Sunday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Melody Schrieber reports on new data showing that more Americans missed work due to illness in 2022 than in any other year on record even as the pandemic causing widespread sickness was declared to be over. And Madison Stoddard et al. study the difficulty individuals have trying to shield from an infectious disease when public policy is stacking the deck against them.

- Jon Schwarz examines the assumptions underlying the use of monetary policy to prevent workers from ever sharing in increased nominal values arising out of their work. And Jim Stanford discusses the need for workers to act collectively - including funding their own unions - in order to push back against having the value of their work extracted by employers.

 - Meanwhile, Umair Haque comments on the connection between advantanges being handed to can't-fail nepo babies and the lack of any meaningful opportunity for nearly anybody else.

- Nesrine Malik laments that it's now standard operating procedure in the UK (and elsewhere) for people to be expected to pay for their own basic services due to wanton cuts to the public sector. And John Clarke discusses how the Libs are using the specter of foreign ownership as an excuse for their own glaring failure to invest in accessible and affordable housing which will never be provided by a capitalist market.

- Finally, Konrad Yakabuski writes that the approval of Rogers' takeover of Shaw Communication represents both a prime example of the oligopoly in telecommunications across most of Canada, and a step toward further entrenching that reality.