nathannewman.org

The headline is supposed to evoke a “what the hell are you talking about?” reaction.  Most of us have heard or read about the hellish experience of non-union workers toiling away in Amazon’s warehouse fulfillment centers around the country.   The pay sucks, even if marginally better than most retail workers outside Costco, and the […]

Most people have heard that lower-income individuals and families get subsidies to pay for premiums. But, in the media and online, a lot of folks figure it’s the out-of-pocket costs (deductibles, co-pays etc.) that will still leave health care unaffordable for a lot of those families. Rarely discussed in the media are the so-called “cost […]

This Tuesday is the Democratic primary for mayor in New York City.   And the frontrunner to win the primary is Bill De Blasio, who has made an unapologetic appeal to voters that addressing inequality in the City will be his priority if mayor. That arguably the most progressive major candidate is leading the race shouldn’t […]

In discussing Les Miserables, most critics have focused on the spectacle (grand), on the acting (quite outstanding) or the use of real-time singing (quite effective), but far less has been written about Victor Hugo’s enduring radical politics being brought to the big screen. This is a case of a movie budget making poverty look nasty […]

A new study by the Census Bureau recalculates poverty based on a “supplemental poverty measure” that takes into account transfer payments by the government and various expenses that the traditional poverty rate misses.  The headline number is that with this supplemental measure, poverty is higher than the oficial rate but the more interesting data is on […]

The America of nostalgic visions of clean-cut suburban lawns, self-sufficient breadwinners, and homogenous communities heard its death rattle last Tuesday.    To be fair, we’ve been hearing the hoofbeats of the Grim Reaper coming for the Silent Majority since Al Gore received the majority of the votes in the 2000 election.  An extraordinary Supreme Court […]