Riddle me this: How does one make Scrooge likable? Where does one take the story if one does? 

The question of a main character's likability seems to come up a lot these days, and I often wonder when I hear it how much of a story a person has actually read.

I have a main character who loses his fortune because he deserves to. He is introduced as a guy who clearly thinks he's suave, cool, in command, but he is quickly deconstructed. There are hints as to who and what he was. The initials cut from lizard skin on his boots, the spendthrift ways, and the fact that he's totally feckless without spending power. He's clearly not meant to be likable. But he has a sense of humor and a way with words, with which he hopes to get by. When you start with a character like that, you know that it's going to take considerable humiliation to make him likable and that is what he is going to get. 

So if I were to make the guy likable, I would have to scrap the entire story, and what would be the point? 

It's a story in which our elites take a drubbing because they ought to.