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.
Unions are socialist and minimum wage is one of the worst ideas to ever be implemented.
And no transportation? Really? He didn't have two feet and a heartbeat?
I understand that it was winter at the time of the story but it wasn't always winter in the Victorian era.
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.
No he doesn't. He suggests imprisoning them or putting them in workhouses.
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.
You really think there would be a single person for whom no one would care? You're stupid.
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.
If there is anyone in your family who is truly unable to work you should be participating in helping them and the government should keep its hand out of my pocket regarding your family.
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.
If you save your money then you don't need "benefits" if you lose your job.
If Bob had found another job Scrooge would have had to hire someone else and if no one would have been willing to accept his pittance he would have gone out of business as he had no one to help him.
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.
None of these are right-wing arguments.:nono:
I'll just leave with this quote...
Liberal wasn't always a bad word.