A New Way to Look at A Christmas Carol. For Some Reason.

The Wall Street Journal (or "The Journal", as I call it) is decidedly Team Scrooge:

While the literature of the Victorian era paints a dark picture of mid-19th-century life in England, virtually every official measure of well-being shows the period from 1840-1900 to have been the beginning of a golden age for workers. Wages, stagnant for more than 600 years, exploded during the Victorian era—rising from less than $567 a year in 1840 to $1,216 in 1900 (expressed in 1970 dollars). Life expectancy rose by 20%. Literacy rates soared. As wages rose, the quantity and quality of nutrition improved dramatically, want diminished rapidly, and the mortality rate for Victorian children plummeted. Child labor, once necessary for survival, gave way to steadily rising school enrollment and made ignorance a dark memory. There had never been a comparable period of broad-based prosperity in all of recorded history—and, most amazingly, the progress has never ended.

Who then benefited from the accumulated wealth of Scrooge and Marley? First Britain and then all mankind. Since Scrooge and Marley never consumed the wealth they created, its use was a gift to all. It funded the factories and railroads, the tools and jobs that fed and clothed millions of British subjects and then billions around the world. Their unspent wealth was of no use to them, but it was of sublime use to humanity.

I don't know if this is a joke, but if you read A Christmas Carol and come away deciding Scrooge is the hero, something is wrong with your brains. 

'Someone...is falling for this bullshit? Really?"