"Spending Money"

Not a very inspiring title, is it? Of course, it has no official status; it's just what people call it.  Presumably someone from Another Rainbow(?) slapped that title on it, and here we are. Makes me wonder what WOULD make if "official." I suppose if it had the official imprimatur of The Walt Disney Company™, that would do it. They should have official contests to name Barks stories. We'd probably end up with something better than this, anyway.

...is that the trouble with being rich? IS it? I try not to bring politics into these entries too much--yes, I DO bring them in, because these stories are inherently political, but believe me, it could be MUCH worse. But damn, man. Personally, I think the worst thing about being rich--certainly being ULTRA-rich--is that it destroys your brain and you're not capable of interacting with the world in a normal way anymore. Yes, as I constantly point out, comparing Scrooge to a "real" (so-called) rich person is pointless, but this story DOES seem to be a better argument for it than most, given that his excess money DOES cause him to act in extremely dumb ways here.

This comment isn't limited to this story, as obviously pretty much every artist always does it just like this, but I still find it quite funny that Scrooge receives his earnings in the form of enormous bags stuffed with bills and coins, like he's some sort of drug lord [insert capitalism joke here]. I feel like he (or Glomgold) must have to specifically request it in this form, which indicates that this is a self-inflicted problem. If they were slightly-less-insane plutocrats, they'd stick with quarterly earnings reports or whatever. But, of course, the physicality of money is one of the main things about him. You've GOTTA have giant bags! Doing it in a "realistic" way wouldn't be fun!

If you insist on doing it like this, it seems like the obvious solution is to give the excess to charity. I know you don't like the idea of giving money away, but just look at your forebears--people like your Andrews Mellon and Carnegie. They were always doing philanthropy stuff to try to whitewash their images. You, Scrooge, are supposed to be a substantially better person than those guys, so come on, man.

But obviously, that's not going to happen. So does Donald have any brilliant ideas?

Turns out yeah. If giving it away is off the table, this is clearly the best solution. It just...solves the problem, no muss no fuss. And since he's obviously going to make a bunch more money, it'll help in the long term, as well. He's not spending billions to hold millions; he's spending billions (if it's really that pricey) in anticipation of future billions.

This plan does, however, run afoul of the nonsensical--and therefore unspoken--assumption throughout the story that Scrooge is somehow never going to make any more, and that therefore getting rid of this is enough. Yeah, the story points out at the end that that's a faulty assumption, but man, you really think Scrooge himself oughta know better.

And here's the second best solution! Donald's knocking it out of the park today. But unfortunately, in this world banks are apparently equivalent to money bins, with a hard limit to what they can take. In the real world, any bank would be slavering for his business, but here, alas, it is logistically impossible.  Apparently.

Also worth noting: if Scrooge has decided that he can't build a bigger bin, and he can't use a bank--I'm not sure if he realizes what he's saying, which is that this is as big as his fortune's going to get. What the hell else is he going to do? This could segue into one of those stories where he wants to store his money on a deserted island or in a volcano or on an asteroid or in a haunted house.  Maybe we'll get there.

Given that Scrooge shot down Donald's two eminently reasonably suggestions, it seems only fair that he should get to offer a somewhat self-serving one like this. You might wonder, how is this better than just giving it away, which seems much more efficient? Is it because spending it makes it seem more capitalisty and slightly less painful (though still PRETTY painful, it looks like) than charity? Also, you've gotta wonder how much money is actually in those bags. Given how much of it is coins, I suspect much less than you'd think.

Anyway, I hope you don't think all this criticism is because I don't like this story, because I fuckin' LOVE this story. It's just that it's also such an easy target. But I don't think the nonsensicalness of the premise is a flaw, or even necessarily nonsensical. I think it does a great job of demonstrating his confusing, complicated relationship with his fortune--and it's a ton of fun to boot.

One thing I always like is those uncommon occasions when the balance of power between our heroes is in Donald's favor. He is in charge of this goofiness, he has a ton of great facial expressions, and his ideas for spending money are priceless.

Kind of an odd restaurant, because it's super-fancy, sure, but also, the decor makes it look like a Denny's or something. We will pass over the title in silence, except to say that we really don't think Barks was TRYING for a racial slur here.

One fun thing going through this whole story is Scrooge instinctively trying to economize on everything. His ego and id at war with one another. You might ask, why did he even come along? Seems like this would be quite painful for him. Is it like a wake? It might be sad but he has no choice? Difficult to say.

I love Donald's spendthriftery really paying off here, but I also want to point out that a fancy restaurant like this is not going to nickel-and-dime you for cherries--the entire experience is going to be very pricey, but within that, little extras are going to be free.

Or, I mean, maybe not! I'm not really convinced that this IS a super-fancy restaurant if they can seat dozens of customers without reservations right away.

Seeing Donald spending money hand over fist is great, and while I do have to admit that there's a certain wish-fulfillment aspect to this, it seems broader than that. It's not like I have any deep-seated wish to see Woodchucks eating fancy chickadees, but the unrestrainedness! Has anyone here read Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization? The idea is that there are these warring impulses, the pleasure principle and the reality principle. The former is the idea that people want to be constantly seeking pleasure (yes, obviously, this is mostly referring to sex, but we can apply it more broadly), where as the latter says, no. These impulses have to carefully regulated; otherwise, society can't function. So what we have here is unrestrained pleasure principle. And I like it!

There are just so many great little moments in this story, and it's great how psyched Donald is about them.

And I am SO into this unexpected moment of Donald and Scrooge being sympatico. Why not? Just one fun thing after another!

No real point here. I just like the way Donald thinks. We've GOTTA!

I also like the falling action here, even Donald a bit worn down, and in a kind of exhausted way asking if they at least have gold leaf. Not sure this diner will, but it's worth a try. I enjoy Scrooge's grin in that bottom left panel, but it sorta looks like there's something weird going on with his beak there. A printing error? Well, the coloring here makes it hard to tell, but he just has his tongue out, is all that's happening.

And it ends in rather predictable fashion. A bit of a bummer, but what can you do? Of course, you can see why Barks would want to end it this way, with the money all coming back (like in "A Financial Fable," more or less), but let's be real: he would've accrued a bunch of money in this time anyway, regardless of whatever they all did. This was not a sustainable plan, and there was no way it was ever going to work out, so just buy a fuckin' cane factory and be done with it. Jeez. Also, Donald did a great job here, even it the plan ultimately didn't work out, so he should sue you if you try to worm your way out of paying him.