Tamara Draut

Who’s Responsible?

My book, Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30-Somethings Can't Get Ahead, just hit the shelves last week, and after dozens of radio and print interviews, I now am even more convinced that until progressives can offer an alternative framework to "personal responsibility" we'll fail to capture the public will. It's not that people don't understand that there are big structural issues that need to be addressed in America. When I talk about what's happening to wages, to housing costs, to the safety net, I get lots of head nodding and affirmations. But inevitably the question gets asked: isn't personal responsibility also an issue for young people who find themselves strapped?

The notion that the failure to succeed is rooted in individual pathology is deeply entrenched in the American psyche--and always has been. At the same time, the notion that individual success is only possible if there is a level playing field is also a deeply held American value. The difficulty lies in the reality that most Americans subscribe to both values systems and use both to understand the world around them. And these views compete with each other and often conflict with each. And when that happens, the result is ambivalence.

The trick--and it's a hard one-- is to incite the values of fairness and social responsibility without alienating or ignoring the role of personal responsibility. In the last three decades, personal responsibility has been the dominant explanation for understanding everything from the middle-class squeeze to the rise in debt.

But over the last couple years in talking about debt through my research at Demos, and now talking about my book, I can say that the message that the issue of declining economic security is about more than personal responsibility is resonating with people in way I couldn't imagine five years ago.

For example, now when I'm asked about the role of personal responsibility (and yes, that is always the words that are used) in understanding economic insecurity, this question more often than not comes at the end of the interview, not the beginning. And it's often prefaced as a devil's advocate question. That's progress. It used to be that personal responsibility would be front and center in a debate about why it's become harder to either work or educate one's way into the middle-class. While I still get irate emails about how young people are irresponsible and just need to stop buying $4 lattes and flat-screen televisions, I'm also getting a lot of head-nodding and verbal affirmations. The chink in the personal responsibility armor is cracking.

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Posted at 7:11 AM, Jan 26, 2006 in Progressive Agenda
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