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Race and Poverty and the House Ownership Gap: An Interview with Alanna McCargo
We had the pleasure of hosting Alanna McCargo, VP of Housing and Finance Policy at the Urban Institute to help us answer a listener question about wealth inequality, and Xander came across an incredible article with an important question: how does real estate impact the ongoing wealth gap between white Americans and Americans of color? And what drives the ongoing housing gap?
The answer is…. pretty darn complicated. Thanks as always to the Urban Institute for the really enlightening conversation and great questions. Alanna is awesome; this is definitely worth a listen!
Recent Revelation: Healthcare Monopsony Buying Power
Many single-payer (nationally funded) healthcare systems pay a lot less for drugs, services, and equipment than US insurers do. They have a monopsony and therefore a lot of buying power–makes sense, right? Erik recently has a revelation that calls this logic into question… though without any clear answers.
After Las Vegas: Moving Towards Solutions
After the Las Vegas tragedy, we might just scream at each other, as we do every time there is a mass shooting.
Or, we could do something more productive. If you’re part of the latter camp, read on.
Fact Check: The Universal Health Care Tax Cut
Recently I saw a Facebook post that was starting to seriously make the rounds among my more politically inclined friends. It made the case that if the US were to switch over to a Single Payer system, it could pay for the entire thing with its current budget and also provide a $200B annual tax cut. Also nobody would pay for private health insurance. Sounds pretty great.
Unfortunately it has zero citations so I decided to do the research. Is it anywhere close to accurate or totally full of it?
Data in Policy Debate: The Shrinking Middle Class
In our running series on the crazy world of interpreting data in policy debate, we dissect the latest Pew report on the middle class, with possibly-surprising results.
Let’s Consider Uber’s Emergency Price Capping Policy
Uber (the ride-sharing service) got in hot water in 2014 during the Sydney hostage crisis and shooting. Uber’s automated pricing algorithm increased prices for Ubers to 4x the normal fare in response to demand. This led to a massive media and social media backlash, calling Uber a “shameful disgrace” for profiting during this crisis.
Uber has responded to this by capping its prices at 2.9x during a declared emergency…