Getting kind of convoluted, but I'll give it another shot. I guess the question is whether we as a society want to abandon those who got caught up in the glass through no fault of their own and have no way of continuing the journey without some help, again through no fault of their own. It must also be considered that the group stuck by the side of the road is so large that those who can continue will in the long fun suffer economically themselves if the first group is simply abandoned.

I reject the assumption implicit in many of the posts (and explicit in some cases) that those who get caught in the glass are always at fault for their plight. Some no doubt are, but many are not. One example: my secretary's husband recently lost his job. He has a BA in biology and had worked in a local engineering firm in their environmental division for 20 years. He did well there and in fact, was made a partner about 10 years ago. He lost his job not because he performed poorly but because the firm's business was way down due to the economy. The whole division may be shut down. They had recently built a new house. I think he'll land on his feet and they"ll be ok, but it's hard to say. Property values around here have been pretty stable, but if we lived in an area like some where property values have taken a big dive in the last few years and they had built at the peak of the market, they could easily be upside down on the mortgage. These are not irresponsible, reckless people. There are many like them out there. They are part of the market base for other businesses. Allowing victims of the recession to simply fail could easily have a domino effect and make the recession worse. I think those who simply want the economy to "self correct" give short shrift to the human cost of doing so.