Assorted content to end your week.
- Mary Ward and Lucy Carroll report on New South Wales' warning of the potential for COVID-19 reinfection as the newer Omicron variants become dominant. Zoe Swank et al. find that people with long COVID may have viral reservoirs in their bodies for a year or more after first being diagnosed, while David Holdsworth et al. discover cognitive deterioration comparable to that expected from 10 years of aging after only six months of long COVID. And Jennifer Couzin-Frankel discusses the main theories as to the causes of long COVID symptoms.
- David Macdonald writes that any recovery from the 2020 recession is unprecedented in its combination of massive increases in corporate profits and declines in compensation for workers. Matt Trinder discusses how real wages are falling off a cliff in the UK, while Russell Napier calls out central banks for putting a thumb on the scale to push even more money into the hands of capital rather than labour. And Aditya Chakrabortty writes that an important part of the pushback will involve identifying corporate vulnerability to public and union pressure, rather than relying on legislative action alone.
- Ed Burmilla writes that what should be the end of the neoliberal era has been delayed for want of an alternative. And the continued entrenchment of a failed economic system can largely be traced to Sandor Demetor's observations about political and regulatory capture, as the people with the power to act on the recognition of the dangers of serving corporations have financial incentives not to.
- Finally, Claire Parker highlights the devastating effect of air pollution on public health. Oliver Milman points out the staggeringly large number of lives at stake as the U.S. hems and haws on any climate action. And Stephanie Hogan notes that even Canada's housing stock is far from equipped to deal with the warming and extreme weather that's already locked in (to say nothing of what we're continuing to cause with prolonged fossil fuel use).
I notice that neither of the articles about wage decline, the David MacDonald one about corporate profits gaining at the expense of wages or the Trinder piece about UK wages dropping, mentions the composition of those wages. Over the years I've read plenty of pieces analyzing the shift in wages themselves towards higher inequality, as the top few percent take a bigger and bigger share of wages. CEOs aren't taking cuts in their real wages, and the upper echelons of management take their cue from the top. So I would say it's very likely both of these pieces understate their case--it's actually worse for wage earners closer to or below the median wage than these figures suggest.
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