Unlike Dickens’s famous miser, they’ve spent billions on philanthropy—but ignored the disastrous effects their efforts have had on poor and working-class people.
In his preface to “A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens expresses the hope that his “little book” would “not put my readers out of humor with themselves.” But he obviously wanted to induce soul-searching in some readers: the wealthy businessmen indifferent to the plight of the poor. And in some ways, he succeeded—the book was an instant best-seller and helped popularize philanthropy during the Christmas season. But the basic problem hasn’t gone away.
We still have Scrooges this holiday season, and the wealthiest of them—George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, and Tom Steyer—have inflicted far more suffering on the poor than Scrooge ever did to Bob Cratchit and the working class of his day. These billionaires may not seem like Scrooges, given their extensive philanthropy, but that’s only because most readers today don’t understand exactly where the original Scrooge went wrong.
