There's a major issue in American cities that is unmentionable in polite society: the so-called Curley Effect [0], named after a Boston politician who drove th

There's a major issue in American cities that is unmentionable in polite society: the so-called Curley Effect [0], named after a Boston politician who drove the old Boston Brahmins out of their city by taxing them out of town and pandering to Irish immigrants, making the city as a whole poorer. It turns out that politics is not so straightforward as to reward politicians who improve their cities: instead, a politician can leverage group (ethnic, racial, whatever) differences to reward supporters with largesse designed to render them dependent on the politician, while driving out those who, by nature of their independence, could oppose the politician. In effect, there is a substantial likelihood that American cities decay because politicians consolidate power through the kinds of high taxes and poor services that drive away high earners. WFH workers are very independent: they could move to a city or from it with no regard for the job market. That makes them prime targets for eliminating from a city under the Curley effect. [0] https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/shleifer/files/curley_effect.pdf https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/shleifer/files/curley_effe...