The problem with that story is that it completely ignores what has actually happened since Glass-Steagal was repealed and the bubble burst. This isn't a simple case of ants and grasshoppers.

The current economic problem is a lack of aggregate demand. Too many people are cutting their spending to pay down their debts, which cuts economic activity, which puts more people out of work contributing to the lack of demand, dragging on the economy more, etc.

This means that many careful savers are finding themselves in the same boat as the profligate simply because the drop in demand cost them their jobs. We might judge individuals for not doing more to get new jobs, but market-wide, they can't all try harder and win the few remaining jobs. There simply do not exist enough jobs and some careful savers will unavoidably find themselves in the same boat as careless spenders.

Consider an allegorical ant who worked just as diligently as any other, rudely ejected from the ant hill on the onset of winter because the others decided the hill simply didn't need to be as big as it was the day before. This now-homeless ant would suddenly need to dig his own shelter, preventing them from gathering further food, costing them food to the elements and ultimately leaving them in much the same boat as any grasshopper who played the summer away and never stored a thing. Is it truly fair to judge such an ant no differently than a grasshopper?

Also, the cause of this economic problem is largely one of a supposedly-regulated and free-from-fraud industry enjoying regulatory-capture and left to run amok. Many careful savers are finding themselves in the same boat as the profligate, because they were defrauded by lenders and/or brokers. Lenders and brokers who are facing no punishment for their crimes. No return to effective regulation to prevent it from happening again. No dissolution to prevent "too big to fail" institutions from holding the economy hostage. [1]

Consider another allegorical ant who worked all spring summer and fall, as hard as any other, who wakes up one day to find that the food he'd saved has mysteriously disappeared, despite him taking no less precautions than any other, perhaps simply because his pile happened to be protected by an incompetent or possibly corrupt guard who let or helped others steal it away. And this ant now finds himself being ejected for not having anything to contribute to the hill. Should we also judge this ant no differently than a grasshopper?

You are certainly free to cast judgment and aspersions on these formerly-careful-savers for not having years and years worth of living expenses set aside. And/or for trusting that a protected-from-fraud industry actually was.

But it seems to me that they were punished for these things largely by chance -- not everyone who saved as much/little as they, or stored their money in the same ways, or researched as much/little on their investments, woke up to find themselves cast out by society and treated no differently than a degenerate check-to-check gambler.

And as such, your moral judgment strikes me as terribly myopic, hollow and false.

[1] It's debatable that these fraudsters were even directly rewarded from the bailouts on a far more massive scale than the profligate would be by a few years of modest inflation.

If you're concerned about sending a message that people who follow the rules are an idiot, your complaining about modest inflation rather than the bailouts is akin to complaining that a burglar tracked mud through your house while taking your valuables and your insurance policy leaves it up to you to pay for a carpet cleaning. Sure, that's also unfortunate, but it pales in comparison to having been burgled in the first place.