Uncle Scrooge/Law-Abiding

[L. Schulte]

The debate about whether Uncle Scrooge makes money legally has been 
interesting, especially with Don Rosa's comments that "his" Uncle Scrooge 
earns his wealth legally.  I wonder if there is a division here on 
attitudes towards wealth based on the European and American traditions.  As 
a general statement, the Europeans tend to take a more socialized view that 
somehow gathering great wealth is bad, and therefore must have been done 
illegally or at least immorally, and that great wealth must be 
redistributed.  Americans admire the Bill Gates/Andrew Carnegie/-types and 
think, in general, that the individual should be allowed to become as rich 
as he wants.  I am reminded of the old story of the American and the 
Frenchman in New York.  They re standing on the street corner when a huge 
limousine rolls by.  The American says: "Some day I will own a car like 
that!"  But the Frenchman says: "Nobody should be allowed to own a car like 
that!"

Class warfare based on envy tends to be a European phenomenon (think France 
1789), although you can see it in America too of course, especially in 
election years!  So I wonder if Uncle Scrooge is in fact such an American 
archetype that  he could not have come from the pen and brush of a European.