>I'm curious. Say there is an inner city area with lots of disaffected unemployed youth and a bit of a crime problem. Say that the community leaders come to the authorities and say that if there were only a Youth Center it would be possible to get youngsters off the street, give their idle hands something to do, rechannel energies productively etc etc. Say that the authorities have their doubts, but decide to allow the benefit of the doubt and establish a Youth Center. And say that within 6 months the so-called 'Youth Center" is a hangout for druggies using it as a distribution center and a good place to strip cars.
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>How much blame would you attribute to the criminals? How much to the leaders who insisted that the Youth Center is a good idea and that they could control it? And how much to the authorities who allowed themselves to be convinced?
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>Seems to me that some people would blame Government for all of it, apparently holding the leaders and criminals blameless because the problem couldn't have occurred if the authorities hadn't created the Center.

Whose to blame :
Start with the youth who were too pathetic to overcome their circumstances
Continue with the parents who've raised the crappy youth.
Affix some to the foolish "community leaders" who think asinine ideas like giving "idle hands" a place to go is a solution
Apply some to the jackass "authorities" who've given in to proven non-solutions in order to "do something"

All that being said, affixing the blame doesn't accomplish anything. We must fix the cause.

The root cause is the youth who have free time and "idle hands" to become awful people and the parents who either couldn't be bothered or simply don't care enough to raise their kids with a sense of right and wrong and the root of that is a welfare society that says no one is ever allowed to fail because that's not "fair". Why do they have "idle hands"? Why aren't they working? Or in school? Or in the military? Or doing something rather than waiting for someone to do something for them? Kindly don't insult my intelligence with drivel about lack of jobs. It is not someone else's responsibility to give you a job, it is your responsibility to earn one or create one for yourself. In every city in the country one merely needs to look in the local paper for pages of help wanted ads. If working one job doesn't earn you enough money for how you want to live then get 2. Better yet, work 2 jobs while you go to school to become more successful in the future.

Your example illustrates the issue we're currently having regarding the financial mess. People are pointing fingers of blame at investment banks, credit-default swap sellers, hedge funds, Bush, Bernake, Frank, Dodd, Greenspan, defaulting homeowners, mortgage lenders, and so on. The solutions being offered, like the "community center" are band-aids applied to the symptoms. I have heard no one in a position of authority, from Congress to the president talk even once about correcting the root cause...namely repealing the regulatory and legal changes which directly led to the current mess playing out. Without those modifications, none of the rest follows. Without the welfare state, crappy parents and awful youth, none of the rest follows.