Here, we must get past Scrooge’s obvious selfishness (“Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge!”) and admit that this problem is also our problem today. We have our gated communities, designed to keep the comfortable set away from anyone who might impose on them (legally or illegally). We have our elder-care facilities, set up to keep the old and ailing from requiring too much of us. And parts of our cities increasingly feature “child-free zones,” places where adults do not have to put up with the unpleasant neediness (and noise) of little boys and girls.
We too have our surplus population, and like Scrooge, we go to great lengths to keep them apart from us.
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