Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Ellie Mae O'Hagan writes about Jeremy Corbyn's much-needed work in addressing the loss of hope by young people in the UK:

For the first time in a good few years, I’ve stopped worrying about money. I can imagine living somewhere nice without having to move to another country. I feel less worried about my parents, who could now be cared for by a properly funded NHS as they get older. I have hope that we may start taking climate change seriously, and people my age and younger won’t be left scooping out buckets of murky water from our living rooms every year. I may finally stop being a member of a sprawling precariat without sick pay, holiday entitlement or job security. It’s amazing to think my parents took those things for granted, and only now do I realise how low my expectations have been.

I know these things won’t happen overnight – maybe they won’t happen at all – but finally there is the possibility of them. Hoping for a better world doesn’t feel like a cruel and futile process any more. It feels rational; it feels like something we deserve.

Last night, when I was out celebrating, I met a 25-year-old woman who was in a two-year unpaid internship and still living with her parents. I spoke to a man in his 30s who said he felt like he was still living like a student. Is it any wonder that the surge for Labour was driven by people under 45? This demographic doesn’t care that Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t look like a conventional politician (they like it), or about things he did before they were even born. They just want the constant tension that pervades their lives – the tension that comes with having virtually no financial security – to be lifted.

- Meanwhile, Amy Traub highlights the widespread U.S. wage theft which transfers massive amounts of money from the workers who make the least to the corporations who already have the most. And Erik Loomis points out how the Trump administration is going out of its way to make work as hazardous as possible.

- The B.C. Health Coalition points out a new survey on the spread of private clinics and extra billing in Canada's health care system. And Andre Picard weighs in on the longstanding failure to deal with double-dipping and other practices which lead to both unfairness and poor results for patients.

- Marc-Andre Cossette reports on the Libs' painfully small first step toward child care funding.

- Finally, the Star's editorial board calls out the Trudeau Libs for their miserly attitude toward foreign aid.