769
‘The new normal’: work from home is here to stay, US data shows
(www.theguardian.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024
769 points (98.6% liked)
News
23655 readers
3340 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I'm curious how this impacts decentralization in terms of population density.
You could cure traffic congestion, repopulate rural communities with less conservative folk, and generally improve overall life satisfaction if more jobs became remote and access to high speed internet in rural communities became more common.
Would arguably reduce housing costs on average?
At my previous job, I had a coworker who was hired on after the office decided work from home would be permanent. Everyone in the office was originally from northern Illinois since that's where the office was, but she lived in rural Iowa in a farm with her husband. She mentioned how she really wasn't able to get a job like this previously as she would have to commute long distance to the city. And of course she and her husband can't just pack up the farm and move it closer to her work. So you're absolutely right! Work from home could very well be the thing that saves small communities that have been largely going off.
(Canadian here with some knowledge of the industry)
It hasn't reduced prices on average, but it does flatten out the distribution across the country. I would say that for small towns the short-term effect has been overall negative, because it drives up housing prices in regions that historically have lower wages, and also ties up the construction industry and drives up prices there as well, so it becomes more difficult to both buy an existing house and build a new one. The real winners in the equation are the remote workers who are no longer tied to big cities and can use their "big city money" to buy pretty much whatever they want in a small town.
Long-term (after things have stabilized, maybe a decade, and assuming the "immigrants" stick around) it will be more positive, because the small towns' tax base and demographics will be rejuvenated. Short term infrastructure pains are real though.
Super insightful comment and makes complete sense, thank you.
In America I'm curious how it could impact the Electoral map (especially considering the effects of the Electoral College itself).
This come up sometimes and I can't speak for everyone, but I don't live in a city just because that's where work is. I live here because it's dense, walkable, has a lot of stuff happening every day, and many different people.
Moving out to a rural or suburban space is a huge downgrade on most metrics I care about.
I still want to work from home.
However, a lot of folks would love to work at a California based company, be paid California based wages, and then live in an Arkansas cost of living. You have a super valid point for your own standard of living, but there are plenty of workers willing to make that trade for the financial security.
Suddenly a percentage of the Arkansas population actually has a decent amount of income, you start getting some purchases and tax income in the area, now the ass end of Podunk, AK actually has a little bit of cash money to invest in their area. Rinse and repeat in a hundred thousand little drive-by towns across rural America. As long as it has internet connection someone can make a good living there, and that's a huge difference to what we've traditionally seen in those towns - that being, everyone is broke as shit, so there's no real upward mobility for anyone because there's no new money coming in. This is a huge step forward towards addressing that.
I mean, you're probably not wrong. Getting more money in the hands of poor people would likely be good for everyone.
But i would rather have people live in denser, more walkable, more human spaces. We don't really need to have our living spaces where the nearest grocery is 5 miles away.
Why would we want to keep the sprawl and low density as a first class option? We don't need to keep people living in Podunk, AR just because that's where they are. It's expensive for society. We should be discouraging low density.
Interesting insight I've heard echoed before, thanks. Question: do you have kids or plan to have kids?
I've never lived in the downtown of a city before. I can only say I've lived the suburban life of a big city and a deeply rural countryside. For me, I like a bit of breathing room. I don't like the hussel of the city, nor how people tend to generally become less friendly as density rises. I miss the small-town feel or rural privacy. I certainly dislike the pollution (air, traffic, noise) and raising my kids in it. I'm not a party animal who likes the night life either. Even before kids.
I don't have kids but I'm close to someone who does. I play Legos with the kid and don't have to change diapers. It's great. We're in Brooklyn.
I'm not sure I know what you mean by breathing room. I'm not far from prospect Park.
The idea of privacy is kind of counter intuitive. In the city people see you but they don't typically care. It's like being invisible. But better, actually, because when you get in a bike accident then people do see you and help.
I don't know about less friendly. Differently friendly, maybe. I don't talk to people on the street or subway. I talk to people at bars or meetups or shows.
I would never ever want to subject my hypothetical kids to a suburban life. That's what I had. Couldn't do shit. Everything's too far away, and the roads are too dangerous to walk or bike on.
I was so jealous of the kids I knew that grew up in the city. They'd tell me about how they'd gone ice skating or to a punk show or to a board game shop, and I'd be like wow I can't do any of that. It's either just not here (music), or I can't get there because walking for miles/down a highway is dangerous.
All of this is written specifically from the experience of NYC and its suburbs. I haven't lived anywhere else long enough to speak to it.
It already reduces housing costs for those who move away from high cost of living areas. Also, access to high speed internet is already common in rural areas of the USA. It wasn't 10 years ago but we've made a lot of progress.
I'm glad to hear. Better satellite internet seems to make it more viable, too. I didn't have high speed internet the entire time growing up while all my friends in town had it. This up through 2007.
Ideally you want the opposite. Sure not commuting to work saves a lot of emissions, but not driving in the first place is much better. Cities are far more energy efficient that spread out suburban housing.
I definitely do not want to live in a city, especially if I don't have to go into an office. Living and working in the same closet-sized apartment would drive me insane.
Many apartments are in fact larger than a closet.
Walkable areas are probably the most important thing. The way most suburbs are set up so you have to drive everywhere is just a bad idea on every metric.
Well then it's good I don't want to live in a suburb either