Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Annie Lowrey discusses how essential workers have been consistently undervalued due to political choices. And Patty Coates, Jan Simpson and Pablo Godoy discuss the need to ensure legal protections for workers' rights in the wake of Foodora fleeing the country after its attempt to find a loophole in employment law failed.

- Meanwhile, Vanessa Brcic argues that we have a much-needed opportunity to better apply principles of equity and public health to the design of our social supports. Rutger Bregman implores us to take advantage of the opening to change the world for the better. And Laura Spinney interviews Thomas Piketty about the prospect that the response to COVID-19 will result in fairer societies.

- Gregory Beatty notes that social programs and safety regulations have been under neoliberal attack for decades. And Nam Kiwanuka highlights the dishonesty and inhumanity underlying the right-wing assumption that people receiving needed income support must be gaming the system.

- Susan Delacourt offers a reminder that Stephen Harper's last call for austerity and corporatism in the wake of a global crisis produced little benefit for anybody but the wealthy and well-connected. And Bruce Arthur notes that while Harper tries to deliver right-wing messages to an American audience, Canada faces the need to protect itself from the U.S.' reckless choice to let the coronavirus run wild in the name of Trump and profits.

- Finally, Matt Taibbi writes that the COVID-19 corporate bailout has once again offered the wealthiest Americans the opportunity to avoid any losses from their financial gambling. And Sharon Riley reports on Alberta's use of the pandemic to let oil companies off the hook for the environmental damage done by abandoned wells, while Lawrie McFarlane notes that Alberta is facing the consequences of its own disdain for the rest of Canada.