Towards a Security and Opportunity Society

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* Essay: The New Economic Insecurity — And What Can Be Done About It. Jacob S. Hacker. New America Foundation,

URL = http://www.newamerica.net/files/nafmigration/The_New_Economic_Insecurity_And_What_Can_Be_Done_About_It.pdf

Summary

Over the past generation, the economic risks American families face have increased substantially. Yet public programs have largely failed to adapt to these new and newly intensified risks, and private workplace benefits have eroded. As a result, Americans increasingly and themselves on an economic tightrope, without an adequate safety net if, as is ever more likely, they lose their footing. This tightrope both creates anxiety about the future and causes hardship when families do lose their balance. But importantly, it also threatens opportunity by making it more difficult for families to feel sufficiently secure to look confidently toward the future and make the risky investments in skills, education, and assets necessary to prosper in a highly dynamic and uncertain economy. In response to these worrisome trends, I call for a “security and opportunity society” a vision that is starkly opposed to the ideal of an “ownership society” outlined by leading conservative critics of the welfare state. The premise of the conservative ownership society is that we can be free to pursue the opportunities in our lives only if we do not share risks with others if, for example, we have an individual Social Security account from which we alone benefit in retirement, or a personal Health Savings Account that allows us to finance routine health expenses solely on our own. A security and opportunity society, by contrast, is based on a very different premise: that we are most capable of fully participating in our economy and our society, and most capable of taking risks and looking toward our future when we have a basic foundation of financial security. In this view, economic security is not at odds with economic opportunity; it is its cornerstone. Restoring a measure of economic security in the United States today is the key to transforming the nation’s great wealth and productivity into an engine for broad-based prosperity and opportunity in a more uncertain economic world. The argument proceeds in three parts. First, I briefly review the evidence that Americans are at increased economic risk, drawing on my recent book, The Great Risk Shift. Second, I outline a set of principles for restoring economic security in the United States principles that, I argue, demand bold and immediate action. Finally, I develop an agenda for change that will help restore job security, retirement security, health security, and income security in the United States, so that all Americans have the financial foundation they need to invest in their futures with optimism and confidence.