Ignorance and Want: Why Dickens Wrote “A Christmas Carol”

Years ago, families gathered round the fireplace at Christmastime to read “A Christmas Carol” aloud. Now they sit around the wide-screen HD TV to watch one of the myriad dramatizations of the book Charles Dickens wrote so long ago.

The story has been recycled so often that most new versions are updated satires of other-worldly adventures of Ebenezer Scrooge. No longer viewed as a serious parable of social corruption and redemption, the drama has been so eroded, it’s become a sanitized fairy tale. Many versions don’t even feature two of the most critical characters in the book: the children hidden beneath the robes of the second of three Spirits Jacob Marley foretells.

Though Dickens wrote the book to educate people about the dangerous influence of greed, the lesson people generally take away is nothing of the sort. Instead of changing attitudes toward poor people, his seminal work sparked renewed interest in ancient traditions of secular holiday celebrations that had been ignored since the days of Puritan asceticism.

People still believe the story encourages seasonal materialism. They think Dickens wanted us to exchange expensive presents and binge on Christmas dinner. They forget that besides treating the Cratchit family to gifts and goose, Scrooge raised Bob’s wages and promised to pay for his family’s medical needs, with the wretched Tiny Tim being the first beneficiary. He also swore that as long as he was alive, the Cratchits would never again be poor.

The real lesson of Dickens’ story is that employers and governments must ensure the well-being of workers in exchange for their labors. Instead, companies and politicians are doing all they can to cut wages, medical benefits, and retirement funds, and politicians pass laws that minimize corporate responsibility when workers are injured or killed in dangerous work environments. They eagerly cut benefits for people in the middle and lower classes in order to enhance the financial standing of people who are already wealthy.

Dickens must have been sorely disappointed that little had changed for the working poor by the time he died 26 years after publishing the book. Indeed, he’d be just as sad if he were resurrected today and learned that for the past three decades, corporations and politicians have been eagerly reversing so many of the hard-won rights and benefits that were established for workers, one by one, throughout most of the 20th century.

That’s why I’m suggesting we revive a Dickens tradition, with a twist. Rather than watching endless TV reruns of this classic story each December, I’d like to hear the book being read by groups of people in public places around the country. One venue could be Wall Street, that center of commerce and greed which spawned the economic meltdown that spread across oceans and borders throughout the world.

The headquarters of major banks would be significant locations, as would statehouses in Wisconsin, Ohio, and any other states where conservative governors and lawmakers are stripping away rights from hard-working people. I know there are so many other significant locales where people could gather with friends and loved ones to read this moving story.

And the biggest twist of all: Besides volunteers taking turns reading, at least one girl and one boy, dressed in rags, could listen to the story being read aloud. When a reader comes to the point where the second Ghost reveals the hidden waifs dubbed “Ignorance” and “Want,” one boy and one girl could stand up to represent these symbols of our social failures.

These two youngsters could have signs hung around their little necks identifying their roles. More children could stand with signs reading “fear,” “oppression,” “war,” and any number of other conditions that mark the worst abuses of society. Children could even choose their own “names” or other relevant social messages.

Finally, I’d love to see a slew of videos posted on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, even news i-reports pages, showing that the next generation is finally beginning to understand the lesson Charles Dickens hoped to teach the world nearly two centuries ago.

Perhaps if we start early enough to spread the word about this simple plan, something might actually come of it when the holiday season rolls around. It would be a truly blessed thing to see people finally begin to understand how Scrooge really “knew how to keep Christmas well” throughout the year and for the rest of his natural life.

Comparing real economic values of people by their income

In my previous article in this series, I introduced the fact that varying income levels of people has a lot to do with their impact on the economy. Understanding these differences can help people decide whether the current political policy of favoring the rich at the expense of the poor is a valid economic model.

Recent history provides an unmistakable clue to the facts: Policies of the past decade almost totally devastated our economy. We need to understand the financial realities if we’re ever going to turn things around and climb out of the recessionary hole we’ve been trapped in for the last few years.

Worth Millions, Maybe

First, consider arguments for continuing to let the rich wallow in piles of man--uh--money: When they get their fat paychecks, they dine at the finest restaurants, stay in five-star hotels, frequent luxury-car showrooms, and buy lots of real estate, from mansions to vacation homes to investment property. The economic advantage here is that lots of “little people” work at all these places, catering to the demands of wealthy patrons. That arrangement boosts employment numbers and allows some money to trickle down from the wealthy to the masses.

The rich also invest lots of money in stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments. But many of them also tend to move a significant chunk of their wealth to banks in other countries, especially places where they’re less likely to pay taxes. The combination of tax deductions, loopholes, and offshore banking means the best return, in spending, investment, and taxes, that the U.S. economy can expect from people who are worth more than a million dollars is about two-thirds of their income.

Middle Class, Middle of the Road

Next, consider the schlub who schleps to work every day so he can bring home around fifty thousand dollars a year. He can’t treat his loved ones to a meal at the Four Seasons, at least not often. McDonald’s is more his style--or Subway, if he’s watching his calories and carbs. He has one house, and these days he’s more apt to take a “staycation” than be seen sunning on a beach in Acapulco. That’s good news for The Home Depot, bad news for Hilton Hotels. And he will spend a higher percentage of his money, in taxes, groceries, rent or mortgage, insurance, and so on, than the aforementioned rich guy. In the end, this middle-class earner will return close to 90% of his paycheck directly back to the economy.

Since these middle-income earners greatly outnumber the wealthy, the value they return to the economy creates significant working capital for both the government and businesses to keep on providing goods and services for other customers. By earning money and spending a big chunk of it, this middle-income guy is a basic, average member of both the “public,” as far as the government is concerned, and the “market,” according to Wall Street’s point of view.

Poor but Valuable

Now, let’s look at the poor--and I do mean poor--fellow who barely earns fifteen thousand dollars a year. If this person has any family at all, he--or she, because many such families are headed by single women--can barely make ends meet on that amount of money. The family will usually require extra help from the government and/or private charities, such as food stamps and food banks, to make it through each month.

Then there’s the medical help. A shocking percentage of people in this range have no medical insurance. They’re more apt than the average middle-class person to have chronic health problems, especially because what care they do get isn’t the kind of comprehensive support that helps them improve and live as well as they could. Any care they do get is most likely delivered through some sort of public assistance program.

Another area where services are hit and miss is education. Schools in such low-income areas as inner cities and rural communities rarely have enough resources to serve their students as well as they should. Add the fact that a high percentage of low-income parents are likely to work long hours, if they’re around at all, and too many lack the education to provide the kind of help and guidance their children need to succeed. There are exceptions, in students, family members, and schools, but those are notable because of their rarity. That’s the biggest reason economic problems tend to continue from one generation to the next, ad nauseam.

When you consider how much of his or her income this person will spend, that is, return directly to the economy, it comes as close to 100% as anyone can possibly get. Trouble is, that contribution is usually offset by the value of the help, in cash, goods, and services, that the family requires just to survive. So, they’re more of a drain on the economy, right? Actually, not when you consider that just about every cent of the value of those payments to the poor goes directly back into the economy.

So, who’s more valuable to the economy? We’ll look at the meaning of these percentages later in this series. Before that, I’ll discuss the actual economic value of the labor of one person who doesn’t have to labor as hard as the rest of us. Watch for it!

Fixing the Economy: Enrich the wealthy? Or end poverty?

Okay, which economic class is more beneficial to the economy:

• The top earners?
• The middle class?
• The people who live in poverty?

Most people have an opinion about this matter, but what are the facts? What are the economic effects of spending by people who make a million dollars a year? Fifty thousand dollars? Fifteen thousand dollars? How does capitalism really work? Is socialism good or bad for the economy? What is the real economic impact of continuing to allow people to depend on welfare or unemployment insurance payments, along with other public and private charity benefits?

Several studies have been done to clarify this issue. The numbers generally agree and fall within predictable ranges, so I won’t bore you with statistics here. The important lesson is not the numbers extrapolated from the studies but the principles demonstrated by those numbers. It should come as no surprise that the numbers support the practice of more humanitarian principles than current policies that favor the rich and place undue burdens on poor people.

To put it bluntly, the real cause of the failure of our economic system is greed. More to the point, a society that caters to demands of the wealthy by penalizing poor and middle-income citizens and accepts unemployment and poverty as standard economic policy is doomed to eventual failure. That conclusion runs counter to the commonly held belief that economic success depends on perpetuating the super-wealthy lifestyle of a small percentage of the population.

During recent banking disasters when taxpayers shored up failing financial institutions, top executives continued to receive hideously huge salaries and bonuses. The mantra, according to corporations and economists alike, was that companies have to pay big bucks for the big brains. The apologists totally ignored the fact that these “geniuses” were the same ones who brought their companies, and the world economy, to the brink of disaster. With brains like that, we’d have been better off with Mickey Mouse, Goofy, and Pluto running the Wall Street circus.

Meanwhile, whenever anyone suggests raising taxes for the wealthiest among us, loud voices shout down the idea by claiming the economy depends on making sure the already filthy rich keep on getting richer. The unspoken opposite side of that policy requires ripping as much money and as many rights as possible away from the most down-trodden in society.

Never mind the morality, or lack of it, with this policy. People who favor the rich certainly don’t. In my next postings, I’ll take a good look at the economic effects of continuing to steal from the poor and middle class in order to support people who don’t really need any help. In fact, later in this series, I’ll discuss how capitalism works, or should work when it’s done right. Watch this space for these articles in the next few days.