Sunday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.


- Lauren Leatherby and David Gelles examine how people are spending money differently in the midst of a pandemic, while Lucia Mutikani reports on a massive drop in prices as declining consumer spending outweights any disruption to supply chains. And Armine Yalnizyan comments how COVID-19 represents a brand-new economic crisis centred on service work, a disproportionate impact on women, and a limited prospect of rapid growth once the shutdown is done.

- Claire Cain Miller wonders whether our increased recognition of both the importance of service workers and the precarity of their work situations will be a first step toward righting what's wrong with the U.S.' system of labour relations. And Dr. Dawg's contributor ForgotToBuyTinfoil comments on the potential to shape a new economic system which actually puts people before profits, while Robert Green notes that the willingness of governments everywhere to spend whatever it takes to respond to a fast-moving crisis signals that they're equally capable of investing in the slower (but no less severe) fight against a climate breakdown.

- Tom Wall reports on the connection between subpar housing on the spread of the coronavirus.
Andre Picard discusses the importance of ensuring that the horrors of private long-term care which have been exposed in the face of a pandemic aren't repeated. And David Yaffe-Bellany and Michael Corkery write about the simultaneous rise of hunger and destruction of massive amounts of food due to a lack of coordination between production and needs.

- Finally, Tae Hoon Kim argues that South Korea's success in beating COVID-19 can be traced to a greater degree of government accountability to its populace. And Sarah Kendzior points out how the coronavirus is only exposing the disease pervading the U.S.' political system.