This article describes the real reason behind the push back to the office. It’s about rich people gambling on real estate and now office buildings are empty.
These same people own newspapers and media channels which is why their crying voices are being pushed.
"You know what they want?
They want obedient workers.
Obedient workers.
People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork and just dumb enough, to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs, with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it." – George Carlin
David Graeber’s book on bullshit jobs blew the myth of office productivity wide open several years ago. The elites have been promising us shorter work weeks for more than a century now. We have the technology to make it happen. As we speak, they’re bragging about their new AI minions.
Of course, that article even admits that onsite employees aren’t more productive. They just find different ways to “goof off,” like shopping online or scrolling their phones. The real ire seems to stem from envy, that remote workers are capable of meeting their responsibilities while also doing healthy things and taking care of themselves, like taking a walk in the middle of the day or (gasp) even a nap. Ironically, wellness articles have been telling bosses to let their employees take walks or naps in the middle of the day for almost 20 years.
Many news outlets finally came clean last year and reported that a big chunk of companies might simply be using office return mandates as an excuse to lay off employees and “restructure” their workforce.
Anywhere from 12 to 20 percent of office space remains vacant. It’s worse than the 2008 recession. If these landlords can’t find a way to make money off their corporate real estate soon, they’re going to start defaulting on their loans. The landlords will go bankrupt, and banks will wind up with giant office towers they can’t sell. More than $1 trillion will go poof.
According to a piece in the Harvard Business Review, the $1 trillion will come due between now and 2026. That explains why CEOs keep making these edicts, and newspapers keep trying to trash remote work. As the piece explains, “The damage could metastasize into a full-blown financial crisis if scores or even hundreds of small and midsize commercial banks fail simultaneously.”
The Federal Reserve’s misguided war on inflation has made everything even worse over the last couple of years. By raising interest rates, they’ve motivated more companies to ditch their office leases. Now commercial real estate is in a death spiral that could tank the economy (again).
Major cities have spent the last several decades catering to these corporate landlords. Now their entire downtowns rely on workers for commerce. We’re talking about all those restaurants and coffee shops that serve breakfast and lunch to white-collar workers, and all the bars where people used to go and complain about work before they spent an hour commuting home.
Once again, the elite have gotten themselves into big trouble. They want the rest of us to bail them out. If they don’t want our tax money, they want us to give up our freedom and autonomy. They want us to sacrifice ourselves on the altar of capitalism to protect their fortunes.
seems like it would behoove the average worker to try to hold out until after 2025. let’s let the axe fall on these billionaire property owners. in my experience, poor people benefit from rich people hitting hardship. things get cheap when they need to come up with liquid capital. i know so many people who were able to buy a house during the 2008 collapse. a lot of properties were auctioned off for pennies on the dollar, and a lot of hard-working people reaped the benefits.
Much as I hate bailing out the rich, I also hate recessions.
We should be pouring money (yes, taxpayer money) into buying and demolishing these office towers, and building housing instead. Apartments and condos. The downtowns that are thriving now are the ones where people actually live there.
It was always about control.
And money.
Yeah but look deeper. Materially. Corporate real estate, billions of dollars of it sitting empty during the pandemic.
Same with abortion. Certainly about control to a point but mainly about US citizens not having enough kids to keep up the meat grinder in the future.
There’s always a material reason.
“Should we build a world that people want to raise a family in? Nah! Let’s just force them to have children!”
I just got a new job lately. My position is sorta a unicorn position so my new company has been searching for 6 + months. The reason being is that they now require the person to come in 3 times a week in downtown San Francisco. That basically eliminated 99.999999% of people who aren’t walking distance from their office.
To get around the 3 times a week in the office, my manager changed the position into a contractor position. Even then it took 2 months to find me.
So because the CEO was a dumbass, his growth team is not running at full potential. Losing more money than he would have made in his real estate property.
He is probably not a dumb-ass. He’s probably getting kick-backs from the city for making people come to the city 3 times per week. The city makes a fortune off these deals, and the companies save a bunch on taxes.
Damn. TIL.
Duh
Otoh, not everyone wants to work from home. I did that for 2 years, and while I would like a hybrid or occasional schedule, in burned out from it.
I also feel like it isn’t healthy to go 6 months without seeing another human aside from a 200 pixel wide zoom feed.
I would need to drop at least $50k on a house expansion just to fit a functional home office anyway.
This is why people should be allowed to work from where they want. Of course it’s not healthy to not meet other people for long times.
Some of my colleagues are single and they felt the same during covid, it was very difficult for them. But I had a family and didn’t feel lonely at all. So situations vary a lot.
Damn, it’s almost like this choice should be up to the worker, not the company, or something.
Did they just more figure that out?
These businesses need what they do to seem more expensive than it is so they can maintain what leverage their industry thinks they have.
There’s more to it than that. Corporations get massive tax breaks from the cities and States that they’re located in under the contingency that they maintain a minimum occupancy in their buildings. The government offers them this because they themselves profit immensely from all of the tolls, speeding tickets, parking fees, sales tax on gas and vehicle maintenance, tax on lunch, etc. Basically the government and corporations are conspiring together to create a scenario that necessitates you giving them a bunch of your money. It’s quite disgusting.
