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Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

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Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#131
post #101
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a time when many of us on this board lived in buildings without personal bathrooms and only shared facilities. Dorm style housing could work.

For who?

For the Millennials with proper jobs that never could buy a house, still live at their parents, and are inclined to communal ideas that lower the impact of individuals on their environments.

Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just like lending creates money, destruction of assets destroys money. Lending creates money? Banks can just, poof, will it into existence? Correpondingly, asset destruction destroys money? Like someone literally is setting fire to it? This is nonsense.

Fractional reserve lending does create money.

I suppose when we say these things we should say, fractional reserve lending creates some money. Otherwise one can get the impression that banks can create as much money as they want, which they can’t.

Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#133
post #20

Everyone keeps calling them offices, but I used to work in them and they felt a lot more like code factories to me. Good riddance.

When I started my career in the late 80s programmers had their own offices, which was great. Then in the 90s I largely worked in shared offices, which was still OK. By the late 90s everyone was working in cubicles, which was a step down, and I longed for the days of offices. Then, for me, in the teens it had seemed that everyone had converted to the open-plan hellscape we're all now familiar with, and I longed for the days of cubicles.

Now since the pandemic, I work from my personal office at home, which is the absolute best, and I'm never going back.

Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And yet the world has not stopped. In fact everything seems to be going faster than ever. Indeed. I know many people who used to religiously go to the office 5-days a week. The only time they were not in the office was when they were on holiday or they were sick. It's what they did for their entire working lives. And in some cases it's what "custom and practice" historically dictated in their industry, e.g. those w…

"The future is now and the future is hybrid or fully-remote for 99% of jobs." I assume you mean for 99% of office jobs.

Yeah, you can't be anything blue-collar remotely. As well as jobs like healthcare. Lots of jobs still require you to physically interact with people or things.

Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The future is now and the future is hybrid or fully-remote for 99% of jobs." I assume you mean for 99% of office jobs.

Yeah, you can't be anything blue-collar remotely. As well as jobs like healthcare. Lots of jobs still require you to physically interact with people or things.

All of those jobs should pay MUCH more.

Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#139
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the paper value of an asset disappears you don't get the money back to spend elsewhere. Nobody does. Just like lending creates money, destruction of assets destroys money. Which happens to be what we want right now, as long as it can be done in an orderly fashion.

> Just like lending creates money, destruction of assets destroys money. Lending creates money? Banks can just, poof, will it into existence? Correpondingly, asset destruction destroys money? Like someone literally is setting fire to it? This is nonsense.

yes, basically, they just poof it into existence, and then it poofs out again when the loan is repaid.

of course there are details ...

Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is something worth anything? How is something worth $800b? Is it because someone else would pay $800b for it? Why would they pay $800b for that somethin? Is it because they need to in order to make more money? If that all is true, then by destroying the need to pay $800b, we freed up $800b, right?

This is not exactly correct. For example consider a single office building and say it’s worth $2 billion. But now demand has fallen and the most anyway will pay is $1 billion. The other $1 billion is not “lost”, but it’s not freed up either. It just means that the buyer no longer transfers it to the seller. So the buyer has an extra $1 billion to spend on other things and the seller has $1 billion less. The net effec…

>The net effect on the economy should be approximately neutral

It wouldnt, and that's exactly my point. Company A is producing something of value (presumably) while Landlord B isnt (as evidenced by COVID-19 forcing us to WFH). So the $1 billion has now and always has had a wasted opportunity cost attached to it (who's making better use of it).

In other words, if Apple wired me personally half of their yearly profit, do you think that the net effect on the economy would be neutral?

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