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Is remote work bad for the economy?

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Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#161

Post by onion2k »

The only way it'd be worse for the economy would be if remote working somehow caused people to hoard money in cash in their house. So long as people are still spending, or saving/investing their money in institutions that reinvest, then all that happens is a shift in where people's economic work is done. Restaurants in cities might suffer from losing the lunch time crowd, but people will spend that money somewhere else in the economy instead.

Remote work is obviously not bad for the economy because the economy is basically a closed system.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#162

Post by klodolph »

jemmyw wrote: post #57

The economy is for the people, the people aren't for the economy, ideally. If you run a business that relies on particular behaviour, like people commuting the office, then I'm sorry things are hard but we do not owe you our business. Something that seems similar that comes up often around here is when there are proposals to improve the road system to move traffic out of towns. Currently the main highways run through…

> The economy is for the people, the people aren't for the economy, ideally. If you run a business that relies on particular behaviour, like people commuting the office, then I'm sorry things are hard but we do not owe you our business.

There's a pattern of restaurant closures. People want food from restaurants, but the demand shifted to different locations and restaurants were forced to close for some time. When a restaurant re-opens, it now owes tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in back rent. The restaurant goes bankrupt and the landlords get paid from the liquidated assets.

That's nothing short of wealth transfer from restaurant owners to landlords. We can say "the economy is for the people" all we want, but in situations like this, the economy favors some over others. Increasingly, the economy favors capital + rent seeking, and does not favor labor.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#163

Post by gladiatr72 »

msrenee wrote: post #77
gladiatr72 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh. Well, methinks your idea and mine as to what constitutes a small town are somewhat different. The small town (pop.~1500 at the time) canceled pre-calc my senior year; the district contacted, individually, the 3 of us that had enrolled. Something about being the only person who had enrolled, so they couldn't justify a regularly scheduled class. I guess they might have thought that nerds didn't talk to each other.…

>would kill such a a program in the crib. Did I miss something in the comment you're replying to or do I need to read the article? 1500 is a small town for sure. I'd consider 12k to be a small town as well. 1500 is way bigger than the town my dad is from. There's about 100 people there now. Your small town is huge compared to that. He sometimes talks about being on the highschool football team at the school shared by…

Comment on comment regarding idea of some sort of remuneration going to the home town of those who grew up there.

The difference between a town of 1500 and 12000 is very significant the further you get from a (real) city. Kids from nw Kansas drove to Hays to party, not Denver or KC because they were 3+ and 7+ hours away by car.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#164

Post by OJFord »

klodolph wrote: post #156
briga wrote: post #25

Bad for which economy? Countless programmers over the years have packed up their bags and moved away from their small towns to live in big expensive tech hubs. This has certainly been beneficial for the economy of large metros--they didn't pay to educate these workers and in many cases these workers (including myself) were raised and educated in completely different countries. So these metros have a huge pool of high…

The big metros are more efficient (dollar-wise) and have a lower environmental impact than small towns. Small towns, in the US, are already subsidized by big towns, at least economically.

Subsidised by more than the effect of the employee living, eating, and being entertained there?

And that doesn't account for GP's immigrant case at all.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#165

Post by mathgeek »

jrumbut wrote: post #112
michaelteter wrote: post #74

This applies everywhere: just because a job or business has existed does not mean it has a right to exist forever. This is not being harsh on people; it's just a reality. The blacksmiths in the horse and buggy days saw demand for their services fall when time and technologies changed. The coal miners began losing their jobs when we realized that coal as fuel was more harmful than it was beneficial. History is full of…

This is probably true to an extent, but I do think this analysis fails to capture the very real upheaval that happened in the life of a hypothetical blacksmith or wainwright that ended up at a car factory. A job isn't just a financial transaction. It's part of a person's identity and a social outlet. There is a career progression that they had planned on, they made choices about where to live and all kinds of other t…

> A job isn't just a financial transaction. It's part of a person's identity and a social outlet.

It doesn’t have to be. For hundreds of years in a large part of the world, a job for most people was whatever the local lord told you to do. Before and during that, it was whatever you were born into. History does noy dictate the present or the future.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#166

Post by watwut »

klodolph wrote: post #156
briga wrote: post #25

Bad for which economy? Countless programmers over the years have packed up their bags and moved away from their small towns to live in big expensive tech hubs. This has certainly been beneficial for the economy of large metros--they didn't pay to educate these workers and in many cases these workers (including myself) were raised and educated in completely different countries. So these metros have a huge pool of high…

The big metros are more efficient (dollar-wise) and have a lower environmental impact than small towns. Small towns, in the US, are already subsidized by big towns, at least economically.

This is not subsidisation. This is a small town participating in economy and offering better price for housing or better walkabikity or better socialization options or something.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#167

Post by aflag »

smelendez wrote: post #99
newswasboring wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe within a city, but people are not moving to another town/city to get access to a good school. The primary factor for people moving somewhere is still jobs. If that wasn't the case why will these people move out of the place which made them this capable?

Are you in the US? People here absolutely move to get access to what they perceive as good schools for their kids' needs. That can include leaving a major city for a suburb or choosing between multiple suburbs/small towns based on schools. Work-from-home ads more flexibility, but even with a traditional commute there are typically multiple towns/school districts within an easy range of any given workplace assuming yo…

I think the point was that they would move somewhere for work and then look for school in a given radius from work. That may fall into a different city/town than they work or not. But they are not moving to a new city or town because of the school and then looking for work within a radius of that school.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#168

Post by sokoloff »

KronisLV wrote: post #120
friendzis wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wellllll.... debatable. This argument of expense rerouting is a bit flawed. Suppose working from home saves one some money that they spend elsewhere. Working from the office they spend that money on fuel, indirectly spend on road maintenance, directly spend on vehicle maintenance where the shop in turn spends on parts and tools and so on. The money one spends circulates in the economy much longer and reaches more act…

> Working from the office they spend that money on fuel, indirectly spend on road maintenance, directly spend on vehicle maintenance where the shop in turn spends on parts and tools and so on. It's arguable whether all of this is needed everywhere in the world, to such a degree as is presently done. In the cities, the transportation needs of most folks can be covered by public transportation (depending on the country…

I live in Cambridge, MA (a city for sure) and used to work in an office near the Waltham/Lexington line. Not some out in the rural woods places at all.

I looked up and wrote up my “what if I tried to commute on public transit to make a 9AM meeting?”

It’s ugly to the point where no one would voluntarily choose it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31723197

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#169

Post by seydor »

Skeime wrote: post #160
seydor wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That s where european cities have an accidental advantage

I don’t think the advantage is really accidental. It’s more a failure of zoning laws if every-day shopping requires a long(ish) trip.

Probably back then it was considered an advantage because "in the future everyone will use cars for everything".

I am also curious when did north america start planning like that. Probably after modernism

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#170

Post by watwut »

saiya-jin wrote: post #115
perceptronas wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is some truth to that. My parents went to eat out like once a year for quite a while. They saved as much as they could and succeeded at that.

Generation of our parents lived much more frugal lives from current perspective. Less traveling, adventures, exciting matters and more grind of work & kids care. I utterly respect them for that, but its not a life I would call ideal and strive to have. Financials now for buying real estate became ridiculous for many places globally. It can be counted from ie how many salaries of similar jobs you need to buy a house i…

Is that actually true? Yes people now have less kids, but are they really having adventures more in some large numbers?

I mean, there are regular outrages here over people living frugal - not buying cars, living with parents, generally having less, having massively larger college debt to pay. It is combined with outrage over them not buying this or that subscription someone is pushing. Bycicle transport is cheaper then car and is money saving move for people living at right place too. People watch Netflix rather them going ro movie theater and pay for tickets + popcorn.

They do tons of money saving choices, get blamed for them. And then they get blame for buying anything that did not existed 30 years ago.

There is no epidemic of expensive avocado toasts being bought out in large numbers.

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