Synopsis - The Great Risk Shift - ISBN 0-19-517950-1
The currently favored response to rising
insecurity is to throw more tax breaks and individual accounts at
Americans to encourage them to save and invest on their own. This may
help the privileged, but it won't provide strong guarantees of economic
security to ordinary Americans, who are just barely staying afloat. Nor
will it stop the huge shift of risk onto these hardworking families as
jobs, health care, and retirement all become less secure. Quite the
opposite: "The Ownership Society" is akin to throwing a lead weight to
a drowning man, on the assumption that now he will really have an
incentive to swim.
We need solutions that make Americans less at risk, not more.
And to achieve these solutions, we need to do three things: Get Mad,
Get Wise, and Get Even.
Get Mad. The Great Risk Shift isn't a natural
occurrence, a financial hurricane beyond human control. There are
powerful forces propelling it, yes, but our leaders could have
responded to those forces by building up the floodgates that protect us
from the rising tide of economic risk. Instead, in the name of personal
responsibility, many of them are busy tearing the floodwalls down. When
it comes to economic insecurity, fatalism is fatal. We can halt the
Great Risk Shift, but only if we start fighting back now.
Get Wise. The personal responsibility mantra is right
about one thing: We stand on the front lines of economic insecurity.
Too often, Americans don't realize how at risk they and their families
are. Ultimately, there is no way that our finances can be made secure
if we don't wise up to the reality of growing risk. But there is also
no way that we can achieve security completely on our own. There should
be tools to build and patch our own safety nets, including improved
private insurance and better public information. This means, for
example, new indicators that help people know exactly how risky it is
to buy a particular home and new resources that allow people to hedge
against that risk when they get a mortgage. It means new indicators
that help people know how risky it is to go into a particular line of
work and new resources that allow people to borrow to train or retrain
for a job-without the fear that if the training is for naught. they
will be forced into bankruptcy. And it means savings accounts that are
universally available and generous even for people of modest means. It
means, in short, that everyday Americans should have the same tools at
their disposal in hedging against risk as high-flying investors do.
Get Even. American politics and policy is badly tilted
against working families. We have limited liability for corporations,
but increasingly we have full liability for American families. This
must change, and the change should begin with health care, the
epicenter of economic insecurity for millions of hardworking Americans.
Health reform doesn't have to be complicated, just effective. Let every
employer and worker have a choice: Buy insurance through the private
sector, or buy it through Medicare. Americans should also have access
to an all-purpose catastrophic insurance policy to protect themselves
and their families against huge drops in income or budget-breaking
expenses. These and other innovative reforms outlined in The Great Risk
Shift are designed to catch people when they plummet from the ladder of
economic advancement. But they're not just about security, but also
about opportunity. By providing workers and their families with the
financial security they need to look with hope and optimism toward the
future, they will help millions of now-anxious Americans reach for and
achieve the American Dream.
Biography
Jacob S. Hacker is Professor of Political Science
at Yale University and Fellow at the New America Foundation. He is
author of The Divided Welfare State and The Road to Nowhere, and most
recently, co-author of Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the
Erosion of American Democracy. A frequent commentator on NPR, PBS, and
CNN, Hacker has written for The New Republic, The Nation, The New York
Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and other
publications.
Condition: Used / Excellent Condition ( Hardback Book )
