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People don't buy coffee on the way to work, people don't buy coffee on the way home, people don't buy sandwiches and snacks, people don't spend money on commuti

People don't buy coffee on the way to work, people don't buy coffee on the way home, people don't buy sandwiches and snacks, people don't spend money on commuting, people don't spend money at resturants for launch, companies stop having team lunches. So your argument that remote work harms the economy is because it hurts businesses that sell coffee for at least a 10x markup over what it would cost to make it yourself when the one advantage they offered - convenience - ceased to be relevant? Should we also mourn the demise of the horse and cart? That's not how economics works. The money that was being spent on coffees doesn't just disappear. It becomes available to spend on something else and the greater efficiency is a boon overall. As for things like transportation of commuters that's a clear win for both quality of life (less time wasted on journeys) and the environment (less pollution and consumption of resources for unnecessary journeys). And again economically what is lost in transport infrastructure might be gained in better communications infrastructure and technology that enable better working from home and bring other benefits as well. People don't go to cafes locally because they have a coffee machine at home. There's a cafe just down the road from my home. It's a family-run business that employs local people. Everything is made fresh and the quality of the food is significantly better than the average chain sandwich shop. They now have so many new staff working for them that I don't even know everyone's name any more. It must be at least 3x the scale they were pre-COVID. They are busy throughout the day with tradespeople stopping in on a break or parents with young families getting out out of the house for a while. Of course at lunchtime they are packed and even with the extra help and redesigned kitchen they now have there is usually still a bit of a wait at the peak time. My impression is that even when working from home a lot of people still like to get out of the house for a break now and then and still value the convenience of having a decent lunch made for them. I don't see the market for this kind of local place going anywhere. On the contrary the growth in demand has been obvious. Companies aren't just going to fire managers. That would be unfair. It's unfair to fire people who can't get results when literally the only reason to employ them is to improve results and they are demonstrably incompetent? That's an interesting perspective but I'm not sure it's going to result in a lot of groundbreaking economics papers getting published any time soon... Too early? Two-years in? Of course. Since COVID started we've seen huge changes in our lifestyles. We've seen patterns in property markets sharply disrupted. We've obviously seen business arrangements change fundamentally for a lot of knowledge workers. The way we shop has changed. The way we socialise has changed. Use of technology (by non-experts) has changed. Education has changed. How we think about our health and provide healthcare has changed. I would be surprised if we know what the "new normal" looks like before at least another 5-10 years have passed. I doubt it will ever be the same as the old normal no matter what a few dinosaurs in business and government might think about subjects like remote working. They'll simply be outcompeted by employers who offer a pleasant working environment and take care of their staff whether that's in a company building or at home or on the move or some mix of those.

ghaff 4y ago
>I would be surprised if we know what the "new normal" looks like before at least another 5-10 years have passed. I generally agree although a lot of things have generally drifted back to business as usual. However, other patterns still need to play out. The degree to which pre-pandemic office work for knowledge workers who can work remotely goes back to pre-pandemic patterns still has to play out and I suspect, for many, there will at least be greater flexibility in the future. Many US cities were still losing population 25 years ago. There's certainly no law of nature that younger educated people will continue to reverse this trend as they have the past couple of decades. Things like big in-person business conferences have come back to some degree but it's unclear if they'll ever be back to business-as-usual. The list goes on. I'm not sure the disruption will be as great as some envisioned but a lot of things were paused and it's unclear they will look the same as they unpause.
- Silhouette 4y ago
  I suspect you will be proved right that the changes often won't be as big as some have predicted. One of the surprises to me about the spike in working from home during COVID was how many people didn't really like it either because their work environment wasn't very good or just because they missed the direct communications and social aspect of working in an office together. Based on that I suspect we'll see a lot of hybrid arrangements in the future as well as some people preferring to work from home full time. I won't be surprised if we see some sort of local work hubs developing as well.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    For all the fervor here about remote work, a lot of people especially with fairly easy commutes prefer to go into an office many days for the environment, social aspect, work/life separation, change of scenery, etc. I worked for an analyst firm at one point and many people came in most days even though they usually didn't need to. Early on in the pandemic, there were lots of predictions about what pandemic activities would stay and which would be dropped/be much diminished. The evidence seems to suggest that things today are a lot more like the before times than they are different.

ghaff 4y ago

>I would be surprised if we know what the "new normal" looks like before at least another 5-10 years have passed. I generally agree although a lot of things have generally drifted back to business as usual. However, other patterns still need to play out. The degree to which pre-pandemic office work for knowledge workers who can work remotely goes back to pre-pandemic patterns still has to play out and I suspect, for many, there will at least be greater flexibility in the future. Many US cities were still losing population 25 years ago. There's certainly no law of nature that younger educated people will continue to reverse this trend as they have the past couple of decades. Things like big in-person business conferences have come back to some degree but it's unclear if they'll ever be back to business-as-usual. The list goes on. I'm not sure the disruption will be as great as some envisioned but a lot of things were paused and it's unclear they will look the same as they unpause.

Silhouette 4y ago
I suspect you will be proved right that the changes often won't be as big as some have predicted. One of the surprises to me about the spike in working from home during COVID was how many people didn't really like it either because their work environment wasn't very good or just because they missed the direct communications and social aspect of working in an office together. Based on that I suspect we'll see a lot of hybrid arrangements in the future as well as some people preferring to work from home full time. I won't be surprised if we see some sort of local work hubs developing as well.
- ghaff 4y ago
  For all the fervor here about remote work, a lot of people especially with fairly easy commutes prefer to go into an office many days for the environment, social aspect, work/life separation, change of scenery, etc. I worked for an analyst firm at one point and many people came in most days even though they usually didn't need to. Early on in the pandemic, there were lots of predictions about what pandemic activities would stay and which would be dropped/be much diminished. The evidence seems to suggest that things today are a lot more like the before times than they are different.