THM - Crises of New Proportions

Crises of New Proportions

Crises of New Proportions

By the end of the 1990s, Americans from all sides of the political spectrum embraced policies that prioritized personal over communal responsibility, often blaming the most vulnerable for the struggles they faced. But the new millennium brought with it an era of crises, each chipping away at the presumptions underlying the prevailing wisdom of prior decades — that individuals were responsible for their own circumstances and, therefore, responsible to remedy them. 

These crises — from natural disasters, to external attacks, to a global pandemic — revealed not only how vulnerable most Americans were to financial insecurity, but also laid bare the structural inequalities that had weakened government programs so significantly that they could no longer adequately respond to the public’s needs. It became clear that policymakers must provide the lasting, structural changes needed to ensure that all people could feed themselves and their families.

Crises of New Proportions