Martha L. Minow, Seeing, Bearing, and Sharing Risk: Social Policy Challenges for Our Time, in Shared Responsibility, Shared Risk: Government, Markets and Social Policy in the Twenty-First Century 253 (Jacob S. Hacker & Ann O’Leary eds., Oxford Univ. Press 2012).
Abstract: This chapter focuses on the social shift of economic risk to individuals and the need to overcome the barriers—psychological, cognitive, analytic, and ideological—to understanding the risk allocation. It begins with a historical overview of risks to human health, welfare, and well-being before explaining why it is difficult to see risk and its shift from government and businesses to individuals and families. It then looks at policy proposals to address these shifts, from income support to consumer credit reforms. The chapter concludes by arguing that democratic action toward addressing social policy challenges posed by these shifts is not possible in the absence of a greater sense of shared risks and shared responsibility.