https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/poverty/4246551-us-employees-spend-51-daily-when-they-work-full-time-in-office-study-says/

  • Maoo [none/use name]
    ·
    1 year ago

    This is the real estate and therefore property taxes and therefore city hall angle. This is why cities and states were so easily convinced to pull back COVID protections. The City (TM) has been built up around the assumption that everyone needs to get to work (often by car), often eat lunch out, have a latte, go out after work for a drink, etc. City Hall has built itself on taxing property values (and sometimes corporate profits) driven by those activities, i.e. the concentration of office workers and service workers to make the lattes and lunches and drinks.

    Work from home undermines those property values and colocated service businesses.

    This is also a big part of why the real estate bubble is threatening to pop.

    The useful part of this analysis for organizing is that any socialist in office needs to work on decoupling municipal income from property values and explain it in these terms. It's one of the major ways in which the chamber of commerce dictates local politics so that even the few progressives will reluctantly oppose your agenda. If you are involved in creating capital investment projects via initiatives or petitions etc, you want to design the tax to pay for it to be decoupled from property values.