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> What if companies had to pay for the time you spend commuting? They'd have an incentive to hire people as close as possible, and support local policies that m
by maxsilver 9y ago
> What if companies had to pay for the time you spend commuting? They'd have an incentive to hire people as close as possible, and support local policies that make it easier to live closer to work.
I don't know. I worry that would immediately become a major form of discrimination -- it would inherently put anyone who was poor/middle-class or anyone with any sort of family/children at a huge employment disadvantage. Large companies would only ever hire already-hyper-wealthy individuals for their main positions (since they are the only people who are ever allowed to live in dense urban places). I'm imagining employers in Seattle saying "We like this guy, but he doesn't live in Pioneer Square where our office is, so that will be a pain, we should pass on him"
Many people already have to deal with that discrimination somewhat in terms of employers only being in major cities. Having that hyper-charged down to just major cities wealthiest neighborhoods seems like an even worse situation.
- ryandrake 9y agoYea as someone who has a 2+ hour commute each way, such a policy would doom me to unemployment unless I was willing to take a huge loan and live closer to where the employers are. Good intentions, but bad idea.
- asteli 9y agoI don't think we should take it for granted that it's prohibitively expensive to live in cities. That may be the state of metro areas in North America right now (SF, NYC, Vancouver) but historically this isn't a constant. Obviously enough economic incentive exists to convince people to spend the time and effort to commute, but if city centers were more affordable to live in, many fewer would choose to live so far away from work. Myself included.
- maxsilver 9y ago> if city centers were more affordable to live in, many fewer would choose to live so far away from work. Myself included. I agree, and would personally do the same too if possible. But I've watched us artificially inflate property values for literally my entire life. Even in my tiny US Midwest city in the middle of nowhere, city center prices have never been remotely affordable. We should take it for granted that it's too expensive to live in US/CA/AUS/NZ cities -- because that's the honest truth. That's been the current state for decades, and there's very little chance that any major city center ever becomes affordable again in our lifetimes. Obviously, we should still try to fix this. I fully support trying. But every facet of our society is wholly dedicated to preventing city centers from ever becoming affordable. Affordable city centers just are not likely to happen. We should not assume regular people live in a situation that doesn't exist, and likely never will.
- crdoconnor 9y agoMaking city centers affordable would just require once again turning occupying / owning land into a tax liability rather than a rentier asset that grants you an effective right to tax others.
- chrisdbaldwin 9y agoRent certainly makes it more affordable to live somewhere until you suddenly never own your home and the rent was higher than the potential mortgage the whole time. I understand home ownership has a lot of hidden costs, but I think the rent situation is a festering cancer preventing the growth of a middle class especially in cities.
- imgabe 9y agoThere's only so many hyper-wealthy people living close to cities. They already have jobs or have enough money that they don't need jobs. I don't think it's going to be feasible for any company to staff themselves with only hyper-wealthy people.