The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American DreamAmerica's leaders say the economy is strong and getting stronger. But the safety net that once protected us is fast unraveling. With retirement plans in growing jeopardy while health coverage erodes, more and more economic risk is shifting from government and business onto the fragile shoulders of the American family. In The Great Risk Shift, Jacob S. Hacker lays bare this unsettling new economic climate, showing how it has come about, what it is doing to our families, and how we can fight back. Behind this shift, he contends, is the Personal Responsibility Crusade, eagerly embraced by corporate leaders and Republican politicians who speak of a nirvana of economic empowerment, an "ownership society" in which Americans are free to choose. But as Hacker reveals, the result has been quite different: a harsh new world of economic insecurity, in which far too many Americans are free to lose. The book documents how two great pillars of economic security--the family and the workplace--guarantee far less financial stability than they once did. The final leg of economic support--the public and private benefits that workers and families get when economic disaster strikes--has dangerously eroded as political leaders and corporations increasingly cut back protections of our health care, our income security, and our retirement pensions. Blending powerful human stories, big-picture analysis, and compelling ideas for reform, this remarkable volume will hit a nerve, serving as a rallying point in the vital struggle for economic security in an increasingly uncertain world. |
Contents
1 | |
11 | |
2 Risking It All | 35 |
3 Risky Jobs | 61 |
4 Risky Families | 87 |
5 Risky Retirement | 109 |
6 Risky Health Care | 137 |
Securing the Future | 165 |
Acknowledgments | 195 |
Notes | 199 |
Index | 227 |
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Common terms and phrases
adverse selection Ameri American families Amos Tversky available online average bankruptcy basic benefits Cato Institute companies conservative corporate costs coverage Daniel Kahneman debt defined-benefit pensions defined-contribution divorce earnings economic risk economic security economists employers Enron face family income family’s federal growing guaranteed health insurance health plans Health Savings Accounts HSAs increased increasingly individual insecurity instability investment Job Loss kids labor less living long-term losing loss aversion managed Medicaid Medical Savings Accounts Medicare Medicare’s ment millions moral hazard nation nomic ownership society parents part-time pension plans percent Personal Responsibility Crusade political poverty premiums private accounts problem protection Republican retirement rising Risk Shift risk-pooling risky sector Security Act share simple social insurance Social Security spending statistics tax breaks tion today’s unemployed unemployment University Press volatility Washington Welfare What’s women workers workforce workplace York
Popular passages
Page 47 - ... first. It was economics. In the 1960s Kenneth Arrow (who would win the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1972) authored a pioneering analysis of the role of insurance in medical care, in which he argued that insurance was a rational and positive response to the inherent uncertainties of the medical field.32 Arrow, a rigorous, wide-ranging scholar who was also known for his personal generosity and for refusing to engage in ideological squabbling, saw the message of his work as supporting government...
Page 211 - Employment Arrangements, February 2005," July 27, 2005, available online at www.bls.gov/news.release/conemp.nrO.htm. 41. Chris Tilly, "Reasons for the Continuing Growth of Part-Time Employment," Monthly Labor Review 3 (March 1991): 10-18, available online atwww.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1991/03/art2full.pdf. 42. Michael K. Lettau, "Compensation in Part-Time Jobs versus FullTime Jobs: What if the Job is the Same?" Bureau of Labor Statistics Working Paper 260, December 1994, available online at www.bls.gov/...
Page 52 - In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.
Page 43 - We must face the fact that in this country we have a rich man's security and a poor man's security and that the Government owes equal obligations to both. National security is not a half and half manner: it is all or none.
Page 38 - Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose." The Personal Responsibility crusade offers a new twist: "Insurance is just another word for nothing left to lose." And to leaders of the Crusade, the solution is as straightforward as the problem: Insurance should be limited; individuals should bear the full weight of both responsibility and risk — all to promote wise consumer choices and enhanced self-reliance. As one leading Senate advocate of Health Savings Accounts explains, "I believe...
Page 204 - ... Why American Poverty Affects Us All (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 94. 45. Lee Rainwater and Timothy M. Smeeding, Poor Kids in a Rich Country: America's Children in Comparative Perspective (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2003), 52, 58. 46. Rank, One Nation, Underprivileged, 94. 47. Daniel Sandoval, Thomas A. Hirschl, and Mark R. Rank, "The Increase of Poverty Risk and Income Insecurity in the US Since the 1970's" (paper presented at the American Sociological Association Annual...
Page 221 - Employee Benefit Research Institute, "Early Experience With HighDeductible and Consumer-Driven Health Plans: Findings From the EBRI/Commonwealth Fund Consumerism in Health Care Survey,
Page 39 - For the first time in six decades, the Social Security battle is one we can win — and in doing so, we can help transform the political and philosophical landscape of the country.