Over at The Washington Monthly, Jacob Hacker is blogging about his new book, The Great Risk Shift. I'll be mixing it up with Mr. Hacker later in the week at TAP, but for now, check out his piece and think seriously about whether, as he believes, a war against economic insecurity is really a coherent or adequate message for the Democratic Party. So much as the expansion of risk is a bad and worrying thing, and so much as Hacker is serving an important purpose by pulling together the data and suggesting solutions, calming insecurity without changing the fundamental weakness of the working class's bargaining position strikes me as, at best, an attempt at harm reduction, not an actual improvement. Moreover, government policies are wonderful and all, but without more power on the ground (through unions, say) or a government more committed to intervening on behalf of working class interests, how will better policies now sustain themselves two, three, or four Republican administrations into the future?
Further reading: I talked a bit about Hacker's idea for Universal Insurance here. Worth checking out if you're interested in what his prescriptive agenda looks like.
