Good. This is $453B that people can now put to better use, by working from their preferred location.
Remote work is gutting downtowns
161–170 of 262 posts
Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've had funny conversations about why I still wear a good n95 on public transit (planes included). My right-leaning and remarkably well educated parents are incredulous. A few years ago I thought personal masking didn't really matter. Wow, I was wrong! And not catching bs colds from weirdos on the bus or the grocery store makes it worth it. My face isn't that pretty anyway.
Yep. I went from being sick roughly one week out of every 1-2 months before covid to only getting sick maybe once a year now that I mask in public places, thoroughly wash my hands with soap every time I arrive somewhere, and occasionally wash my phone. Never going back. This whole "train your immune system" thing is BS. Hygiene is important!
I muse to myself, without a shred of evidence, that masks do "train your immune system". Since they are no where near perfect, pathogens do make it though. However, the "initial viral load" is much smaller, giving your body more time to mount an effective defense. So, I would like to believe you are not neglecting your immune system by masking. Rather, by not overloading it, just being less sick than the unmasked, on average. Who knows, it might even train better this way.
Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is funny, because after 2008 it felt like a lot of the bedroom communities / strip malls struggled and went down hill (lack of demand I guess) - and it felt like a whole wave of young people were only wanting to live in the city.
Living in the city is great for young people who have no kids - lots of entertainment options a short walk away. It's noisier/busier/dirtier (EVs will help A LOT with noise and pollution). Living further out is much nicer when you have kids - more space, more freedom for the kids to move around, more trees for them to climb and places to explore.
And nowhere for them to go by themselves? Living in the suburbs as a tween/teenager is death.
Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids[1]. [1]: https://youtu.be/N1KvgtEnABY
I guess a lot of people got triggered by the first words and never finished reading after the downvote. Such an amazing movie...
HN readers don't like low value joke / sarcastic comments.
Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
New York rental vacancy rate is still pretty typical, but trending up[0]. I expect it will continue as leases expire and people move to WFH elsewhere. If that happens, rents should come down, unless RealPage and similar drive price spirals of higher prices for fewer occupied units. [0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYRVAC
Not too sure about that. I visited NYC several times after covid, and it is packed every time. The offices might not be full, but the streets and apartments def are. > Dense downtowns in Austin and New York have seen steep increases in rental demand, a sign that people continue to be willing to pay a premium to live in a social district. (^^from the article) People, especially young people, still find NYC desirable e…
I wonder how they square steep increase in rental demand in NYC with decreasing occupancy rates.
Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns
#166It’s annoying that articles repeatedly wrongly claim that reduced real estate prices lead to reduced real estate taxes. The method of computation of real estate taxes generates a mil rate which is the percentage rate that needs to be charged to generate the current budget’s revenue. This rate is computed each assessment after the property values are adjusted. The government gets the same total amount of money if prop…
That's not true, at least not everywhere. My property taxes always go up when my property values are adjusted upwards.
It doesn't disagree with the OP. If the budget has not changed your millage rate should have gone down even if your property value goes up. Most likely your city hall did not adjust the millage rate down and used the extra assessment to pay down debt.
In my own city even though my millage rate is going down because of new developments going up it's being offset by values going up.
Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
>If anything I'd expect the lack of activity to cause your immune system to be hyper-aware and you'd get less sick That's not really how it works afaik. The immune system can only respond quickly and effectively to the things it knows. If you spend 3 years outside society and you come back, your system will be 3 years behind on disease evolution. When you finally do get exposed, you'll have a much stronger immune res…
> The immune system can only respond quickly and effectively to the things it knows. Is that true? I'm not sure. Another question is what does it mean to be "known". I'd get a cold or a flu every year. At what point has the virus mutated sufficiently so that I don't have an effective immune response? This is also a great point to get vaccines. Best of both worlds.
>At what point has the virus mutated sufficiently so that I don't have an effective immune response?
I don't think anybody really knows, this is an active area of research. What is known is that, the more similar a virus is to something you already had, the more likely your immune system is to be able to respond quickly enough that you don't show any symptoms and don't even realize you were exposed. And if you do show symptoms, it'll be more likely that they will be much milder than for somebody who wasn't exposed previously to something similar.
Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns
#168There is a big push in Ottawa, Canada to get govt workers back on the road and into buildings. Downtown businesses (restaurants, etc) are pushing for it and the govt is doing its best to cooperate with them. They are slowly moving the needle on how many days an employee needs to show up. Many are accepting it because its a low number of days per month (like 2) right now. But basically its the boil a frog strategy. There is a pro-downtown bias going on here and even if local govt does not help the Federal govt will. Zero consideration for sub-urban businesses.
Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The thing I don't miss is that I got sick every single Winter. All it takes is one inconsiderate person to not cover their mouth and everyone is getting ill. And it happened all the time. Give it a few years without exposure, and you will have very hard time if you have to get exposed again. I did 2 years for remote work with a single day with long exposure each week, after a few years with low exposure. I then had…
There is no scientific basis for this assumption (the idea that you rake in immunity "debt" by not getting sick, leading to worse symptoms /when/ you get sick).
It's not "immunity debt" but rather that immunity for seasonal diseases is not permanent - you lose it if you don't use it, basically, with "refresh period" about the same length as the disease cycle.
I don't have citations handy, it's just something I've seen mentioned here and there some months ago, as a possible explanation why after 2 years of lockdowns, many more people seem to catch the common seasonal diseases.
Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the more people are living where they want to and not where they're forced to the happier people will be in general. Especially as the "city" fills up with "city people" they hopefully will stop voting so strongly against "city".
> Especially as the "city" fills up with "city people" they hopefully will stop voting so strongly against "city". It'll be interesting to see if the obverse is true. My suspicion is that the US will continue to self-select along political and social lines, as it seems to have been doing since ~2000.
I was more referring to "NIMBYism" or suburbification than purely political parties; both deep red and deep blue "cities" vote heavily NIMBY when they get the chance, and some of that may be that many of the people living in said cities wish they could live more suburbanly or more rurally, and try to make the city as much as such.