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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?

#61

Post by Spivak »

htag wrote: post #14

The author talks about three data points: 1. Is there less restaurant business? 2. Does it hurt city real estate? 3. People spend more time with family. I'm much more interested in other points about how remote work has an impact on the economy. * How do cities and states attract well paid remote workers? Who are the winners and losers of this transition. * How does remote work impact wages? A programmer in Nashville…

> How do cities and states attract well paid remote workers.

To me WFH aligns the incentives exactly right in this case. You attract workers by being a good place to live. Have stuff human people care about -- parks, playgrounds, schools, restaurants, nightlife, recreation, arts, theater, music, food, yada yada. Instead of right now where the strat is to get a critical mass of well-ish-paying businesses and then everything else is extra. Communities will form based on what people do outside work which sounds like actual heaven.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#62

Post by Spivak »

grugagag wrote: post #58
xwdv wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but hungry people who don’t want to get dressed and leave the house will order a quick meal on Uber Eats at twice the cost of getting it in-person.

Or they prepare something at home

Both are true, it definitely depends on how many spoons I have when lunchtime rolls around and what the leftover situation looks like. For <$20 I can get some real food to my door async and that wins very often compared to canned/frozen.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#63

Post by Spivak »

ativzzz wrote: post #59
Rimintil wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, who goes to a barber during work hours? That's something that one would assume would happen closer to home regardless, such as on a weekend.

Anyone who works from home? One of the perks is you can run errands during working hours when less people are doing it

Right?! Are people not actually using the perks of WFH? I can just tell my team, "hey I'm gonna step out for an hour, I have a hair appointment" and it's no big deal at all. When I hit a block, I can clean the apartment, start dinner, play videogames. And let me tell you, things you actually wanna do are infinitely more refreshing than "work Reddit." My productivity and energy levels have never been so well managed.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#64

Post by eyelidlessness »

freetime2 wrote: post #53
eyelidlessness wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I reached the same conclusion but from a different angle: if remote work is bad for the economy, but good for the people who enjoy it, how many other aspects of serving “the economy” are in conflict with serving the people who participate in it? Maybe it’s the economy itself that’s bad. Maybe looking for ways to balance changes like remote work with a bad economic system isn’t nearly ambitious enough. Maybe labor tha…

Free market economies also offer a solution to this problem. Restaurants close due to lack of demand, and the workers find jobs doing something else that is in demand (e.g. food delivery).

That’s really just a reconfiguration of the same underlying problem. The workers have to get a job, because they arbitrarily have to make some profits to benefit someone else who is just taking advantage of the market shift and their leverage to do so. That’s an economy which is good for a few people with access to capital, but bad for everyone else.

An economy which prioritized taking care of the people who are out of work would be beneficial for basically everyone except the people who benefit from every outcome anyway.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#65

Post by I_AM_A_SMURF »

Rimintil wrote: post #20
whatshisface wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhh... nobody stops going to the barber just because they work from home.

Not only that, who goes to a barber during work hours? That's something that one would assume would happen closer to home regardless, such as on a weekend.

I don't understand how WFH makes this different, if you can step out and go to the barber while WFH why can't you do it while you're in the office?

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#66

Post by gepardi »

Remote work is great for: - People who want more quality time with family - Environment. Less pollution. - Businesses who can save money by not needing an office.

If “the economy” doesn’t like it, it needs to adapt.

The economy should support people, not the other way around.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#68

Post by mannerheim »

jezzamon wrote: post #67

Seems like a significant amount of commenters are arguing against the title without realising the content agrees with them :)

I read it, I'm just peeved that after two centuries, enough people are still convinced by broken window fallacies that articles like this are even necessary.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#69

Post by maxfurman »

Spivak wrote: post #61
htag wrote: post #14

The author talks about three data points: 1. Is there less restaurant business? 2. Does it hurt city real estate? 3. People spend more time with family. I'm much more interested in other points about how remote work has an impact on the economy. * How do cities and states attract well paid remote workers? Who are the winners and losers of this transition. * How does remote work impact wages? A programmer in Nashville…

> How do cities and states attract well paid remote workers. To me WFH aligns the incentives exactly right in this case. You attract workers by being a good place to live. Have stuff human people care about -- parks, playgrounds, schools, restaurants, nightlife, recreation, arts, theater, music, food, yada yada. Instead of right now where the strat is to get a critical mass of well-ish-paying businesses and then ever…

You do see the irony that jobs at places like restaurants and theaters cannot be done remotely, right?

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#70

Post by simoncion »

maxfurman wrote: post #69
Spivak wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do cities and states attract well paid remote workers. To me WFH aligns the incentives exactly right in this case. You attract workers by being a good place to live. Have stuff human people care about -- parks, playgrounds, schools, restaurants, nightlife, recreation, arts, theater, music, food, yada yada. Instead of right now where the strat is to get a critical mass of well-ish-paying businesses and then ever…

You do see the irony that jobs at places like restaurants and theaters cannot be done remotely, right?

There's no irony there... either those businesses that require local staff exist because they place they're in is a interesting and/or good place to live, or the place they're in is an obscenely-expensive shithole and they just won't exist.
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