sincerely, i like Artie as character. If anything, his fault is to be too weak to his wife; if he accepted the tickets for the cruise and closed the restaurant, there would have was no need to burn it.

in the history of the Mafia many have benefited from having a mobster as friend, as Skinny D'Amato that managing the club 500 in atlantic city.
For the $ 50.000 Artie if he really wanted to scare someone to get back the money,would have taken at least a baseball bat or brass knuckles without considering that Tony has deleted his loan.

The trouble of Artie is that who what is Tony and he is envious, but at the same time does nothing to try to ''improve his situation'', it's too good, because to be a criminal you have to be a fucking son of a bitch.