Last fall, Peter G. Gosselin, who covers the economy for the Los Angeles Times, wrote three articles examining “an American paradox”: Why do so many families report less financial security than ever, even as many benchmarks indicate a nation grown more prosperous?
The answer, according to Gosselin, was a 25-year-long transition that shifted economic risk from business and government and dumped it into the laps of workers and their families.
Starting in the late 1970s, the nation’s leaders sought to break a corrosive cycle of rising inflation and stagnating output by remaking the U.S. economy in the image of its frontier predecessor — deregulating industries, shrinking social programs and promoting a free-market ideal in which everyone must forge his or her own path, free to rise or fall on merit or luck. On the whole, their effort to transform the economy has succeeded.
But the economy’s makeover has come at a large and largely unnoticed price: a measurable increase in the risks that Americans must bear as they provide for their families, pay for their houses, save for their retirements and grab for the good life.
The loss of these social and economic safety nets has made many Americans far more vulnerable to swings in the economy, Gosselin wrote. A single setback — the loss of a job, or an injury — can set off a downward spiral from which there is no recovery.
Gosselin, who works in the Times’ Washington bureau, spent a year gathering data and speaking with economists, statisticians, benefits experts, and workers and their families who unexpectedly had the financial rug pulled out from under them. Their stories provided a starkly different picture of an “ownership society” than the portrait drawn by President Bush.
By Gosselin’s own account, despite the Los Angeles Times‘ daily circulation of over one million, the stories generated almost no response for months. That is, until he recently sent out a link to them to a handful of liberal bloggers, including Kevin Drum, who writes the widely read “Political Animal” blog on WashingtonMonthly.com. Drum’s post, in turn, generated several other blog mentions, including one from J. Bradford DeLong.
Coincidentally, today’s Wall Street Journal carries a story (subscription required) by Jackie Calmes exploring the same topic:
Critics say Mr. Bush’s vision is blind to economic risks facing Americans, especially lower-income workers. William Gale, a Brookings Institution economist, dismisses the president’s agenda as “the Dismantling-the-Safety-Net Society.” Some applaud his rhetoric, but say the president’s policies — heavy on tax breaks — don’t broaden ownership, but favor the well-off. The poorest workers, exempt from income taxes, can’t take advantage of any tax breaks for savings. Eugene Steuerle, a Reagan-era Treasury official now at the Urban Institute, titled a recent analysis, “An Ownership Society, Or A Society For Those Who Already Own?”
Drum wants Gosselin’s stories nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, but it’s a little late for that. (Pulitzer nominations for 2004 have long since been submitted, and in fact Pulitzer jurors are busy this week poring over entries.) For his part, Gosselin is caught off-guard by the fact that his series has caught fire so long after it appeared in print to little effect.
“[T]he idea seems to be racing from cutting edge to conventional wisdom with no intervening steps,” says the bewildered author. Also from largely ignored to hot item of the day.
Welcome to the Web, Peter. It can make you and it can break you.
–Susan Q. Stranahan
Susan Q. Stranahan wrote for CJR.