Muppet Christmas Carol criticisms: Michael Caine and the fantasy of Christmas

I really enjoy A Muppet Christmas Carol. I remember the songs like the back of my hand. The production designs are great compared to the more recent Muppet films that are basically just the Dark Knight set, which consists of exterior locations. (I didn't even notice that Michael Caine was in both when I wrote that observation!)
This growing up was my favorite Muppet media, besides Muppet Babies and the Muppet Show.
I was lucky enough to have bought it on VHS, which is still intact with the song "When Love is Gone." I bought the VHS at my local Pathmark, which is still around, with my brother or I sitting in the baby seat of the cart.

 

Anyways, there's two main problems with this film.
Michael, Caine.
He plays the character of Scrooge a bit too dark for a kid like me to enjoy it, noticeably when stating that he would not mind decreasing the surplus population when Beaker's friend states that people would rather die than live in the poor houses.
It also doesn't help that according to Wikipedia that Caine is a conservative having discussed topics such as

• his disdain for increasing taxes on the rich (LIKE HIMSELF)
• bringing young people back to conscription and public service
• and discussing other people's pay such as benefits when being helped out by the government

Perhaps, when Dickens wrote the film, he imagined it as a bit of a parody of Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde, where people magically turn into happy people during Christmas, an ultimately misunderstood aspect in the film, in amidst the themes of being rich, unhappy and/or selfish.