“It’s really hard to sort out this crazy financial meltdown. Let’s face it: we’re all responsible.” Heard that much?  Well, get used to it because that’s the mainstream media mantra and it’s picking up steam across the land. 

Witness New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who recently wrote: “...it wasn’t only bankers. This financial meltdown involved a broad national breakdown in personal responsibility….” Friedman goes on to cite an example of a strawberry picker earning $14,000 a year who got a no-down mortgage for a $720,000 house. Imagine that: field workers in splendid houses! Talk about irresponsible!

Back up a minute. It would be irresponsible for me not to mention a couple of contextual details. That throughout the Bush years the American workforce was more and more productive. And by 2004 huge profits started to stack up. Over the next three years profit making in the US was higher than at any point in the country’s history. Let me say that this way: some people got filthy rich during the Bush years.  

By 2006, income to the top 1% of  American households reached its highest level since 1928. But the average American’s wages simply did not keep up, not even close—their earnings were stagnant even as their productivity increased— a fact not overlooked by Barack Obama during his winning campaign for president.   

Making money from another’s productivity was just part of the extraordinary get rich scheme at work in Bush’s America. Some of the massive wealth the elites stacked up can be attributed to good, old fashioned speculation. Trillions and trillions of dollars in speculation. Any irresponsibility there?

And it would be irresponsible for me not to add that had the strawberry picker been paid fairly all along -- $14,000 a year!!?? -- he might well have been able to afford a house. And were it not for the mortgage banker's practice of gouging home buyers of modest-to-few means with high interest rates, the strawberry picker could count on remaining in that house, building equity in it, raising his family, etc. You’ve heard that fairytale. But that was not the priority. Pure and simple. The priority was delivering as much money as possible to the richest households.

So here we are: Auto workers making $70,000 a year have been overpaid, strawberry pickers got houses they should know are never to be theirs, and you and I…figure it out.  During the BAD times and GOOD, the priority assigned you doesn’t change. 

And did I mention that Thomas Friedman and his wife live in a multimillion dollar mansion in Maryland? Responsibility pays.