. If we flippantly give to the poor we are giving, by default, to the lazy as well as the truly in need. That is not okay.

Finally, I don't think you've yet shown how Scrooge's pre-ghost values differ at all from those of a right-wing libertarian capitalist.

I'm pretty sure I have already done that. He believed in welfare and population control.

That's conservativism/capitalism/big business.

Prove it.

All of the other business owners might have been exactly like Scrooge. Scrooge's dead business partner was.

See VC's response below.

They weren't. Scrooge's own nephew, Fred, is one example. Fezziwig is another.

 

[genuineoriginal]

Barbarian observes:
Scrooge's assertion that the poor should die and reduce the surplus population: Conservative.



If so, why are the guys who cheer about the uninsured being turned away from emergency rooms at the republican debates?

Reducing the "surplus" population is a liberal agenda. See below:

Do you not agree that much of the suffering going on in the world today would be alleviated by a reduction in the number of people competing for a very finite amount of resources?

Overpopulation is already happening in many areas of the planet, and in the U.S. it's really only a matter of time before some type of winnowing, whether more abortions, more contraceptives, or outright sterilizations, starts occurring because we simply can't feed and house everybody.

 

[MrRadish]

You mean how much of a debt people owe to the government.

No, to society. It's not as though the government hoards all of the money they collect in tax. Taxpayers' money that goes into welfare programmes is (whether you believe it to be being used efficiently or not) going back to society.

You're supporting my point. Bob was part of the problem as well by not seeking better and more gainful employment.

One does not simply walk into a new job, especially when you're a poor working-class man in Victorian London with a family to feed, no access to public transport, insufficient income to save up a reserve, aren't in a union because they're illegal, and there's no such thing as a minimum wage.

And as VC pointed out, Scrooge proposed that the poor should die and thus decrease the surplus population.

Well, to begin with that's not an inherently left- or right-wing issue, especially as at this point in history there was no such thing as environmentalism and therefore concerns about 'the surplus population' weren't tied with worries about the depletion of natural resources. Importantly, Scrooge advocates inaction on the part of the government with regard to this issue.

The people are better suited to apply the money to the actual need and keep others from "working the system," etc.

I see very little evidence to support this, especially given many people's propensity for irrational prejudice. I'd rather some people were able to 'work the system' than have people who aren't cared for at all.

We the people should not be okay with giving money to the poor, but rather to the needy. If we flippantly give to the poor we are giving, by default, to the lazy as well as the truly in need. That is not okay.

Again, paying a pittance to a few able-bodied 'lazy' people is better than not paying anything at all to people who're unable to work.

As I've said before, unemployment benefits and the like also allow workers to be somewhat more selective when choosing work, which helps reduce brutal exploitation by Scrooge-esque employers who know that their employees must work for ludicrously low salaries or be evicted and starve.

I'm pretty sure I have already done that. He believed in welfare and population control.

He claimed that prisons and workhouses were sufficient provision for the poor ("they cost enough") in spite of the Left at the time calling for significant expansion of state welfare, education and the like. And the 'population control' he called for came in the form of wanting people to suffer the consequences of having too many children without enough money to provide for them; a classic argument the anti-welfare lobby uses against awarding child benefits to poor families. As The Barbarian pointed out, it's the same logic that lies behind opposing state healthcare.

I'll just leave with this quote...

'Mr Marley has been dead these seven years,' Scrooge replied. 'He died seven years ago, this very night.'

'We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner,' said the gentleman, presenting his credentials.

'It certainly was, for they had been two kindred spirits. At the ominous word liberality, Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and handed the credentials back.