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Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

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Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#281

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

juped wrote: post #275

The most interesting part (to me) is not touched on in the article - if expensive jobs can be done remotely from Gary, Indiana, they're not going to go to Gary natives who are currently underemployed, but to the same small crowd of well-off people who are just going to move to Gary, driving prices there up. I think this is the inequality that is interesting and matters.

But Gary, Indiana has a lot more room. In addition, the new well-off people will need coffee, and cars, and groceries, and be able to pay for them. This will rejuvenate other jobs. With more people with money who can now afford tickets and buy merchandise, maybe more bands will start playing in Gary, Indiana, improving the music scene. With more people with more disposable income, maybe some of them will be interested in local artwork. Now artists can move and live in Gary, Indiana.

In addition, well-off people are interested in making sure their kids get a good education. So maybe they start pushing the city to improve public education. In addition, the increased home values and increased businesses are likely to result in greater increase in tax revenue, allowing more money to go to education.

And the nice part is that Gary, Indiana got these benefits without having to try to bribe a large corporation to open an office with tax giveaways.

You may or may not have more inequality, but I would argue that the people in Gary would be better off.

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#282

Post by rob2312 »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #228

Can someone help me understand this? The thesis is that remote work is making inequality worse, but all they show is an association between working remote and income. Where's the thesis coming from? Even if it was a causal association, with more remote work causing higher incomes, that seems like a good thing.

> The higher a person’s salary, the most likely they are to be able to work from home

and

> employees unable to work from home, such as restaurant servers, personal trainers or manufacturing workers, may be laid off temporarily or permanently, a burden that seems to be falling disproportionately on low-income workers.

People with higher salaries are more likely to be able to still work, whereas people with lower salaries in different sectors are far more likely to have been laid off due to the physical nature of the job. Hence poor people have been disproportionately hit, increasing income inequality.

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#283

Post by onemoresoop »

juped wrote: post #275

The most interesting part (to me) is not touched on in the article - if expensive jobs can be done remotely from Gary, Indiana, they're not going to go to Gary natives who are currently underemployed, but to the same small crowd of well-off people who are just going to move to Gary, driving prices there up. I think this is the inequality that is interesting and matters.

I think the jobs would go to the most capable and there are capable people everywhere, but not all are willing to relocate to such places ad California or New York. You do see a lot more smart people in these areas because this is where they were all attracted to like magnets by high paying jobs. If a bit less high paying jobs become available no matter where one lives how many people would be willing to relocate?

I think the most absurd thing that is happening is the high rents and low quality living standards that people are putting up with because of the companies that they need to relocate for. And the havoc they produce for the needed locals who can’t afford to live where they have been working all along.

If people in Gary Indiana get these jobs then the local economy would go up for the rest of the people.

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#284

Post by onemoresoop »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #281
juped wrote: post #275

The most interesting part (to me) is not touched on in the article - if expensive jobs can be done remotely from Gary, Indiana, they're not going to go to Gary natives who are currently underemployed, but to the same small crowd of well-off people who are just going to move to Gary, driving prices there up. I think this is the inequality that is interesting and matters.

But Gary, Indiana has a lot more room. In addition, the new well-off people will need coffee, and cars, and groceries, and be able to pay for them. This will rejuvenate other jobs. With more people with money who can now afford tickets and buy merchandise, maybe more bands will start playing in Gary, Indiana, improving the music scene. With more people with more disposable income, maybe some of them will be intereste…

Absolutely agree that their local economy would get better.

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#285

Post by downerending »

macinjosh wrote: post #276
downerending wrote: post #236

Looking at it just now, this appears to be the money quote: Given its potential benefits, telecommuting is an attractive option to many. Studies have shown a substantial number of workers would even agree to a lower salary for a job that would allow them to work from home. The appeal of remote work can be especially strong during times of crisis, but also exists under more normal circumstances. The ongoing crisis the…

These sort of people see every trade-off or compromise a person might make in life as systemic oppression. If someone decides they don’t mind earning less if they get to work from home that’s their decision! No one is making them do this. No one goes to the car dealership expecting the premium trim for the standard trim price. This is no different. Like it or not we sell our time, attention, and effort in exchange fo…

I agree that most of the time, people should be regarded as the final experts on what is best for them. In that context, do-gooders swooping in to "help" can seem rather presumptive.

That said, sometimes we as a society do need to "swoop in". The obvious cases would be things like loan sharks, dealers of highly addictive drugs, etc. Right now remote work doesn't seem like one of those cases.

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#286

Post by haihaibye »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #228

Can someone help me understand this? The thesis is that remote work is making inequality worse, but all they show is an association between working remote and income. Where's the thesis coming from? Even if it was a causal association, with more remote work causing higher incomes, that seems like a good thing.

If you can work remotely you're less likely to lose your job.

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#287

Post by burlesona »

csense wrote: post #273
xapata wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like yet another wealth transfer from metro areas to rural areas. I understand that the US government is structured that way, by the creation of the Senate, but as a city-dweller, I'm not a fan. I'd rather pay for people to move, perhaps subsidizing housing where other services have competition and jobs are plentiful.

> wealth transfer from metro areas to rural areas I live in the Rust Belt, and when I visited San Francisco, it was like visiting a different planet. I find it hard to believe that wealth transfer from metro to rural is larger than wealth transfer in the opposite direction. Why does $HOT_TECHBRO_STARTUP invariably choose to locate its offices in the ultra-tight real estate and labor markets of SF, NYC or Austin when…

Because businesses have gravity and naturally condense into gravity wells. Why is the oil industry (executive and R&D) so heavily centered in Houston, or finance so heavily centered in New York? Why don't some of those giant banks move their headquarters to (fill in your struggling town) where they need the jobs?

The reason is that businesses aren't charities. The people who work in the industry benefit enormously from proximity to a bunch of other people in their industry.

I grew up in the midwest, but I moved (with my family) to the Bay Area a couple years ago, and it's been like rocket fuel to my career and income. It's hard to even describe how advantageous it is when your social network naturally includes so many people in your industry - when your neighbor works at Google, and the other parents at your preschool work Stripe and Apple, and when your friends from the gym work at Github... etc. It's just nuts.

Most people, once they've lived some place a little while and established a network, don't really want to leave. So then when they start their business they launch it with a few friends who are all here and either worked with them at their last business or are part of that extended social network, and of course they all live in the Bay Area already so they just stay because why move?

I understand the frustration of geographic inequality of jobs, but honestly the hot startups are not who you should target if you want to inject some vitality into a struggling city. By far the better way forward is to combine a mix of training/education, public investment, and attracting some mid-size business to help seed the local market. As one example, this is roughly what they did in Chattanooga, TN, and have turned it into a small but nice little tech outpost.

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#288

Post by bsder »

ghaff wrote: post #252
bsder wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> -Giving people computers > -Making sure people have access to broadband There should be a Rural Broadbandification Project set into motion so everybody gets fiber. This also has the advantage that it requires lots of labor like digging ditches. It also has the advantage that it would allow some of these high earners to move from turbo-high cost of living areas to much lower ones.

Everyone probably doesn’t need fiber to their homes. Good 5G access without onerous caps is probably a reasonable alternative.

Tech has been stymied by the fact that bandwidth has been constrained at 10Mbps or less for 2 decades. My 10 year old computer is more than powerful enough to handle any networking in the last decade. Without that impetus, there is nothing driving computers forward.

Every time we jump in consumer bandwidth by an order of magnitude, we launch some new technology that we couldn't even dream of before.

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#289

Post by bsder »

csense wrote: post #273
xapata wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like yet another wealth transfer from metro areas to rural areas. I understand that the US government is structured that way, by the creation of the Senate, but as a city-dweller, I'm not a fan. I'd rather pay for people to move, perhaps subsidizing housing where other services have competition and jobs are plentiful.

> wealth transfer from metro areas to rural areas I live in the Rust Belt, and when I visited San Francisco, it was like visiting a different planet. I find it hard to believe that wealth transfer from metro to rural is larger than wealth transfer in the opposite direction. Why does $HOT_TECHBRO_STARTUP invariably choose to locate its offices in the ultra-tight real estate and labor markets of SF, NYC or Austin when…

> Why does $HOT_TECHBRO_STARTUP invariably choose to locate its offices in the ultra-tight real estate and labor markets of SF, NYC or Austin

Because it's cool and the $TECHBRO wants to live somewhere cool.

As for those of us doing engineering instead of $TECHBRO software:

Because I can't drive 10 minutes to go talk to my PCB assembler in the lab to help figure out something that is failing.

Because I can't have a realtime chat with my injection molder in front of the machine about the fact that my last order was crap so let's make some adjustments.

Because I don't have a choice of colocation facilities which have different connectivity guarantees.

Because I can't go grab lunch with a friend who happens to also do RF design, drug development, mechanical engineering, etc. and pick their brains (and vice versa).

Outsourcing is only useful when you're in production (and I'd argue it's less useful than people think). If I'm doing engineering R&D, I tend to insource as much as possible and keep the rest local where I can keep an eye on it.

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#290

Post by freehunter »

tathougies wrote: post #215
intopieces wrote: post #179

It seems from the comments that a lot of the readers here equate "let's look at socioeconomic inequality" with "let's make sure everyone has the same socioeconomic outcome by bringing down the people who earn more." This is... a leap not found in this article. The idea is to make sure that we realize the knock-on effects of changes in the workforce / society and take measures to make sure people who have the ability…

> Imagine if a single mother working for $20k a year at an office could do that work from home? Imagine if we applied this same kind of get-it-done thinking to wondering why there were so many women raising children on their own without support from the child's father?

But then we'd have to have a lot of politically and religiously uncomfortable conversations about contraception, birth control, and other forms of family planning. Not to mention sexual education.
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