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This is pretty far from anything related to the topic of the thread, but I occasionally fall into the "where's my bailout" line of thought. Not really sincerely, but simply because I feel like the government is creating incentives for bad or irresponsible behavior and penalties for people who, so far, have demonstrated they're more likely to pull their own weight.
AGDee, I think some of my differences with you on this point have to do with your having a fundamentally more positive view of human nature and human behavior. Most of the time, you seem to assume that people who want or need help honestly tried their best to meet their obligations but through limited fault of their own have now become unable to. That line of thought more supports the idea that it becomes the moral duty of others to try to help them, and the government's job to kind of provide guarantees of this help.
On the other hand I see some evidence that the current mess reflects a lot of behavior by people who approached things very selfishly and incautiously, who sought to get the most they could rather than what they could safely afford (or morally or ethically deserved, in the case of money managers who made a lot of money losing money for investors or CEOs who screwed their companies), government officials who were more than happy to personally profit from a failure to regulate and turned a blind eye when things were good, who all now turn to people who have been plugging away at steady jobs, living in modest houses, paying taxes, basically trying to carry their own weight, and ask for the second group to subsidize the bad outcomes because of the behavior of the people in the first group.
Oh, hell no.
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