One of the big issues, if not the biggest issue, in this year’s presidential campaign is described in “The Great Risk Shift,” a book by Yale political science professor Jacob S. Hacker.

Hacker’s theme can be summarized in a single sentence: “Over the last generation … we have witnessed a massive transfer of economic risk from broad structures of insurance, including those sponsored by the corporate sector as well as by government, onto the fragile balance sheets of American families.”

As evidence, Hacker cites with clear opprobrium the growing volatility of family and individual incomes, escalating bankruptcies and foreclosure rates, the collapse of defined-benefit corporate pensions, and the swelling ranks of Americans without health insurance, which he collectively describes as the consequences of “America’s sweeping transformation away from an all-in-the-same boat philosophy of shared risk toward a go-it-alone vision of personal responsibility.”

Hacker attributes this transformation to the “Personal Responsibility Crusade” which has previously been labeled by others with less emphasis on its negative effects as “Reaganomics” or “The Opportunity Society.” LINK