The Threepenny Opera has a happy ending. The small-time criminal Macheath is freed from prison and given a lordship and a huge fortune. A thief living at the margins has been rewarded with the great riches ordinarily reserved for big-time plunderers. The lessons of this parable are that crime (and corruption) pays – and that you cannot eliminate small-time thievery or petty corruption. Yet the final song, “The Mounted Messenger,” warns that this is just a story and in the real world, petty thieves neither become rich nor respectable. Macheath was supposed to be executed, as demanded by his antagonist (and father-in-law) Jonathan Peachum. While Peachum ultimately pleads (successfully) for a pardon for the prisoner for an uplifting end to the drama, he cautions: “Happy endings only really happen on stage, and people are saved from poverty only rarely.” The rich stay rich, the poor stay poor and messengers from the throne do not reward the latter with unexpected fortunes, much less social status.