> Is remote work bad for the economy?
Nope.
Is remote work bad for the economy?
261–270 of 363 posts
Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spending money at restaurants is great, way better than everybody sitting at home eating their own lunches. I suspect massive adoption of restaurants would be more efficient too, if we cared about that primarily. Inner city areas full of people chatting in restaurants and cafes at lunchtime and after work are the best. > Then you get these articles about how unhealthy life is in the city. You know; mobile phone tumou…
Sure, it is fun. But the point of the article and discussion is not to be city-phobic like your quote suggests -- rather why do we need our economy to focus around people commuting? It is not only inner-city folks. A lot of these restaurants in cities rely on all of the people coming in for work.
I was replying to someone who said spending money in restaurants is undesirable. I was not replying to the article.
Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is close to the broken window fallacy. We tend to forget the flow of money is an indirect proxy for work performed. If 20% of construction workers are freed up from fixing roads because of lower traffic, they don't just sit around crying, they find other work to do. Same with tech workers, same with everyone. That's a net good because the work they'll move to will by definition be worth paying someone to do. Was…
> are freed up from fixing roads because of lower traffic, they don't just sit around crying, they find other work to do. yes, this holds up when there is something else to do, which is not always the case. I remember during the great recession, building contractors in Florida were praying for a hurricane to put them back to work. There was absolutely no other work to be found.
There is always work to do. However there is often a mismatch of skills and unwillingness to learn the right skills. Sometimes there is an unwillingness to work for the price people are willing to pay.
Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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
Bad public transit exists all over. That doesn't make the idea of public transit bad, it just means we need better management of it.
Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
This is some weird rural populist hogwash with no basis in reality. The economy is a highly interdependent system. Cities need farms and farms need cities.
Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?
#266Is banning child labor bad for manufacturing?
Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Having your own vehicle is an enormous benefit in quality of life, why would anybody want to take that away? Why should we then eat nice food when we can survive on dull rations? There is so much more to the use of personal vehicles than just "transportation needs", but yes - some places build their infrastructure too much catering to cars. The best way to beat traffic right now without having to wait for anybody els…
Only if the alternative is bad. While it is true that most public transit in the US is bad, that doesn't mean it has to be that way.
Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spending money at restaurants is great, way better than everybody sitting at home eating their own lunches. I suspect massive adoption of restaurants would be more efficient too, if we cared about that primarily. Inner city areas full of people chatting in restaurants and cafes at lunchtime and after work are the best. > Then you get these articles about how unhealthy life is in the city. You know; mobile phone tumou…
Whose economy are we talking about though? I mean I understand what you're saying but most people I know still prefer eating at home most of the time and going to restaurants occasionally, mainly because meals out cost 3-10x as much as eating at home, unless you start every meal from scratch. this is really important for families.
>Whose economy are we talking about though?
The economy of scale. A kitchen with professional staff and equipment making hundreds of plates do that far more efficiently than each person or family making their own food. The reason then why it is still more expensive to eat out is because of business burdens, such as parasitic rent and interest, parasitic taxes, and sometimes exaggerated profit demands from owners. And of course there are costs that are just nice to have, such as table service.
If you look how little healthy school lunches or lunches on ships cost, you see how efficient the economy of scale is in a kitchen environment. And truly, in many places in the world it is common for even the poorest labourers to eat out, because there is a balance without excess burdens taking away the advantage of the economy of scale.
Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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.
They were talking about the tax dollars of remote workers going to the smaller towns. It's not exactly a program that needs to be set up.
It didn't seem relevant to me in terms of the discussion, so I countered with an even smaller town. I grew up in a decent-sized metro area, but I've definitely lived the 3-hour drive to the nearest Target. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's how local corruption works in Eastern European cities. New mayor gets elected, so good streets get torn up and re-paved, so that his friend who runs a local construction company gets a lucrative government contract above market rates. Rinse and repeat every time we get a new mayor. It's a tried and tested way of legally shoveling public taxpayer money into well connected private pockets. I've seen similar corr…
Yes, and it's also funny that they will re-pave the street, and then few months later it turns out that some water pipes need to be replaced, so the freshly re-paved street is torn up again. Then, few months later, new fiber cables needs to be put in the ground, so guess what?. Re-paving becomes one of the best businesses in such town :)
A few cities have someone who's job it is to coordinate between all the groups that have/want something under the streets so when the streets are torn up (which needs to happen every 20-60 years depending on how long the chosen pavement type lasts) everyone with something under the road goes out and does whatever they need.
The city I'm in now puts everything in the area between the streets and the sidewalks. I don't have a sidewalk yet because there are some thing that will be going in next summer.