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Is remote work bad for the economy?

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Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#81

Post by User23 »

csomar wrote: post #73
maxfurman wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#82

Post by neilwilson »

Remote work is bad for the 'people are there to serve business' economy.

It is good for the 'business is there to serve the people' economy.

The latter distributes people across the country rather than concentrating them in megacities and forces business to go where the people want to live. It favours social capital over financial capital.

We need to decide politically which of these economies we want.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#83

Post by raldi »

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…

What the small town gets out of it is property values going up because families want to live there because they have good schools that set children on a path to go to a good college, learn a lot, and then move to a city and make a bunch of money.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#84

Post by cableshaft »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #33
Sebguer wrote: post #9

Maybe dollars spent at local restaurants isn't the metric we should be optimizing for?

Maybe those restaurants can simply move to residential areas. People still eat lunch. Regardless we don’t manufacture buggy whips to keep the buggy whip businesses afloat either.

Yeah, I live in the suburbs, and I count almost 60 restaurants within a six minute drive of me, most of them centered on two commercial strips surrounded by residential areas. Only a few restaurants around here died since Covid (we lost a Steak n' Shake, a brunch place, and recently a chinese place and a Boston Market), most are still here, and we've gotten several new ones besides that, so I think people are still clearly supporting restaurants around here.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#85

Post by csomar »

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.

I know a few friends who lives/lived in Jersey and took long commute to Manhattan. They are not "living in the city" by any shot; their relationship ends at 7-8PM when their shift ends and they have to take their long commute back.

Manhattan is attractive because it's much easier (at least pre-2019) to get a job there when you have little skills (a bartender can actually be a skilled job and requires certain connections) and need cash fast. There is also a community of people in the same situation (especially if you are a new immigrant).

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#86

Post by newswasboring »

raldi wrote: post #83
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…

What the small town gets out of it is property values going up because families want to live there because they have good schools that set children on a path to go to a good college, learn a lot, and then move to a city and make a bunch of money.

I don't think that's how that works. It's evident by the fact that there are no school towns like there are college towns. Once the people earning the money move out, there is no taxes left to fund education. Unless we nationalize education, which is not going to happen (at least in America).

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#87

Post by tfehring »

scarface74 wrote: post #47
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…

There are 2.5 million developers in the US. Most of them don’t live in tech hubs. Most of them work for hospitals, insurance companies, state and local government, etc.

Even outside of tech hubs, the distribution of where those workers end up is pretty different from the the distribution of where they were raised. Not many of my classmates from rural Wisconsin ended up in the Bay Area or New York, but many moved to Chicago or Minneapolis, and of those still in Wisconsin, almost all of those with white-collar jobs are in Milwaukee or Madison. Lots of cities and even many college towns in "flyover country" are doing just fine, but the brain drain from towns with less to offer is very real.

I imagine my hometown would be a very different place if people didn't have to leave to get decent jobs. Though of course there are plenty of other good reasons to leave.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#88

Post by raldi »

newswasboring wrote: post #86
raldi wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the small town gets out of it is property values going up because families want to live there because they have good schools that set children on a path to go to a good college, learn a lot, and then move to a city and make a bunch of money.

I don't think that's how that works. It's evident by the fact that there are no school towns like there are college towns. Once the people earning the money move out, there is no taxes left to fund education. Unless we nationalize education, which is not going to happen (at least in America).

School quality is one of the most important criteria people use when deciding where to buy a house.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#89

Post by chii »

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 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!

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#90

Post by chii »

newswasboring wrote: post #86
raldi wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the small town gets out of it is property values going up because families want to live there because they have good schools that set children on a path to go to a good college, learn a lot, and then move to a city and make a bunch of money.

I don't think that's how that works. It's evident by the fact that there are no school towns like there are college towns. Once the people earning the money move out, there is no taxes left to fund education. Unless we nationalize education, which is not going to happen (at least in America).

> no taxes left to fund education

which is why it's really a stupid policy decision to fund schooling via local taxation. There should be federally funded schools.

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