Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Chantal Panozzo discusses the lack of work-life balance which serves as the default in the U.S. - and notes how preposterous precarious work looks once a person has experienced an alternative:

Before I moved to Switzerland for almost a decade, American Reality was all I knew. I was living in a two-bedroom apartment making $30,000 a year in a job where I worked almost seven days a week with no overtime pay and received 10 days of paid time off a year.

In other words, for the hours worked, I was making minimum wage, if that. The glamour of this job was supposed to make up for the hours, but in reality, working every weekend is a ticket to burnout — not success.

My husband and I were so accustomed to American Reality that when he was offered an opportunity to work in Switzerland, we both thought about travel and adventure — not about improving our quality of life. It hadn't occurred to us that we could improve our quality of life simply by moving.

But without realizing it, or even asking for it, a better life quality came to us. And this is why, now that I'm back, I'm angry that my own country isn't providing more for its people.

- Travis Lupick highlights why we should encourage the development of supportive housing rather than assuming there's anything to be gained by trying to push it away.

- Daniel Tencer reports on how the TPP would have prevented Crown entities including the CBC from operating in the public interest rather than as a commercial body - meaning we may have dodged a bullet in the breakdown of last week's talks. And Alice Olstein points out how trade agreements and control by financial elites have led Puerto Rico to fiscal disaster.

- Jacqueline Nelson writes about the confusing and ineffective patchwork of funding for prescription drugs in Canada.

- Finally, ThinkPol reports that the Cons have pushed any public access to documents evaluating the constitutionality of their two-tiered citizenship and terror legislation until after election day.