A Democratic Agenda

As The New York Times reported yesterday, Jacob Hacker presented his view that middle-class families face “a harsh new world of economic insecurity” to former Democratic Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards last week. Edwards, who did pretty well in the 2004 race by talking about “two Americas,” one for the rich and one for the poor, convened a meeting of scholars and antipoverty experts at his Center on Poverty, Work and Oppotunity last week and asked Hacker down from Yale to discuss his views on “The Great Risk Shift.”

As the Times reported, Hacker discussed how “same economic trends that hurt the poor” increasingly hurt the middle-class and “described a decline in shared safety nets, like health insurance, that leave more families confronting medical crises or job losses without assistance.” Hacker’s newest book, The Great Risk Shift, due this fall just in time for the mid-term elections and for the launch of the 2008 race, will layout how the move towards individual responsibility translates into greater individual risk as well.