Lousy Job; Good Life?

In the News   Presented by Prairie Title  

September 29, 2016

         

Our Social Compact in the New Economic Reality

By Frank Pellegrini, Prairie Title CEO   

Not so long ago, Americans chose careers (or happened into them), worked for a single company or a few companies over the course of a lifetime and felt a sense of security based on loyalty and the employer-based benefits they received. As we all know, that world has substantially gone the way of all flesh. What now?

The New York Times recently published an article by Michael Lind of New America, a non-partisan public policy think tank, that examines the social compact in modern America by posing the intriguing question, Can You Have a Good Life if You Don’t Have a Good Job? Lind’s answer: Yes.

Incomes are rising, and that helps, but less visible government benefits are also growing.

“Americans have been moving away from a system in which a good job with a generous employer was the key to having a good life to a new system in which even people with low-wage jobs can have access to the basic goods and services that define a decent life in a modern society,” Lind writes.

“The unelected policy experts who envision a future of multiple job types and a greater, if hidden, role for government in maintaining minimum incomes and providing health and retirement benefits are essentially right. From the 1970s to the present, then, mostly with bipartisan support (the glaring exception was Obamacare), American policy makers have responded to the decline of high-wage jobs and generous employer-based benefits by gradually expanding the role of the government in ensuring that Americans have adequate income and adequate benefits.”

As you listen to politicians leading up to November’s critical election, keep in mind that what government officials and those who aspire to replace them say about taxes and benefits while campaigning often contradicts what they do in office. It is up to us to try to tell the difference.

What’s your point of view? Keep the conversation going by calling or emailing me, or write a comment below.

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