Portable Benefits Get Big Nod In Obama’s Final SOTU
Watching last night’s State of the Union was an emotional affair. The last SOTU of the Obama presidency, it was a particularly meaningful one; the empty chair left for victims of gun violence, the gravity of America’s many complicated issues, and the reality that the lectern would, in just a year, have a different face behind it weighed heavily on the room and on the millions of people watching at home. President Obama’s remarks served both to bolster the spirits of the public and to gently wag a finger at his colleagues, many of whom made up some of the least productive Congresses of the modern era. He took jabs at climate change deniers, hate-mongers, and Ted Cruz (because who else has been hot to carpet bomb civilians in the last year?), while encouraging Americans to think of themselves as creative, innovative, and hard-working people. He, like Jay Inslee just a few hours before him , tipped his hat to the myriad jobs being created by science, technology, research, and space exploration endeavors. He said, out loud, that we need to raise the minimum wage. All of that was great. But the point at which I nearly spat my tea at the C-SPAN broadcast was when I heard him mention what sounded to me an awful lot like an idea put forth by our very own Nick Hanauer and David Rolf in the Summer 2015 Democracy Journal. Here’s what they said: “Gone is the era of the lifetime career, let alone the lifelong job and the economic security that came with it, having been replaced by a new economy intent on recasting full-time employees into contractors, vendors, and temporary workers.” and also “Economic security is what frees us from the fear that one job loss, one illness—one economic downturn amidst a business cycle guaranteed to produce economic downturns—could cost us our home, our car, our family, and our
+ Read More
