WFH has the potential to end the worst macroeconomic trend of the last 20-30 years, which is the "you have to be in one of four or five cities to do something" trend. We have to fight for it. Resign, resign, resign.
The four of five cities where you "must live" are: San Francisco (Bay Area), New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, and perhaps Boston. Nothing happens anywhere else, or so goes the meme that has been deeply embedded into the culture of GenX and younger.
It results in "no good jobs or unaffordable housing, pick one." Without good jobs it's impossible to build your career. Without affordable housing it's impossible to accumulate wealth or raise a family. The working class of the top-tier cities is pushed into poverty as well as their housing costs start to become >50% (or more!) of their wages.
Oh, and all the interesting culture that made those cities "cool" to begin with gets priced out and leaves.
Building more housing in these cities won't work. The fact is that if we try to cram all opportunity into 4-5 cities there is nothing that will make those cities affordable save some massive government-subsidized sci-fi super-arcology housing project (that would probably suck to actually live in). If we build more then more people will come, the city FOMO feedback loop will intensify in the culture, and prices will go even higher.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent
The "everywhere else" cities all lose too as their talent base leaves, forcing companies to leave as well. Everyone loses except property owners and rentiers in top-tier cities.
WFH can geographically diversify. Over time if some returning to office occurs, people may look for jobs in their new local areas pumping more talent into the talent pools of those cities. Capital and VC is already more willing to geographically diversify than ever before, so the old "you can only raise money in the Bay Area" canard is just about dead.
Edit: this hyperconcentration is also a contributor to America's political polarization, since it turns everywhere into a bubble where people are surrounded only by people who think like them. The physical community becomes a filter bubble.
I also wonder just how large a contributor to wealth inequality this could be. It seems like wealth inequality has exploded over the same time period that the "you must be in one of a few cities" meme became deeply embedded in culture.
Yes there has always been a draw to the big "alpha world cities," but the trend I'm talking about is beyond that. Starting in the late 90s to early 2000s it became the idea that if you were not in one of those cities you couldn't do anything at all. You simply "must" be there.