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Is remote work bad for the economy?

fractional.work

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Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#241

Post by doublerabbit »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #238
doublerabbit wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there the typical 35 year aggressive attitude I have to deal with daily. Your joking right in thinking that no communication is loss via email? Team, zoom meetings take away facial expressions and as someone with social blindness it makes my job harder to engage. Why so hostile? As from what I see the culture here, the prosperity that they give has been one of the I best fitted environments I've worked in. Very s…

Forgive my confusion, but why do you specify needing space away from work now when the vast majority of your concerns prior was struggling with textual mediums? I could suggest if you want to be on prem, you can be. But none of that will address that not only do you want to be on prem you have frustration that other people are not. Couldn’t difficulty with communication be resolved via personal occupational therapy o…

But how do you identify if the issue is with you or them?

If its you, sure you could.

But if it's them, how so you convince that they have a problem? Why would it be my problem, when I get on with other folk?

I find that talking in person, allows me to express what I'm wanting to express clearly. Its hard, but easier.

Why can't a compromise be made where you have three days off and then the two you come in? Why does it have to be All X, none Y or vice versa. WFH shouldn't be having weeks off from the office.

It should be a tool not a privilege.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#242

Post by OJFord »

dymk wrote: post #226
OJFord wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Suburbs are economically insolvent, dense cities aren’t. That’s the case for basically every suburb and dense downtown in the US.

I think that's really missing the point of this hypothetical?

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#243

Post by bequanna »

antihipocrat wrote: post #129
chii wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This obviously is a financial loss for the economy it's not, because the money that was otherwise spent (wasted) can now be deployed else where. Otherwise, why not increase the GDP and economy, by periodically just breaking every window? The replacement is gonna cause huge growth!

Exactly, the local suburban businesses are loving the extra foot traffic, at the expense of less foot traffic in downtown areas. I'm sure home delivery services are benefiting too. The suggestion that the general economy is suffering because of people WFH doesn't make much sense, spending is just reallocated. .. Now if people were saving any money previously spent on commuting and eating out, then that would reduce G…

Right, and in my experience urban retail is often high cost, low quality. Some of the dirtiest stores/restaurants you see are in urban centers.

They could get away with this because they had a captive group which was previously forced to be in that location with relatively few options.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#244

Post by [deleted] »

sph wrote: post #177
kwhitefoot wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an argument against you working from home. My experience was that I worked just as effectively at home and had two hours a day extra that I could use for exercise, relaxing, and in fact a bit of extra work.

Also an argument against work in general: the vast majority of people were not doing work the entirety of their 8 hour work days. Coffee breaks, social media, reading HN, which in WfH means walking the dog, spending a few minutes with your family, doing some yoga stands after a meeting. And that is perfectly fine. Unless you're very focused and enjoying a particular task, no unassisted human being is capable of being…

[deleted]

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#245

Post by treis »

manfre wrote: post #233
treis wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Those gentlemen would probably also waste time in an office environment. You're just substituting wasting time at work with wasting time at work (from home). There's way more distractions at home and not everyone can handle it. It's just wild what people find appropriate to do during meetings that they're supposed to be paying attention to. In office yeah maybe someone would read emails but you wouldn't be fully imm…

> Feel like for most people if you're stuck in the office you might as well do some work. The biggest distractions in the office are the coworkers. Random hallway conversations, loud talkers in neighboring cubes/offices, people walking up to your desk with a question that should've been an email/chat (but really they are too lazy to check the ticket system/wiki/doc store for the answer). The level of distraction vari…

But that quiet focus time is all for naught if people use it to pursue their time consuming hobby instead of working. Which is the point that kicked off this thread.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#246

Post by carlosjobim »

doublerabbit wrote: post #223
carlosjobim wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It is proving insanely hard getting in contact with folk. Can you call them on the phone?

Sure, when they're not in some meeting, or marked online and not actually there. To ask questions is a pain having to ring them constantly after ending the previous call. Sure. one could argue that this would happen in the office too but at least you can grab their attention easier.

One thing that works well is to keep the call going while the issue is being handled. So for example you ask for a solution and they tell you what to do, then you two can bullshit about other stuff while you're implementing the solution live and get back to the questions when you need help, in the same call.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#247

Post by carlosjobim »

UncleMeat wrote: post #222
carlosjobim wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big cities are dependent on agriculture and raw materials from rural regions for their survival. The small town can exist without the big city, the reversal is not true. As always through history, politicians and bankers plunder the country with taxes and interest. This wealth is then distributed by them, from the big cities, but that doesn't mean that the wealth originated there.

Most small towns where remote workers might settle are not driven by agriculture. Agriculture matters, but we don't live in an economy where everything outside of metro areas is just farms as far as the eye can see.

I'm not saying it's only agriculture, but rural areas give much more to urban areas than they receive back, evident by the massive waste and corruption within the cities and the throngs of people being sustained in the cities without producing anything of value or anything at all.

In the past you could certainly say that urban areas give back just as much or even more, when factories where concentrated in cities. Today the factories are not only in the cities.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#248

Post by acdha »

ok_dad wrote: post #118
jrumbut wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What really matters to me is spending time with my family. Fuck executives and management that would force me to go to an office to do the exact same things I do at home now. Upheaval be damned.

I get where you’re coming from but just because some of the criticism of working from home is in bad faith doesn’t mean it all is. Many American cities were hollowed out by white flight in the 1950s and 60s as people moved to suburbs, taking a great deal of economic activity with them. The balance which kept that from being an immediate disaster was business-related spending but that came at a steep cost as infrastructure was built for car commuting at the expense of neighborhoods, quality of life, and hefty maintenance costs.

This was arguably a major long-term mistake but I understand why mayors all over are panicking at the thought of that system crumbling, leaving them with all of the costs and half the downtown economy. I don’t think the entire country is turning into Detroit but it’s going to be bad anywhere that they can’t take a different path. Setting up some kind of larger tax zone to pay for at least the broader infrastructure costs could help but many suburbs were specifically designed to prevent that and few have enough slack in their budgets to help in any case.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#249

Post by badpun »

User23 wrote: post #81
csomar wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an "infinite" amount of people that need a job and can't do something remotely (because they are not too "techyy" for that). Right now, they have to 1.5H commute from Jersey to Manhattan because that's where the job is. They are not originally from NJ but that's where they found the cheapest rent. I'm pretty sure they'd be happy to serve the Digital Nomads or the Remote worker that picked small town, out of…

Out of curiosity, why are you sure of that? Because me, personally, I have my doubts that the kind of person who wants to be a NYC bartender also wants to be an Iowa City Bartender.

Perhaps, but there's also plenty of NYC bartenders who don't particularly want to be bartenders, it's just a job they managed to get and it's what they're doing to pay the bills.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#250

Post by sokoloff »

dymk wrote: post #226
OJFord wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Suburbs are economically insolvent, dense cities aren’t. That’s the case for basically every suburb and dense downtown in the US.

The suburbs around Boston are definitely not economically insolvent, and the ones in metro-west are fairly flush financially (continually building and upgrading schools and other town amenities).
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