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Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality
- ipnon 6y agoWould it be similar to say "factories worsen inequality by mostly helping high-income earners" (consider England during the Industrial Revolution)? New technology increases our productivity.
- mythrwy 6y ago`New technology increases our productivity` I have doubts about that sometimes.
- Supermancho 6y agoHistorically, that's what happened. The average wage went down because less training was required despite more people being employed. Revenues went way up, quickly.
- sokoloff 6y agoMany (now) mass-produced goods also became much cheaper than when they were artisanally hand-crafted.
- ipnon 6y agoFurther, the extent to which material quality of life has improved since the industrial revolution implies that the drop in prices has exceeded the drop in wages by orders of magnitude.
- onion2k 6y agoThere were a few mill owners murdered by workers they'd put out of work in the industrial revolution. People breaking in to mills and smashing machines was quite common too. People in fear for their livelihood will often fight back.
- hirundo 6y agoSince there is no limit on the ceiling, but there is a limit to the floor, things that increase economic opportunity tend to decrease equality. Things that reduce economic opportunity tend to increase equality. See e.g. Steven Pinker: "...the most effective ways of reducing inequality are epidemics, massive wars, violent revolutions and state collapse." https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/twenty-questions-steven-pinker/ https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/twenty-questions-steven-p...
- ashtonkem 6y agoI always argue caution about revolution to help the poor, as there are plenty of examples where revolution killed as many poor people as it did aristocrats. Possibly the least flame war worthy example is the French Revolution. While the popular image is of the great terror killing off nobles, the reality is that most of the killings in Paris were either politicians or unfortunate merchants who refused to sell their goods at state mandated prices (at a loss) and were denounced. And that’s not even including the 160,000 mostly poor soldiers killed in the Vendée after peasants revolted against forced conscription, nor the extra 40,000 civilians killed in the brutal reprisals after the war was over. And the kicker? Not only did France eventually get a different king, but most nobles were able re-buy their old estates, and the government even went deeper into debt to compensate various nobles for their confiscated land.
- Supermancho 6y ago> I always argue caution about revolution to help the poor, as there are plenty of examples where revolution killed as many poor people as it did aristocrats. Std pareto curve. population of 100. 10 are aristocratic. 90 lower class. if you net equal losses, population 80 and you have increased equality. This is a simplification.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoRight, but they didn't net equal losses. The vast majority of people killed in the French Revolution were from the Third Estate.
- ashtonkem 6y agoThe suggestion that governments can close the remote working gap is not very well thought out. A large percentage of low income work is service work that requires physical presence. You can’t make the typical burger joint remote friendly without automating all the jobs away.
- bzb3 6y agoThey are miserable people who want to make things worse for remote workers because if everybody can't have something then nobody can.
- commandlinefan 6y ago... even if letting the people who can work remotely do so is a net win overall for everybody when you consider the reduced environmental impact.
- ashtonkem 6y agoAnd if continued forever, reduced pressure on high housing costs, which currently hit lower income earners very hard.
- bradlys 6y agoThat’s purely a regulation issue. We could easily have more affordable housing by increasing supply. If you move people from one area to another without changing supply, you’re just gonna cause issues in the next area.
- realbarack 6y agoBut if the "one area" is one of ~10 expensive cities and the "another" is 100s of smaller cities, suburbs and large towns, it's much easier to build to meet the change.
- 6y ago
- sandworm101 6y ago>> "Benefits not available to low-income workers" A more accurate statement would be "Benefits not available to low-income jobs" There are plenty of jobs that simply cannot be done remotely. The more physical the job, the less it can be done remotely. A meat packer at a meat packing plant cannot work from home. A construction worker cannot build houses from a desk. (I'd add nursing, but a large amount of those jobs is paperwork that often can be done remotely.) And there are some very highly-paid jobs that cannot be done from home. Pilots cannot pilot from home (of the few that still have jobs). Surgeons cannot cut. Mechanics cannot turn their wrenches from afar. And all the IT people. Some of them can login remotely to diagnose network and service problems, but someone always has to have hands on hardware. There is yet to be a robot that can replace a failed cooling fan on a law firm's NAS device. Some, many, of these people are in fact making trips to other peoples' homes to service the equipment that allows them to work at home.
- lmilcin 6y agoI would also say that even for people that can work remotely, low income may mean worse environment for work at home. Even with three kids I was able to quickly repurpose one of the rooms for home office and get everything needed to work comfortably from home. As my wife does not need to work we have less problem with kids staying at home. This is currently mostly discussion how to provide healthy environment for them to grow. I know colleagues at work who are not as fortunate and have to share same space with kids with no breather and it is putting a very visible strain on them.
- vladvasiliu 6y ago> I would also say that even for people that can work remotely, low income may mean worse environment for work at home. Even with three kids I was able to quickly repurpose one of the rooms for home office and get everything needed to work comfortably from home. I would think that working from home all the time as a matter of course (as opposed to being forced to, like during a pandemic) would allow lower income people to live further from the expensive cities and, arguably, in much better conditions. I know that if I could WFH full time I could move to the suburbs (or even to a smaller city) and live in a house bigger and cheaper than my current flat.
- saschag 6y agohigher paid more intellectual/creative jobs can often be done from home. good lucking building roads or baking bread on an industrial scale from home.
- Havoc 6y agoI can definitely see this. I barely missed a beat while a couple months like this presumably wiped out a ton of 3 month rainy day funds out there.
- pdubs1 6y agoI taught myself IT skills while sleeping in a tent. If anyone wants it bad enough, they can also teach themselves IT skills. No need to bring classism into it-- Once someone teaches their self IT skills (while living homelessly, as I did), apparently suddenly they're part of a separate class? How ironic.
- baron816 6y agoThis is a pretty awful, clickbaity title. The implication is that remote work is bad for low-income earners, but that’s not the case. Inequality isn’t bad by itself. If some people are doing better without others being impacted, how could that be bad?
- throwaway2048 6y agoThe problem is the assumption you are making is that others aren't being impacted.
- GordonS 6y agoOK, but how are they impacted?
- freefriedrice 6y agoThe statement is sound: Inequality will always exist. But this worsens it because people with remote jobs earn more money by luck: they happened to pick the right job for a pandemic. Just like being born into a rich family means you will be rich without having to ever work for it, or even consider it. The deeper question is: how does a civilized society respond to this? By saying: "You die now, loser, LOLZ", or through years of sufficient planning and preparation for emergency situations like this? Personally, I think as a society we are long past the "die now loser" phase, and can definitely supply resources to even-out this temporary dip for the most impacted. However, I'm from the US, and 40% of the country wants to shoot me for believing anything but bootstraps and social darwinism.
- kerkeslager 6y agoThis is a pretty awful, irrelevant post. The current situation is bad for low income earners, because remote work is not available for most low income earners. Some people are doing better while others are being impacted. You're not wrong about a hypothetical situation in which low income earners aren't impacted, but your post reads a lot like using that hypothetical situation to draw attention away from problems which exist in reality.
- downerending 6y agoI'm waiting for Nuclear Winter improves inequality by eliminating high-income earners.
- bagacrap 6y ago"Governments should encourage the adoption of telecommuting by employers where it’s possible but not yet implemented. They could, for instance, provide information to organizations about how it works." This seems a bit delusional. Who actually believes the government knows how to run a business? If you think remote work should be encouraged by the government, all they need to do is use taxes/tax breaks to incentivize it.
- yters 6y agoLaptops and smart phones are everywhere these days, regardless of income level, so accessing remote work is not a problem. I think the only reason remote work might hurt low income people is due to lack of business owners taking advantage of available remote workers.
- war1025 6y agoI know that I want remote workers stocking my shelves, driving my buses, and building things in my factories... Access to technology is not the issue. Low income jobs are as a general rule more physical than higher paying jobs. You can't remotely do physical labor.
- yters 6y agorobots with humans in the loop! most robots are quite capable, but the AI isn't there
- commandlinefan 6y agoYou're being sarcastic, but humans controlling robots from a distance has actually been tried before, and was promisingly successful: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/11/26/national/cafe-opens-robot-waiters-remotely-controlled-people-disabilities/#.XrsaixNKg00 https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/11/26/national/cafe-o....
- cameronbrown 6y agoTry deploying this at scale in a supermarket or warehouse...
- yters 6y agoI am not being sarcastic! The threshold for human controlled robots is much lower than fully autonomous robots.
- dr-detroit 6y agomost poor people have apple products yes but their data plan is shut off
- go13 6y agoI'm afraid of these socialist trends and statements. Hopefully, there will not be any new "revolution" where 'low-income' will vote for some populist who will make everyone "equal". And by "everyone" they normally mean middle/upper middle class because ultra-wealthy people operate in a bit different world than the rest of people. AND: Can't low earners take those high-earners who work remotely (programmers, for example) as an example and follow their path rather than complain about inequality? I had a mate who was a good example for me at some point which allowed me to progress in life. What would happen if i metaphorically i asked the government to get part of his salary to help me to be "equal"? Is this discovered life path not a valuable resource and example?
- shlom22 6y agoThe West will go full communism, and it will make life better for all of us - no more rent, work or paying for groceries and everything will be taken care of so we can be creative in our time
- go13 6y agowell.. wealth owners probably would lobby that not to happen, but surprisingly to me that is happening already contrary to any common sense.
- shlom22 6y agoThey will be made to sign it eventually by the people. Then we can all be a whole world as a country, one vision and full equality of resources and thoughts, and it will be beautiful
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoIf you think that the groceries are going to continue to show up on shelves in a world where nobody has to work, reality is going to hand you a very nasty surprise. If we're going to give stuff to everybody, somebody has to make the stuff. Merely redistributing money isn't going to solve that problem.
- jokit 6y agoThere is no situation where those with more resources don't have more resources. The best we can achieve is that each rightfully earns their resources.
- SergeAx 6y agoWhat? On the contrary, remote work levels inequality by allowing workers from low-income regions to take high-income remote positions.
- y-c-o-m-b 6y agoThis is a dangerous title and I hate it because the implication is remote work = bad. These stupid titles are what people (e.g. Marissa Mayer) refer to as evidence when trying to enforce non-telecommute cultures. The article itself is good and raises some serious questions worth discussing and even encourages finding ways to allow remote work for lower-income jobs, so I would have preferred "Remote work and solving inequality" or even "Remote work and inequality" as a title. I really wish "journalists" would stop writing opinionated and click-bait titles like this because it's really damaging to those of us that have livelihoods built around these things. If you're trying to bring attention to inequality so we can better the lives of more people then that's great, but don't do it at the expense of destroying other lives. I'm seeing more and more articles attacking remote work like this and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little anxious.
- renewiltord 6y agoEquality is not a thing I ever care to have a society optimized for. If you give me a planet, I don't care that everyone else has a galaxy. Simply optimize for the leading edge and the rest will get dragged along.
- jokit 6y agoWe should strive for the only equality possible, which is equality in face of the law. There is no other equality. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.
- dopu 6y agoRight, this is why the US GDP has grown by a factor of 20 in the past half century while adjusted average hourly wages haven't budged. What a frightfully naive point of view.
- rodiger 6y agoQoL has grown with GDP though, even for the below-middle-class. Hard to find even a low-income household without a microwave and a fridge today.
- renewiltord 6y agoLife for the below-middle-class is way better than before. Maternal mortality, infant mortality, calories consumed, appliances in the home, life expectancy all trending in the right direction. Life now for the average American is stupendously better than half a century ago. Over the last twenty years (over which the ATUS was active), time spent sleeping, time spent on leisure, and percent of people engaged in sports and recreation each day are also trending well. I don't care if I make a dollar and you make a billion if one dollar will provide for my entire life, and if that life is pleasant in an absolute sense. Equality is a false god.
- Avicebron 6y agoWhy is it a false god? "QoL Trending in the right direction" seems to be a very myopic way to view the world. When it's clear concentration of wealth has slowly eroded the dignity of many peoples lives, encouraging them to work longer and longer hours in jobs with less benefits "gigs/contracts" while being jerked around by increasingly powerful and untouchable classes of people. I've experienced this phenomenon very prominently in the life sciences industry where short term precarious contracts are handed out to lower income lab workers. Recently it has become more obvious as all of management has moved to remotely monitoring and dictating the worker's day to day activities while becoming increasingly out of touch with the realities of the people doing the actual work. This is real and also representative. When there is a culture of respect and dignity of all members of a society sharing similar goals, this sort of thing doesn't happen. Exploitation isn't expedited. Wages and equality are a form of that respect. It's not a false god when it performs a function of cultural cohesiveness, you could argue that is what a god does.. Final note: Keeping you're livestock healthy doesn't alleviate them from being livestock.
- aSplash0fDerp 6y agoI have yet to hear the phrase "making city money while living in the country", but we should see an uptick in personal utopias as the 21st century workforce matures in this new era. In the age of logistics, it is not inconceivable that manufacturing labor will also have the opportunity to have autonomous vehicles deliver the inventory needed to support the livelihood of residents such as garment workers and others with WFH options. "Work on Demand" has probably been accelerated by decades and would be a more viable option than many of the UBI proposals floating around to reverse mass unemployment in the long-term. All it takes is one IKEA set to start a chain reaction. Send it to worker 1 to assemble, worker 2 to disassemble and worker 3 to refurb/repackage and send it out again. I say that in jest, but they could have the white collar, blue collar and t-shirt (creatives) workers all on a positive financial trajectory at the same time if they manage the next wave of innovation and any real or manufactured crises well.
- dang 6y agoAll: this article deserves a better discussion than it's gotten so far. It's a rare thing: a new angle on one of the absolutely most-discussed topics here. That's interesting, regardless of where our reactions all land on agree/disagree, like/dislike, us/them and so on. If you're going to add comments to this thread, can you please engage with the specifics of the article?
- qu4ku 6y agoThis article got its central point not only wrong but patently wrong. Remote work puts downward pressure on the highest salaries [think globalisation but on a smaller scale — poor countries are main beneficiaries of globalisation]. People with a low amount of opportunities will have more opportunities [upward pressure] and the highest earners will need to compete with higher number of people [downward pressure]. It literally decreases inequality. The article points out that there is a difference in earnings and higher-earning jobs can be done remotely more often, which is not that valuable insight itself but it is meaningless in the context of inequality. People that have jobs that can't be done remotely are 'constant' in this equation — their situation won't change meaningfully.
- int_19h 6y agoWhy is it meaningless in the context of inequality? Inequality is a relative measure, so if higher-paying jobs become more lucrative, while lower-paying remain the same, inequality has increased. You can argue that inequality stemming from that doesn't actually matter, because nobody is worse off - but that's a different argument from whether remote work creates inequality or not.
- qu4ku 6y agoBut that is not what is going to happen. Jobs that can't be done remotely will be +/- constant — that's a simplification as there will be some second-order consequences like movements in real estate prices in both directions. Jobs that can be done remotely will become less lucrative [reasons above]. [There may be some second-order consequences like the unlocking of innovation, but that's speculative and hard to estimate economic impact here]. I have a personal, sad and rather extreme theory — anything that can be done remotely will be commoditized. But that's another story.
- oneiftwo 6y agoNot all work is equally valuable. Not all work is equally doable. Some work requires decades patience and sacrifice before one is competent enough to perform it. Some work is physically or cognitively beyond the vast majority of the population. It doesn't make sense to expect all jobs to have all the same benefits and privelegdes. Even if we pretend that all humans are fundamentally equal in ability, inequality will always exist, so long as humans are free to make choices in a world of finite resources and time. Moreso, inequality is not intrinsically bad, for it is a great motivator for the kind of innovation that raises the common floor, which is the more important measure. If you're able to eat, drink, and shelter during a global pandemic, while your entire country is on lockdown, and your economy has crawled to a standstill, then you're in a pretty good place.
- devcpp 6y agoTo add to this, forget qualifications and experience. If a job pays well, that in itself is undeniable proof that it has greater value, no justification needed. Capitalism works not because it rewards on someone's definition of merit, but because it rewards doing what people want.
- callmeal 6y agoThe sad part is that most of the jobs that have great value pay so little. Imagine considering sanitation, seasonal farming, teaching, childcare and other jobs as "low value". Says quite a lot about our values as a society doesn't it?
- tathougies 6y agoseasonal farming is not poorly paid: https://money.cnn.com/2012/11/27/news/economy/farming/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2012/11/27/news/economy/farming/index....
- xkapastel 6y agoI think the coronavirus has proven this to be false. Many of the so called "essential jobs" are low paid, but the "essential" label is an acknowledgement of their high value to society.
- barrenko 6y agoThere are no equals.
- vharuck 6y agoI wonder how much money would be saved by governments encouraging remote work. Less road repairs and widening highways for commuters, less concentration of consumer spending in cities that double in population during daytime. My small city's trying to revitalize itself, but the small number of well-paying jobs is starving new businesses of customers. The problem is, my small city would only benefit if it can convince outside corps to offer remote. But what leverage would my city have?
- buboard 6y agothis is a poorly thought article and full of strawmen Inequality between White collar work and blue collar work has existed for centuries and there is no evidence that remote work is making it either better or worse. Their interpretation of their graph is a strawman: office work is obviously easier to remotize. Inequality stems from supply/demand . There are non-remote workers on the high end of the spectrum (doctors, athletes etc) and there is a vast crowd of low paid workers that work remotely (freelancers, support phone centers etc). The fact that globalization increasing inequality is not news but, if anything, it affects remote workers more. Remote workers are also facing inequality, e.g. they are paid less if they live outside the bay area. If anything, by reducing the disparities in cost of living and housing everywhere, remote work is probably helping to reduce overall inequality. It will also move businesses (and their blue collar workers) away from traffic-heavy city centers and closer to where the remote workers are (their homes). Remote work can also be more costly in many ways: e.g. heating and A/C for houses is costlier than heating a shared office building during work hours. Personally, i spend more on food because i have no office cafeteria nearby. The benefits are mostly in quality of life and in having control of your life.
- intopieces 6y agoIt seems from the comments that a lot of the readers here equate "let's look at socioeconomic inequality" with "let's make sure everyone has the same socioeconomic outcome by bringing down the people who earn more." This is... a leap not found in this article. The idea is to make sure that we realize the knock-on effects of changes in the workforce / society and take measures to make sure people who have the ability to succeed aren't sidelined because of it. Seriously, some of these remedies should be fairly uncontroversial here: -Giving people computers -Making sure people have access to broadband -Looking at industries with low income workers and seeing if the governments can nudge them into the WFH model, so they can start to realize some of the positive outcomes that presents, which in some cases would be far more valuable to low-income workers. Imagine if a single mother working for $20k a year at an office could do that work from home? This topic is ripe for inventive ways to use technology to raise up individuals who have been traditionally left out. But for some reason the 6-fig crowd is reacting negative to a headline that uses the term "socioeconomic inequality."
- jupiter-nave 6y agoWhile I agree with your point, in a spirit of fairness, I think a lot of people are tired of being bludgeoned with "implication" rhetoric. "Socioeconomic inequality" is a pretty loaded term and some people use it to make others feel guilty or attempt a sweeping indictment of the society we live in. Many economists and sociologists use it more in the sense of this article, but it's not surprising that such an overloaded term sets some people off.
- jkingsbery 6y agoI agree. A less antagonistic title would be "How to Expand the Benefits of Remote Work To All." While it is literally true that socioeconomic inequality is increasing, it is increasing because one side is better off in a way that takes nothing away from the other side.
- gen220 6y agoI agree, we should see this for what it is: an unmet need to make WFH possible for more people and more job functions. My two cents on how we might "use technology to raise up individuals who have been traditionally left out": Our company employs 800-1000 "support"/"operations"-type roles, who normally commute to a call-center-esque "office" near Phoenix, AZ. When COVID-19 happened, our (brilliant) IT team had them set up to work from home in a weekend, since our call center tech stack was based on chrome books, RBAC services, g-suite, and mostly self-hosted or non-proprietary business-specific software. This is not the typical story, but there's no reason it shouldn't be. In the graphs shared here by the article, sales and operations-type roles are an outlier in terms of percentage of the economy, and percentage of the economy that "has no opportunity" to work from home. So, while the need for support centers is higher than ever, most call centers are letting people go or reducing their hours, because they can't fill their offices to capacity any more. This has a huge impact on those workers, because they are now either unemployed or are unable to make rent. Call center software is really old, and its antiquity is currently holding these companies back in a way that hurts their bottom lines. If you can package this call-center-in-a-chromebook as a service, you can simultaneously reduce inequality and make the economy more efficient, by enabling a remote WFH call center job, for companies who hire support/ops roles in the 1000s+.
- sokoloff 6y agoOne thing that I find curious about the initial chart of data from Canadian workers (percent who worked some hours at home by income group) is that while the trend is clearly more hours worked at home with more income, I'm not so sure that's an unambiguously good thing. "Are you able to work an entire day of your 40-hour workweek from home?" is a very different question from "Are you able to work your 45th through 60th hour of work from your home?" Pre-pandemic, if I'd been asked whether I could work some of my scheduled hours from home, I'd have answered "yes, absolutely" despite additionally spending 40-50 hours per week in the office. Sometimes, I think it would be refreshing to do something like airline pilot where I'd probably enjoy the job overall but that it was pretty clear there's no expectation that I'd fly an airliner in my non-work time.
- jedberg 6y ago> Sometimes, I think it would be refreshing to do something like airline pilot where I'd probably enjoy the job overall but that it was pretty clear there's no expectation that I'd fly an airliner in my non-work time. Yeah, I've only had jobs that can be done anywhere, which is both good and bad. It gives me flexibility but also expectations. Sometimes I envy my dentist friends. They make great money, but when they leave at 5:30pm, they are done for the day. Even their continuing education is scheduled into their in-office work day, as one of their benefits. On the flip side, they have to be in that office every day from 8:30 to 5:30. There is very little flexibility.
- Frondo 6y agoI sometimes -- well, I used to, heh -- share an office with a labor rep (i.e. someone who works for a union). I sometimes over hear their calls, and one of the last conversations I overheard before the pandemic really stuck with me. In reference to some kind of changing circumstance that was going to compel their rank and file to spend more time doing some work-related task, the labor rep said, "They're entitled to their time" with a kind of finality I envy. Absolutely no wiggle room around the question of, "should they be paid for every minute they spend on the clock for someone else's business." The ubiquity of salaried work really gets me sometimes.
- papaver-somnamb 6y agoAlright, narrower spreads in economic inequality appears to connote greater overall happiness in the measured society. Perhaps attributable to the averaging and not representative of the outliers, or demonstrable of modality, but that might be a separate argument. Northern European countries are famed for ranking near the top. The degree to which a society is advanced can be measured in part by how it treats its most disadvantaged members. And in the long run, we help ourselves by helping each other. But (playing the devil's advocate here) I'm interested in equalizing opportunity, not in equal outcome and artificial fairness. If this notion is ridiculous, would somebody care to enlighten / disillusion?
- Avicebron 6y agoBecause structurally one cannot do the first without doing the latter. If I have 100bn, my leverage over the people who help generated that is disproportionate. I can set up a self perpetuating lobby to government to make laws that make generations stuck in a cyclical system of poverty. Thus it's easier to exploit and make more money. Rinse. Repeat. By better maintaining a relatively tight "artificial fairness" it prevents the system from falling into one of the two extremes - everyone poor and struggling and one extremely powerful elite and the serfs.
- rmrfstar 6y agoThis is more evidence that the market clearing price for labor is irrational and inefficient. Most workers are not compensated for (a) the surplus value they generate, or (b) the risk they bear in work activities. This article goes to point (b). Point (a) is evident in [1], and is far more problematic as it leads to consolidated control over resources (physical and the ability to direct the daily activities of others). [1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jofi.12909 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jofi.12909
- ativzzz 6y agoI would argue that market rationality and efficiency described in economics textbooks does not exist, nor has ever existed.
- smabie 6y agoThen it should be pretty easy to make a ton of money in the market, no? What's great about finance is that if you believe there are persistent inefficiencies in the market, you can put your money where you mouth is and exploit them. As market participants might tell you though, the market is much more efficient than you might expect. But let's talk more about the efficient market hypothesis (EMH). Many have the misunderstanding that EMH is some sort of axiom that people actually believe. No one actually believes it to be literally true, but without EMH as a guiding principle, modern finance could not exist. The actions of many market participants creates the mostly/sometimes efficient market we have today. Put another way, in order for a market to be efficient, it needs participants who are arbitraging away the inefficiency. But because they are profiting off the (temporary) inefficiency, clearly the market isn't efficient!
- code_duck 6y agoIs there some sort of advantage to high income workers being forced to drive to an office every day?
- NortySpock 6y agoThey buy lunch downtown?
- code_duck 6y agoIs that really it though?
- 99chrisbard 6y agoTwitter encourages wfh. Let's do as much as we can from home.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y agoCan someone help me understand this? The thesis is that remote work is making inequality worse, but all they show is an association between working remote and income. Where's the thesis coming from? Even if it was a causal association, with more remote work causing higher incomes, that seems like a good thing.
- rob2312 6y ago> The higher a person’s salary, the most likely they are to be able to work from home and > employees unable to work from home, such as restaurant servers, personal trainers or manufacturing workers, may be laid off temporarily or permanently, a burden that seems to be falling disproportionately on low-income workers. People with higher salaries are more likely to be able to still work, whereas people with lower salaries in different sectors are far more likely to have been laid off due to the physical nature of the job. Hence poor people have been disproportionately hit, increasing income inequality.
- haihaibye 6y agoIf you can work remotely you're less likely to lose your job.
- mosselman 6y agoDisclaimer: I have just read the title of the article, looked at the first chart within it and read your comment. Your comment could basically be copy-pasted in any popular thread on HN and seem relevant. Much like a horoscope. Why don't you engage with the specifics of the article yourself so that we have an example of what properly engaging with the specifics entails? In fact, I'd find it interesting to read why you believe that others haven't.
- dang 6y agoIt's not true that all HN threads are like that, though it can be fun to make general claims about that. In reality there's a lot of variation in thread quality, and also in article quality. This is a case where the thread/article quality seemed particularly low; hence I posted that admonition. Funnily enough there was an inverse case at the same time (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23159028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23159028). (I detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23158853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23158853)
- downerending 6y agoLooking at it just now, this appears to be the money quote: Given its potential benefits, telecommuting is an attractive option to many. Studies have shown a substantial number of workers would even agree to a lower salary for a job that would allow them to work from home. The appeal of remote work can be especially strong during times of crisis, but also exists under more normal circumstances. The ongoing crisis therefore amplifies inequalities when it comes to financial and work-life balance benefits. This seems to be saying that workers often prefer remote work, and perhaps even more so at present. But, they're trading salary away for a work environment they prefer, which (by definition) lowers their monetary compensation, which is bad. Not sure what to make of that.
- macinjosh 6y agoThese sort of people see every trade-off or compromise a person might make in life as systemic oppression. If someone decides they don’t mind earning less if they get to work from home that’s their decision! No one is making them do this. No one goes to the car dealership expecting the premium trim for the standard trim price. This is no different. Like it or not we sell our time, attention, and effort in exchange for money. Different types and manner of work are worth different amounts. Our culture (sans pandemic) has begun to place more value on their life than their work so they make choices like this. It is a good thing to let me people do what works best for them.
- downerending 6y agoI agree that most of the time, people should be regarded as the final experts on what is best for them. In that context, do-gooders swooping in to "help" can seem rather presumptive. That said, sometimes we as a society do need to "swoop in". The obvious cases would be things like loan sharks, dealers of highly addictive drugs, etc. Right now remote work doesn't seem like one of those cases.
- taneq 6y agoAll economic activity is a source of socioeconomic inequality.
- x3blah 6y agoAre farmers considered to be "working from home"?
- mesozoic 6y agoSeems like it'd do the opposite.
- 0x8BADF00D 6y ago> The possibility of working remotely isn’t available to everyone, with one Canadian study estimating that only 44 per cent of jobs are compatible with telecommuting. Remote work is particularly common among university graduates, managers and professionals, but its practice also depends on the sector and the nature of the job. Finance, for example, compared to manufacturing, is more suitable to remote work. Consequently, many workers are deprived of an alternative that allows them to continue working during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. This is due to a couple of different things. Our system for organizing production is outdated. The joint stock corporation is an outdated system. We need something more akin to DAOs. Then employees will be as equally empowered. Additionally, the fiat monetary system encourages parasitism and inefficiency. With sound money, everyone can benefit. Unlike the current monetary system we have in place. Cryptocurrency is a poor store of value, but I think is valuable in denoting ownership of something. If you’re given tokens in a DAO, it should be a token or coin that denotes ownership rather than a store of value. This way those who take on the lion’s share of risk, whether they are early investors or employees, will be rewarded the most. It also flattens the management structure substantially. Not much room in a DAO for parasites. Because you need to put your money where your mouth is, so to speak. In summary, this inequality stems from outdated systems that need to be replaced. As I’ve stated in many previous comments, capitalism is the purest filter with which to perceive reality. There is no bullshit allowed. DAOs > corporations, crypto > stock ownership agreement.
- marcrosoft 6y agoThe word inequality is an oxymoron. If you were to wave a magic wand and redistribute wealth you would by definition make inequality because you would transfer wealth from those who create more value to those who don’t. Your end result would be “inequality”.
- csense 6y agoTFARE (The Following Are Roughly Equivalent): - (a) Jobs that can be done over the Internet - (b) Jobs that require specialized education and/or high general intelligence (so not everyone can do them) - (c) Jobs that pay high salaries Proof: (a) <-> (b) because both of these describe jobs dealing with information-like stuff (writing, websites, software). (b) <-> (c) by law of supply and demand. QED Question is, what's our society going to do with the masses of people who just aren't capable of doing the kind of job many of us have?
- juped 6y agoThe most interesting part (to me) is not touched on in the article - if expensive jobs can be done remotely from Gary, Indiana, they're not going to go to Gary natives who are currently underemployed, but to the same small crowd of well-off people who are just going to move to Gary, driving prices there up. I think this is the inequality that is interesting and matters.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y agoBut Gary, Indiana has a lot more room. In addition, the new well-off people will need coffee, and cars, and groceries, and be able to pay for them. This will rejuvenate other jobs. With more people with money who can now afford tickets and buy merchandise, maybe more bands will start playing in Gary, Indiana, improving the music scene. With more people with more disposable income, maybe some of them will be interested in local artwork. Now artists can move and live in Gary, Indiana. In addition, well-off people are interested in making sure their kids get a good education. So maybe they start pushing the city to improve public education. In addition, the increased home values and increased businesses are likely to result in greater increase in tax revenue, allowing more money to go to education. And the nice part is that Gary, Indiana got these benefits without having to try to bribe a large corporation to open an office with tax giveaways. You may or may not have more inequality, but I would argue that the people in Gary would be better off.
- onemoresoop 6y agoAbsolutely agree that their local economy would get better.
- taurath 6y agoHow is it different than trickle down economics? Won’t those coffee shops just be starbucks and grocery stores be Whole Foods and all the profit from them returned to shareholders?
- xmprt 6y agoWhat's the alternative? Everything stays the same? How would that help their economy?
- godelski 6y agoIt seems that for the most part these jobs require: low technical skill, physical presence, and low amounts of flexibility. These also seem like the types of jobs where a longer work week leads to more productivity, in that more "widgets" are produced (length of the work week is another hot topic here on HN). But these also seem like the jobs that are more vulnerable to automation. I'll give some examples. I'm seeing entire movie theaters remove the box office and use touch screens. This can reduce the number of needed staff by 20%. We see similar things at grocery stores (a single person can man 6+ registers, just needing to check an ID, which this can probably be automated soon). Clothing sales are moving online to places like Amazon. Etc. So how do we create a more fair economy? One where everyone has the opportunity to rise into jobs that they want? Get the education they need for that job? Do we let X% of the population just not be productive but still get a basic income? What's that do for mental health? Do we create meaningless jobs that are just jobs for the sake of a job? What's that do for mental health? How do we provide equal opportunities (not equal outcomes) for everyone? More importantly, how do we develop that kind of culture?
- monadic2 6y ago> So how do we create a more fair economy? Well the easiest way would be to forbid private capital.
- svieira 6y agoThat's an easy way to create a different kind of unfair economy, but not a way (by itself) to create a fair one. If there is no private capital there is no private ownership. If there is no private ownership then you're back in _The Republic_ ignoring the fact that Aristotle already pointed out the crucial flaw in that desire - people care more for what is their own than for what is held in common > For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill; as in families many attendants are often less useful than a few. Each citizen will have a thousand sons who will not be his sons individually but anybody will be equally the son of anybody, and will therefore be neglected by all alike. http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.2.two.html http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.2.two.html Or perhaps you're looking for the angels that Madison writes about in Federalist #51 to distribute all capital fairly without assigning ownership of any of it to those to whom it is distributed? > It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed51.asp https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed51.asp
- fragmede 6y agoIt's a highly political angle though, and the dynamics of HN (both the culture, but also the technology here - threaded with a simple up/down vote and a low engagement reply mechanism) don't handle those sort of discussions well. There are three levels on which to have an honest disagreement. Other than 0) plain misunderstanding (which I'm not counting), there's 1) a difference in philosophy, a 2) difference in information, and 3) difference in interpretation of said information. (Eg two people observing an interaction; one person could say it was rudely handled, and the other could say that it was totally fine.) In having a text input free-for-all, all 3 of those disagreements happen at once, as well as the 0th, plain misunderstanding. I've noticed that perceived or projected disagreement over fundamental philosophy seems to drive low-value threads (Eg "Covid-19's just like the flu."), with responses that are very, very hard to read charitably, dead comments, and snarky/throwaway/drive-by replies. There are half-baked experiments I wish I could run in order to fix it (like comment required to downvote; or downvoting requires a reason, eg: "-1; unnecessarily insulting." or "-1; trolling"), but; this isn't my forum to run those experiments on. Ultimately what I'm saying though is moderating this forum must be tiresome work sometimes, so thank you, Dang for the work you do trying to promote thoughtful discussion, especially during these unprecedented times. Especially since being a moderator doesn't scale!
- dang 6y agoPolitical discussions can't ever be very high-quality when they're open to literally anyone who wants to create an account. All it takes is enough activation energy to start flaming. But there are still many topics here with political overlap (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20political%20overlap&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...) that it doesn't make sense, or wouldn't work, to exclude. Thanks for the kind words about moderation. (We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23158853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23158853)
- mister_hn 6y agoThe whole thing is biased. If the so called "low-income workers" don't have this benefit (imagine: workers on system relevant jobs such as medicine, bakery, logistics, grocery), it means they deserve a higher pay than the actual one they receive. These jobs are equally-if-not-more-relevant than jobs in other fields and must not be always labelled as "poor jobs". Not all the jobs require a computer in this world. The ones who have to stay on place must receive a higher raise.