Because Ghav is right, we're not talking about people who had a lot of options in the first place. To elaborate, for the most part we aren't dealing with highly educated and skilled workers with a plethora of diversified business interests in the area. This isn't a case of simply being retrained to do something else: There's not a whole lot "else" to do, so unless we want to fall back on the suggestion given to too many Katrina victims ("just move some place better!" ) that response just indicates a complete disconnect with what's actually going on there. A better comparison might be to Houston when the entire economy was sunk into oil and the bottom dropped out in the '80s, but Houston learned from that mistake and diversified before your time.

The fact we have someone in BP at which we can conveniently point a finger doesn't mitigate the hardship of millions who suddenly have their entire livelihood put on hold. Sure, they still have a place to live (until the rent's due again... ) and their kids still have schools, but the questions of how they're going to put food on the table are every bit as real as in Haiti. The differences are 1) no one's lining up to airlift them aid and 2) the US government actually has a legal obligation to assist its own CITIZENS in an emergency. It's not unreasonable at all to expect the US government to do at least as much for US citizens in US states as it does for people overseas, and they can just add the cost to the civil and criminal penalties against BP (because if I went out and poisoned half the Gulf I'd go to prison, but BP will just pay a fine. )