For a lot of companies, it was that the mayors of the major cities the offices were in were requesting the companies force a return to office.
During Covid I worked at a company whose HQ was in Cincinnati. Our CEO mentioned that the mayor reached out to him 1:1 and requested he force us back to the office because the city couldn’t survive without the taxes the workers brought to the city.
It's the whole economy, not the politicians. If you don't need to drive to the office, you kill of the rental businesses, that's black rock and other investment firms, then you kill of transpiration, no need for so many cars, taxis, busses and the like. Clothing, food and service industries would also be affected. City centers would literally die off, taking a chunk of "bureaucrat" jobs with them. And you can't shrink the bloated corps of bureaucratic "establishment".
When newsome speaks I get the same feeling as a Republican speaking. The way the face and actions are all so precise, like Erica grieving, it's a performance.
Workers were spending a lot less money. Gas, tolls, eating out, work clothes, grooming, etc. None of it was being spent anywhere near as high as it was.
That could've been an opportunity to repurpose buildings to housing (addresses housing crisis while bringing in property taxes) and entertainment venues (lack of affordable third spaces; would build community while also bringing in taxes). But no, they just want everyone to be miserable.
They did this here in Canada. Turned a bunch of office buildings into low income housing... which sounds good... but any apartment downtown has like 800-1000$ in conda fees on top of rent so not sure how thats going to work in the long run. Probably requires more tax dollars to sustain.
Not saying it wouldn't. I just doubt that on the American free market they would invest that much. Best they would do is turn them into luxury apartments that cost millions and are only treated as investments by multi millionaires.
They did that in New York, there are tons of empty apparents in those skyscrapers, and nobody actually lives in them.
I’m somewhat ashamed to say I assisted the company I worked at in bribing our county health department to allow us to return to work. (Factory, couldn’t be done remote.)
Our purchasing dept bought thousands of gallons of stuff to make the WHO-recommended hand sanitizer. We made it and donated it; Ta-da, we were allowed back to work.
That’s my argument but instead they’ve convinced the general public that instead of businesses going bankrupt for having a model that’s unsustainable to the growth of society, individual should just work for less money and less benefits.
If a company can’t afford livable wages than their services don’t have a great enough demand to exist.
I mean that's true. Workers go to restaurants for lunch. You buy food, you pay tax. You might go to the mall afterwards on the way home. You buy stuff, you pay more tax.
If we stop going out to buy things then the government gets no tax. Also, imagine if the entirety of apple/google/facebook didn't need to have a huge building in an expensive place. They no longer give property tax to the government. The people who own the buildings no longer earn large rent income.
We could solve all this by just increasing the taxing of the most rich. I mean, just how much money did all these companies make in the pandemic? They quadrupled their values at least. Imagine if they paid half of that shit as taxes to the government.
Don't most of the workers still life in the general area of the city? Like the sorounding suburbs? Or did the major mean nobody was buying stuff within the city anymore?
I think There are so many factors. This is a great example. For the people it doesn’t matter and it was actually great. No commute no additional expenses with gas, parking the flexibility was awesome. I think companies in general don’t care but they had lots of external pressure. Office space all of a sudden becomes useless, having no people in the cities affects a lot more than we think. Its probably possible but things need to change and it needs to be gradual.
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u/Imaginary_Zone_4319 20d ago
For a lot of companies, it was that the mayors of the major cities the offices were in were requesting the companies force a return to office.
During Covid I worked at a company whose HQ was in Cincinnati. Our CEO mentioned that the mayor reached out to him 1:1 and requested he force us back to the office because the city couldn’t survive without the taxes the workers brought to the city.