Scrooge, Dickens and the Economy

One of my favorite economists has links to several short works on Scrooge, apt perhaps for the day.I went to my pile of Dickens to draw it out. There amongst A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, Our Mutual Friends, Hard Times, Barnaby Rudge, Little Dorrit, Dombey and on, Great Expectations, and Nicholas Nickleby amongst others was the tome.

You see, my grandmother as a former head of the New York Socialists, insisted that month by month I consume a Dickens. Having no idea of English social structure, and having an American form of poverty, namely if you don't like it do something about it, I truly hated every word of Dickens. The books sit there is their aged leather bindings as a reminder of a world which at best I visited from time to time when I had t go to London. Scrooge, you see, is a product of English class society, not the economic times, but class. The upper, middle, and lower class, non mutable for eternity.

The United States is the antithesis. Thus one cannot relate to Scrooge, or any of the other English characters of Dickens.

Thus to the economists who seem to read more into it than others, and perhaps did not suffer Dickens as I did, I really hate the books, why I rather read Marx, Scrooge is not in any way American ... especially on Christmas Eve.

So to each and every one, a Merry Christmas, and please leave Dickens on the other side of the pond!