Remember Who Sent You

She says that "the distribution of [job] displacement has shifted towards the highly educated: workers holding a college degree saw nearly a 50 percent increase in their displacement rates between the early 1980s recession and the most recent one in 2001."

Americans are also suffering from much larger fluctuations in their incomes than in the past. In the 1970s, she says, "a typical family might have seen its income vary from a high of $60,000 to a low of $30,000 over the decade." In the most recent decade, the same family might see its income drop to as low as $15,000. Is it any wonder so many working Americans are mad?

Yellen draws on the essential policy book of the year, Jacob S. Hacker's "The Great Risk Shift." Again, if Democrats get tired of recrimination over an election they won -- imagine if they had lost! -- they might spend time with Hacker, who shows how more and more risk is being offloaded from government and private corporations onto individuals. He makes a powerful case for remodeling our social insurance systems to provide genuine economic security for all working Americans.

Hacker makes the paradoxical and insightful point that "we are most capable of fully participating in our economy and our society, most capable of taking risks and looking toward our future, when we have a basic foundation of financial security." It's common sense: Secure people are more likely to be risk-takers.

The task of creating an economy that is more just and more dynamic will not be completed within the life of the new Congress. It will take a decade of reform, experimentation and innovation. Now that House Democrats have settled on a majority leader, you can only hope they move away from self-involvement and start thinking about the people who sent them to Washington.

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