On a cold December morning in Olympia, Ebenezer Scrounge sat hunched over his ledger inside Scrounge & Austerity, his counting house. He counted taxes. He counted regulations. He counted every dollar government had ever asked of him. He believed this, more than anything, made him a defender of the working class.
Across the office sat his clerk — a young upstart whose name escaped him at the moment — whom Scrounge had hired at minimum wage to replace his now dead partner, Jacob Austerity.
He’d arrived early and left late the night before, which infuriated Ebenezer to no end. Employees deciding their own schedule would not do, and Ebenezer would relish teaching him that lesson when he denied his time off request for the Christmas holiday at the end of the week.
Scrounge liked the boy in the abstract. He admired his discipline and his willingness to make do. Shortly after hiring, the clerk had confided in him that his family wore winter jackets at the dinner table. Scrounge had nodded approvingly; a very thrifty solution, he thought, to whatever mechanical trouble their furnace must be having.
Scrounge believed that hardship built character. If the clerk struggled, it was unfortunate, but also instructive. He did not see himself as cruel or careless. He saw himself as responsible — the sort of man willing to make difficult decisions others were too sentimental to make.
After all, he had numbers to protect.
As they left the counting house that evening, the clerk began to ask, “Mr. Scrounge, about Christmas …” But Scrounge pretended not to hear him over the winds and through his earmuffs. He mumbled a goodbye and briskly strode away down the sidewalk, avoiding the worker’s unreasonable demands.
That night, he settled into his four-post, wealth protected for another day, and drifted into a slumber that would soon be interrupted.
He awoke to the sound of shuffling papers, and snapped upright to discover the ghastly spirit of his old partner Jacob Austerity looming near the foot of his bed. He carried not rattling chains, but binders stuffed with ledger sheets, each labeled “Cut,” “Freeze,” or “Delay.”
“I’ll make this quick Ebenezer. Expect some visitors these nights, and give them your ear lest you’re wanting to lug these ledgers into eternity along with me,” the ghost growled at him.
Before Scrounge could respond, a bright light filled the room, and in the place of Jacob Austerity now stood an angelic creature, hand outstretched.
“Come,” the ghost said, “and remember.”
Scrounge, dazed, followed the creature into the light. They traveled back decades, to the foundations of Washington’s tax system. Scrounge watched as court rulings and legislative choices hardened a tax code that served the wealthy and burdened the rest.
“These choices,” the ghost said, “did not raise costs overnight. But they planted the seeds of unfairness.”
“The tax code? I didn’t come up with it,” Scrounge noted incredulously.
The Ghost of Policies Past didn’t look at him, but simply tapped a binder labeled “Loopholes.”
And with that, Scrounge was returned to his bedroom in a flutter of papercutting ledger sheets. He could no longer sleep, so he transfixed his gaze upward and ruminated until daybreak.
The following night, the Ghost of Policies Present paid its visit to Scrounge, brisk and unsentimental. His beastly form glowered in the shadows as he beckoned for Ebenezer.
“Observe,” the ghost said.
Scrounge saw today’s Washington: families squeezed by rent, food, gas and child care. He heard complaints about dining costs, fuel prices and the rising cost of living. He recognized the arguments. He had made them himself.
“What do you do when faced with these burdens?” the ghost asked.
“You cut,” Scrounge answered reflexively — as if no other verb existed.
He watched himself oppose child care subsidies and tax credits for working families and criticize sales taxes loudly, before rejecting every viable alternative.
“You object to the cure,” the ghost said, “but insist the illness proves your wisdom.” He showed Ebenezer the deficits in school funding, mental health care, infrastructure repair and public safety.
Scrounge couldn’t reconcile his ingrained hatred of government waste with the reality that so much already seemed to be on the chopping block.
The ghost simply chuckled at his bewilderment, and Scrounge was deposited back in his bed, left to ponder whether he’d been sold a distorted truth about the levers of economic prosperity.
On the final night arrived the solemn figure of the Ghost of Policies Yet to Come.
It spoke no words.
It showed Scrounge a future shaped by endless cuts and delayed investment. Sales taxes climbed higher as taxes on the rich remained forbidden. The burden shifted further downward.
Ebenezer found Scrounge & Austerity still standing, but he watched as his older self hung a “Closed Forever” sign on the front door and shuffled away down the sidewalk. The wealthy had finished doing the counting for him, and the working class had been left nothing, in the end, to record on a ledger. So his counting house was of no more use.
Scrounge turned to address the quiet specter. “Was it worth it in the end? Did I find contentment?” he asked.
The ghost did not answer.
Scrounge awoke with a start, a heaviness in his chest. The ghosts had taught him something important: Austerity may have been his loyal partner, protecting him from the risk of losing wealth or sacrificing some of what he’d earned, but the world today requires investment, not retreat, if we’re to move forward at all.
He was eager to find his clerk at his desk that morning to grant his Christmas time off request — he really ought to learn the young man's name — but upon arriving he found only a resignation letter.
He stood alone in the empty counting house. The ledger sat open on the clerk’s desk, columns perfectly balanced.
He had counted costs without counting people. He had learned the lesson. He had simply learned it too late.
•••
Zac Eckstein is chair of the Lewis County Democratic Party. Learn more about the party at https://lewiscountydemocrats.org.
