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> For example maybe people don't go to lots of inner city coffee bars in business districts any more but local cafes near residential areas are thriving. People don't buy coffee on the way to work, people don't buy coffee on the way home, people don't buy sandwiches and snacks, people don't spend money on commuting, people don't spend money at resturants for launch, companies stop having team lunches. People don't go…
People don't buy coffee on the way to work, people don't buy coffee on the way home, people don't buy sandwiches and snacks, people don't spend money on commuting, people don't spend money at resturants for launch, companies stop having team lunches. So your argument that remote work harms the economy is because it hurts businesses that sell coffee for at least a 10x markup over what it would cost to make it yourself…
I generally agree although a lot of things have generally drifted back to business as usual.
However, other patterns still need to play out.
The degree to which pre-pandemic office work for knowledge workers who can work remotely goes back to pre-pandemic patterns still has to play out and I suspect, for many, there will at least be greater flexibility in the future.
Many US cities were still losing population 25 years ago. There's certainly no law of nature that younger educated people will continue to reverse this trend as they have the past couple of decades.
Things like big in-person business conferences have come back to some degree but it's unclear if they'll ever be back to business-as-usual.
The list goes on. I'm not sure the disruption will be as great as some envisioned but a lot of things were paused and it's unclear they will look the same as they unpause.