7.8 billion people living in the ruin of the old world
November 14, 2020 3:28 PM Subscribe
What must we do to rebuild? Metafilter's favourite German bank has some thoughts about what global society might take to rebuild 'democratic capitalism' in the wake of Covid-19. For starters, a 5% tax on anyone who enjoys the privilege of working from home.
Other areas they consider:
Enable a hydrogen Economy, built on non-green hydrogen for at least the first ten years.
Fundamental right to connectivity.
'Radical urbanism' and avoiding zombie cities.
A 'Realistic' Green Deal.
Help young people (before they come for us*).
If that doesn't hook you they have other thoughts too.
(*I paraphrase)
Other areas they consider:
Enable a hydrogen Economy, built on non-green hydrogen for at least the first ten years.
Fundamental right to connectivity.
'Radical urbanism' and avoiding zombie cities.
A 'Realistic' Green Deal.
Help young people (before they come for us*).
If that doesn't hook you they have other thoughts too.
(*I paraphrase)
Deutsche Bank, which funded Auschwitz, Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and ISIS, wants you to consider your privilege.
posted by Former Congressional Representative Lenny Lemming at 3:39 PM on November 14, 2020 [113 favorites]
posted by Former Congressional Representative Lenny Lemming at 3:39 PM on November 14, 2020 [113 favorites]
I don't think I'm going to take any advice from the people who thought it was a good idea to loan the Orange Shitgibbon a load of buckaroos.
posted by Gyre,Gimble,Wabe, Esq. at 3:39 PM on November 14, 2020 [12 favorites]
posted by Gyre,Gimble,Wabe, Esq. at 3:39 PM on November 14, 2020 [12 favorites]
i read this. i call "bullshit". or at least redistribute all the cash businesses save on facilities to employees, not management. and give me a tax deduction for co-opting my private residence as an office. and put a 5% tax on management because they've known for 15 years they could do this and stay profitable. but they're control freaks who think everyone would slack, cause that's what they'd do. /rant
posted by j_curiouser at 3:40 PM on November 14, 2020 [75 favorites]
posted by j_curiouser at 3:40 PM on November 14, 2020 [75 favorites]
Well, obviously banks have a target on their back since they did incredibly well (DB outperformed SP500 by 27 percent YTD) with the stimulus cash plan, so this is a clever share-the-pain tactic.
posted by pwnguin at 3:41 PM on November 14, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by pwnguin at 3:41 PM on November 14, 2020 [5 favorites]
why a tax on WFH?? isn't it better in so many ways to have a larger WFH demo? tax the companies that require unnecessary onsite workers.
team slicy boi!
posted by supermedusa at 3:48 PM on November 14, 2020 [26 favorites]
team slicy boi!
posted by supermedusa at 3:48 PM on November 14, 2020 [26 favorites]
Ha ha ha fuckity no.
posted by acb at 3:49 PM on November 14, 2020 [17 favorites]
posted by acb at 3:49 PM on November 14, 2020 [17 favorites]
as someone at my fully-remote job pointed out, DeutscheBank has an awful lot invested in commercial real-estate property (like the kind that serve as the office that people work in) - they're not a disinterested party
posted by kokaku at 3:50 PM on November 14, 2020 [71 favorites]
posted by kokaku at 3:50 PM on November 14, 2020 [71 favorites]
This is incredibly stupid. A flat 5% would be incredibly regressive. It would also act as a disincentive to work remotely.
Why not, you know, just pay for it as a government program through normal,
progressive taxation.
Or take the money from the billionaires who have profited enormously from the pandemic.
posted by jedicus at 3:50 PM on November 14, 2020 [42 favorites]
Why not, you know, just pay for it as a government program through normal,
progressive taxation.
Or take the money from the billionaires who have profited enormously from the pandemic.
posted by jedicus at 3:50 PM on November 14, 2020 [42 favorites]
Why do we want to discourage remote work again?
posted by leotrotsky at 3:52 PM on November 14, 2020 [13 favorites]
posted by leotrotsky at 3:52 PM on November 14, 2020 [13 favorites]
It really felt like the whole “we don’t need offices anymore” moment could have gone a couple different ways, and as usual, it’s heading the bad way.
I mean, it could have been a moment to seriously reconsider work, and the idea that the work that we do, most of it, takes much, much less time that we thought, and that a large amount of our actual productivity is sapped by commutes, endless meetings, and just killing time until the end of the day. Goals and production based employment, where hours are shorter, and people manage to take back some of their lives, to develop hobbies, spend time with families, all of that. People realizing that telework doesn’t mean their job has to determine where they live.
Instead, we’re getting always on cameras, managers dictating what homes can and can’t look like, eye tracking software, and all of that fun shit. Companies talking about reworking salaries to reflect cost of living to offset workers deciding to move out of housing Armageddon areas like Silicon Valley. And here, from Douchebank, we’re getting by god actual company store talk, at least in its larval form.
And sure, not every manager or company is tracking eye movements while you type. Not yet. But when the time comes that someone makes an argument for how that management style can wring an extra .0001 of a cent per day per employee (even if there’s no data whatsoever to back it up, just a really convincing power point presentation), how long does the company let its lax management style cut into their profits? Christ, think of all the people incensed that, under their desks, workers might be in pajamas?
It was there, a slightly more pleasant, less soul crushing work from home world, but we’ll just have to settle for waving to it as the car turns away, following the shitty everything-must-be-optimized path we’ve been on.
posted by Ghidorah at 3:55 PM on November 14, 2020 [32 favorites]
I mean, it could have been a moment to seriously reconsider work, and the idea that the work that we do, most of it, takes much, much less time that we thought, and that a large amount of our actual productivity is sapped by commutes, endless meetings, and just killing time until the end of the day. Goals and production based employment, where hours are shorter, and people manage to take back some of their lives, to develop hobbies, spend time with families, all of that. People realizing that telework doesn’t mean their job has to determine where they live.
Instead, we’re getting always on cameras, managers dictating what homes can and can’t look like, eye tracking software, and all of that fun shit. Companies talking about reworking salaries to reflect cost of living to offset workers deciding to move out of housing Armageddon areas like Silicon Valley. And here, from Douchebank, we’re getting by god actual company store talk, at least in its larval form.
And sure, not every manager or company is tracking eye movements while you type. Not yet. But when the time comes that someone makes an argument for how that management style can wring an extra .0001 of a cent per day per employee (even if there’s no data whatsoever to back it up, just a really convincing power point presentation), how long does the company let its lax management style cut into their profits? Christ, think of all the people incensed that, under their desks, workers might be in pajamas?
It was there, a slightly more pleasant, less soul crushing work from home world, but we’ll just have to settle for waving to it as the car turns away, following the shitty everything-must-be-optimized path we’ve been on.
posted by Ghidorah at 3:55 PM on November 14, 2020 [32 favorites]
Why do we want to discourage remote work again?
Because the small businesses money center banks invested in -- strip mail restaurants, car dealerships, dry cleaners-- are fucked if work from home becomes the norm. And DB surely has plenty to lose when their customers fade.
posted by pwnguin at 3:56 PM on November 14, 2020 [6 favorites]
Because the small businesses money center banks invested in -- strip mail restaurants, car dealerships, dry cleaners-- are fucked if work from home becomes the norm. And DB surely has plenty to lose when their customers fade.
posted by pwnguin at 3:56 PM on November 14, 2020 [6 favorites]
Why do we want to discourage remote work again?
Those with stakes in commercial landlords presumably would like to.
posted by acb at 3:56 PM on November 14, 2020 [11 favorites]
Those with stakes in commercial landlords presumably would like to.
posted by acb at 3:56 PM on November 14, 2020 [11 favorites]
Deutsche Bank’s prior historical suggestions
Central Heating Tax
Running Water Tax
Rat Free Home Tax
Child Survival to Adulthood Tax
Roof Tax
Wheel Tax
Cave Tax
posted by leotrotsky at 3:56 PM on November 14, 2020 [28 favorites]
Central Heating Tax
Running Water Tax
Rat Free Home Tax
Child Survival to Adulthood Tax
Roof Tax
Wheel Tax
Cave Tax
posted by leotrotsky at 3:56 PM on November 14, 2020 [28 favorites]
Instead, we’re getting always on cameras, managers dictating what homes can and can’t look like, eye tracking software, and all of that fun shit.
In the EU, this is less likely than in the Anglosphere, as union-busting isn't as accepted here, so presumably if it comes to the EU, it will do so last.
Occasionally I consider moving back to Australia or (were Brexit not an ongoing catastrophe) the UK. Things like this give me pause.
posted by acb at 3:59 PM on November 14, 2020 [4 favorites]
In the EU, this is less likely than in the Anglosphere, as union-busting isn't as accepted here, so presumably if it comes to the EU, it will do so last.
Occasionally I consider moving back to Australia or (were Brexit not an ongoing catastrophe) the UK. Things like this give me pause.
posted by acb at 3:59 PM on November 14, 2020 [4 favorites]
Ha, I went to look up the author, Luke Templeman, to see past the headline grabbing article and see if he has done some seroius research into this. He's completely wiped his online presence. His LinkedIn profile is still in Google's search index but gone from LinkedIn. Same with Twitter and similar social media. Usually authors who post articles like this are trying to also build a brand, looks like he got caught in a bad situation.
posted by geoff. at 3:59 PM on November 14, 2020 [24 favorites]
posted by geoff. at 3:59 PM on November 14, 2020 [24 favorites]
And sure, not every manager or company is tracking eye movements while you type. Not yet. But when the time comes that someone makes an argument for how that management style can wring an extra .0001 of a cent per day per employee (even if there’s no data whatsoever to back it up, just a really convincing power point presentation), how long does the company let its lax management style cut into their profits? Christ, think of all the people incensed that, under their desks, workers might be in pajamas?
Most managers don’t add value, and they’re terrified that work from home has demonstrated that, and they’re flailing to justify their jobs. That’s where the dumb tracking shit comes from.
Skilled workers will vote with their feet. Not being a shitty workplace is a competitive advantage for recruiting high skill workers.
posted by leotrotsky at 4:00 PM on November 14, 2020 [5 favorites]
Most managers don’t add value, and they’re terrified that work from home has demonstrated that, and they’re flailing to justify their jobs. That’s where the dumb tracking shit comes from.
Skilled workers will vote with their feet. Not being a shitty workplace is a competitive advantage for recruiting high skill workers.
posted by leotrotsky at 4:00 PM on November 14, 2020 [5 favorites]
Ha, I went to look up the author, Luke Templeman, to see past the headline grabbing article and see if he has done some seroius research into this. He's completely wiped his online presence. His LinkedIn profile is still in Google's search index but gone from LinkedIn. Same with Twitter and similar social media. Usually authors who post articles like this are trying to also build a brand, looks like he got caught in a bad situation.
Looks like he’s just paid the evil minion tax, huh?
posted by leotrotsky at 4:02 PM on November 14, 2020 [6 favorites]
Looks like he’s just paid the evil minion tax, huh?
posted by leotrotsky at 4:02 PM on November 14, 2020 [6 favorites]
Well, 10 Downing Street may be looking for a new evil mastermind...
posted by acb at 4:06 PM on November 14, 2020
posted by acb at 4:06 PM on November 14, 2020
Well, 10 Downing Street may be looking for a new evil mastermind...
I hear you can become the U. S. President just by tweeting "I WON!"
posted by lock robster at 4:13 PM on November 14, 2020 [18 favorites]
I hear you can become the U. S. President just by tweeting "I WON!"
posted by lock robster at 4:13 PM on November 14, 2020 [18 favorites]
this is a plan to save Deutsche Bank, not a plan to save the economy
posted by chiquitita at 4:52 PM on November 14, 2020 [17 favorites]
posted by chiquitita at 4:52 PM on November 14, 2020 [17 favorites]
and give me a tax deduction for co-opting my private residence as an office.
With my accountant's approval, I've been writing off as a business expense the square footage I use for my home office for years (ie: percentage of rent, utilities etc). I'm in Canada.
posted by philip-random at 5:09 PM on November 14, 2020 [5 favorites]
With my accountant's approval, I've been writing off as a business expense the square footage I use for my home office for years (ie: percentage of rent, utilities etc). I'm in Canada.
posted by philip-random at 5:09 PM on November 14, 2020 [5 favorites]
this is a plan to save Deutsche Bank, not a plan to save the economy
Nation’s Stray Dogs Call For Increased Wino Vomit Production
posted by acb at 5:15 PM on November 14, 2020 [15 favorites]
Nation’s Stray Dogs Call For Increased Wino Vomit Production
posted by acb at 5:15 PM on November 14, 2020 [15 favorites]
This entire document is hilariously mendacious. I’m a little bit surprised they dared publish it in this form, rather than laundering it via roundtables and conferences and the like (although perhaps they felt COVID meant they couldn’t do the usual).
posted by aramaic at 5:36 PM on November 14, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by aramaic at 5:36 PM on November 14, 2020 [5 favorites]
Maybe the Deutsche Bank scumbags should be first held to account for suspicious transactions amounting to over $1 trillion dollars before they tell the peons what to do. A little bit of public shaming in town squares is sometimes deeply missed.
posted by adamvasco at 5:44 PM on November 14, 2020 [15 favorites]
posted by adamvasco at 5:44 PM on November 14, 2020 [15 favorites]
Because the small businesses money center banks invested in -- strip mail restaurants, car dealerships, dry cleaners-- are fucked if work from home becomes the norm.
I genuinely don't understand the point you're trying to make here, especially with your given examples.
AFAIK restaurants, even strip mall ones, do most of their business on evenings and weekends, and I don't see how a lack of commuters is necessarily going to impact that. Maybe a handful of "downtown" places rely on weekday lunch or after-work happy hours to make their nut and would be affected.
Why would WFH affect car dealerships? People are still going to want to test drive cars, even if we move to a largely WFH environment and dealerships continue to do dropoffs like they've been doing in COVID, they still need to have cars in stock and somewhere to put them and staff to drop off and pick up and salespeople to actually push the sale to happen. Maybe at some future point it's all automated & online, but that's a lot further away than a WFH expansion.
Dry cleaners may well take somewhat of a hit with fewer people needing to get business clothes cleaned and needing it less often. Are there that many dry cleaners propping up commercial banks?
I could see arguing that commercial office real estate will be in real trouble even with a modest increase in WFH, I just don't see how you're coming to the conclusion that small service businesses are going to be fucked by WFH. Hell, in the more optimistic WFH scenarios they may well thrive - if everybody can take a 2-hour "lunch" because productivity (and pay) has stayed the same with greater time flexibility and no need to travel to some building miles away every day, why not go hit that strip mall restaurant and then test drive a different car every day of the week? You've got the time, you're not trying to jam it in on Tuesday between work and picking up the kids from soccer practice.
posted by soundguy99 at 6:19 PM on November 14, 2020
I genuinely don't understand the point you're trying to make here, especially with your given examples.
AFAIK restaurants, even strip mall ones, do most of their business on evenings and weekends, and I don't see how a lack of commuters is necessarily going to impact that. Maybe a handful of "downtown" places rely on weekday lunch or after-work happy hours to make their nut and would be affected.
Why would WFH affect car dealerships? People are still going to want to test drive cars, even if we move to a largely WFH environment and dealerships continue to do dropoffs like they've been doing in COVID, they still need to have cars in stock and somewhere to put them and staff to drop off and pick up and salespeople to actually push the sale to happen. Maybe at some future point it's all automated & online, but that's a lot further away than a WFH expansion.
Dry cleaners may well take somewhat of a hit with fewer people needing to get business clothes cleaned and needing it less often. Are there that many dry cleaners propping up commercial banks?
I could see arguing that commercial office real estate will be in real trouble even with a modest increase in WFH, I just don't see how you're coming to the conclusion that small service businesses are going to be fucked by WFH. Hell, in the more optimistic WFH scenarios they may well thrive - if everybody can take a 2-hour "lunch" because productivity (and pay) has stayed the same with greater time flexibility and no need to travel to some building miles away every day, why not go hit that strip mall restaurant and then test drive a different car every day of the week? You've got the time, you're not trying to jam it in on Tuesday between work and picking up the kids from soccer practice.
posted by soundguy99 at 6:19 PM on November 14, 2020
hai i m slicey boi.
i came 4 yor despots...
i left with sum of them.
posted by sexyrobot at 6:19 PM on November 14, 2020 [3 favorites]
i came 4 yor despots...
i left with sum of them.
posted by sexyrobot at 6:19 PM on November 14, 2020 [3 favorites]
Car dealerships don't make money off of test drives; they make money from people buying cars, which will happen less if they aren't commuting every day.
posted by soelo at 6:21 PM on November 14, 2020 [12 favorites]
posted by soelo at 6:21 PM on November 14, 2020 [12 favorites]
Those who can work from home tend to have higher-than-average incomes. If we assume the average salary of a person who chooses to work from home in the US is $55,000, a tax of five per cent works out to just over $10 per working day. That is roughly the amount an office worker might spend on commuting, lunch, and laundry etc.
This paragraph is what everything else hinges on and it is literally just "here are some numbers I pulled straight outta my ass."
First, the tax will only apply outside the times when the government advises people to work from home
So, do governments really need some extra financial incentives to not do lockdown properly and to keep people going into work? Because it seems like most western governments have been doing a plenty shitty job of lockdown without this kind of help.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:21 PM on November 14, 2020 [10 favorites]
This paragraph is what everything else hinges on and it is literally just "here are some numbers I pulled straight outta my ass."
First, the tax will only apply outside the times when the government advises people to work from home
So, do governments really need some extra financial incentives to not do lockdown properly and to keep people going into work? Because it seems like most western governments have been doing a plenty shitty job of lockdown without this kind of help.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:21 PM on November 14, 2020 [10 favorites]
AFAIK restaurants, even strip mall ones, do most of their business on evenings and weekends, and I don't see how a lack of commuters is necessarily going to impact that.
I'd expect WFH to reduce the number of people getting something on the way home because some people have more opportunity to cook at home.
Why would WFH affect car dealerships?
Many two-car families might downsize to one.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:25 PM on November 14, 2020 [7 favorites]
I'd expect WFH to reduce the number of people getting something on the way home because some people have more opportunity to cook at home.
Why would WFH affect car dealerships?
Many two-car families might downsize to one.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:25 PM on November 14, 2020 [7 favorites]
they make money from people buying cars, which will happen less if they aren't commuting every day.
Many two-car families might downsize to one
Fair points - I still think there's a pretty fair distance between "reduced business" and "fucked."
posted by soundguy99 at 6:30 PM on November 14, 2020 [1 favorite]
Many two-car families might downsize to one
Fair points - I still think there's a pretty fair distance between "reduced business" and "fucked."
posted by soundguy99 at 6:30 PM on November 14, 2020 [1 favorite]
If there was a 25% reduction in car purchase volume it would probably correlate pretty strongly with a 25% reduction in number of dealers.
posted by Mitheral at 6:40 PM on November 14, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by Mitheral at 6:40 PM on November 14, 2020 [2 favorites]
I would like to note my feeling that the idea of a 5% tax on working from home is an insult to the disabled who might finally get a job, or need to convert to WFH after becoming disabled. So give this guy a cactus colonic and send him down the steps.
posted by mephron at 7:08 PM on November 14, 2020 [31 favorites]
posted by mephron at 7:08 PM on November 14, 2020 [31 favorites]
Also given that many employers aren’t giving their remote employees adequate (or any) compensation for office furniture, higher wages to afford a dedicated work space, higher utility costs, etc, putting a 5% tax on top of it is adding injury to injury.
posted by jedicus at 7:21 PM on November 14, 2020 [23 favorites]
posted by jedicus at 7:21 PM on November 14, 2020 [23 favorites]
Also given that many employers aren’t giving their remote employees adequate (or any) compensation for office furniture
Its hard to feel bad about this in the general course of 2020, but the home office stipend I got covered.... half a chair. Easily the best home office chair I've ever had, and in many ways better than the chairs at HQ. The desk, on the other hand, is a folding table I got off amazon a few years back.
posted by pwnguin at 7:36 PM on November 14, 2020 [5 favorites]
Its hard to feel bad about this in the general course of 2020, but the home office stipend I got covered.... half a chair. Easily the best home office chair I've ever had, and in many ways better than the chairs at HQ. The desk, on the other hand, is a folding table I got off amazon a few years back.
posted by pwnguin at 7:36 PM on November 14, 2020 [5 favorites]
Why we talking slicey bois, sunlight is known to destroy bloodsucking monsters
posted by StarkRoads at 8:14 PM on November 14, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by StarkRoads at 8:14 PM on November 14, 2020 [3 favorites]
Without adding to the pile-on on taxing me for shouldering costs that my employer used to have to cover....
Hydrogen is a non-starter. The EROI (Energy Return on Energy Invested or the ratio of energy used in production to the energy obtained) is about 1:4 and there is little prospect of improving that. Hydrogen is promoted by fuel companies who see it as a way to leverage their existing distribution infrastructure. But it isn't going to work.
One gets the sense that Deutsche Bank is searching for ways to preserve the existing order. But we cannot. We must downshift.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 8:23 PM on November 14, 2020 [8 favorites]
Hydrogen is a non-starter. The EROI (Energy Return on Energy Invested or the ratio of energy used in production to the energy obtained) is about 1:4 and there is little prospect of improving that. Hydrogen is promoted by fuel companies who see it as a way to leverage their existing distribution infrastructure. But it isn't going to work.
One gets the sense that Deutsche Bank is searching for ways to preserve the existing order. But we cannot. We must downshift.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 8:23 PM on November 14, 2020 [8 favorites]
my name is guil
wen incomes rise
(for 1%
not other guis)
I rais my blayd
to highest heck
then chop back down
I slice the nek
too dark?
posted by taquito sunrise at 8:36 PM on November 14, 2020 [41 favorites]
wen incomes rise
(for 1%
not other guis)
I rais my blayd
to highest heck
then chop back down
I slice the nek
too dark?
posted by taquito sunrise at 8:36 PM on November 14, 2020 [41 favorites]
I could see FWH really contributing to hollowing out the retail services offered in office-heavy downtowns. I expect a fair amount of substitution away from restaurants among those workers since you have your home kitchen to make a sandwich or heat up leftovers for lunch right there without needing to have packaged it up ahead of time (but I have always made my own food and may overestimate other's willingness to do so).
OTOH the reduction in car sales is good. We want fewer lives and hours wasted commuting and less carbon going into transportation. With the rise of ubiquitous on-demand ridesharing and say 1 day per week in an office downsizing to 1 car would be really feasible even for 2-income households. Less energy, chemical waste, etc in dry cleaning is also a good.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 8:46 PM on November 14, 2020 [6 favorites]
OTOH the reduction in car sales is good. We want fewer lives and hours wasted commuting and less carbon going into transportation. With the rise of ubiquitous on-demand ridesharing and say 1 day per week in an office downsizing to 1 car would be really feasible even for 2-income households. Less energy, chemical waste, etc in dry cleaning is also a good.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 8:46 PM on November 14, 2020 [6 favorites]
The whole point of this essay is to convince you that an unambiguously good thing is somehow Bad. That’s it. That’s the whole reason they wrote it; they profit from things that are clearly bad for everyone involved except them, so now they must convince us that a good thing is now Bad. DB is especially skilled at this, and especially monstrous thereby.
posted by aramaic at 9:23 PM on November 14, 2020 [15 favorites]
posted by aramaic at 9:23 PM on November 14, 2020 [15 favorites]
5% is like a how much corporations right off waste, over production and money shortages.
It's like saying, we cannot see you or make you work faster.
5% same as in town.
posted by clavdivs at 9:50 PM on November 14, 2020 [2 favorites]
It's like saying, we cannot see you or make you work faster.
5% same as in town.
posted by clavdivs at 9:50 PM on November 14, 2020 [2 favorites]
WFH is killing a lot of restaurants in NZ. Many were dependent on lunchtime business that is not coming back. There have been exhortations to go back to work in the office so the restaurant industry does not collapse.
posted by rednikki at 9:53 PM on November 14, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by rednikki at 9:53 PM on November 14, 2020 [5 favorites]
Here's an article on the inequal impact on restaurants: The Death of the $15 Salad
posted by meowzilla at 10:13 PM on November 14, 2020 [6 favorites]
posted by meowzilla at 10:13 PM on November 14, 2020 [6 favorites]
At least 4 car dealers near me have closed in the last three months. This is not the US but I'm sure there are other countries where this happening too.
posted by bifurcated at 12:29 AM on November 15, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by bifurcated at 12:29 AM on November 15, 2020 [2 favorites]
Maybe a handful of "downtown" places rely on weekday lunch or after-work happy hours to make their nut and would be affected.
It's not a "handful" it's an entire industry that has been gutted by this. "Downtown" is, in most of the world, a concentration of office buildings where people work, for some definitions of the word. Stretched out around them is a delicate web of hundreds of businesses and industries that make the city work. As alluded to with the article meowzilla linked, many, many of the office workers used to frequent businesses for lunch, and they aren't now. Either office workers are in full WFH, or, as here in Tokyo, there are companies that outright enacted policies telling workers they were no longer allowed to sit down in a restaurant for lunch (i.e. takeout only, or bring food from home), and that's brutal to restaurants that were already operating on incredibly thin margins. Again, here in Tokyo, friends of mine running bars and restaurants are terrified of how badly this winter is going to go. Workers in offices, those bars and restaurants exist because there was a demand for them. Workers want lunch, there are restaurants that serve it. Workers want a drink after work, or don't cook at home, so they want food and drink, and restaurants and bars supply that.
When restaurants start to go under, they stop being able to pay suppliers. When suppliers start to go under, agriculture starts to feel the pinch. Hell, outside of restaurants, what about office cleaning staff (nearly always outsourced/contract labor, so the company using the service doesn't have to worry about unemployment or benefits)? All of these businesses that have sprung up to be the support network that made it possible for downtown to exist, they're being hollowed out by corona, and if/when WFH becomes the standard, you're going to see a shocking level of business closures. Hell, I would imagine any company that's gone so far as to talk about a long term switch to WFH has started identifying the office support staff (clerical, etc) that make offices workable, but will be "unnecessary" in a WFH environment.
Offices don't exist in a vacuum, and when they're empty, the businesses that sprang up to support them are going to crash, hard.
posted by Ghidorah at 1:33 AM on November 15, 2020 [16 favorites]
It's not a "handful" it's an entire industry that has been gutted by this. "Downtown" is, in most of the world, a concentration of office buildings where people work, for some definitions of the word. Stretched out around them is a delicate web of hundreds of businesses and industries that make the city work. As alluded to with the article meowzilla linked, many, many of the office workers used to frequent businesses for lunch, and they aren't now. Either office workers are in full WFH, or, as here in Tokyo, there are companies that outright enacted policies telling workers they were no longer allowed to sit down in a restaurant for lunch (i.e. takeout only, or bring food from home), and that's brutal to restaurants that were already operating on incredibly thin margins. Again, here in Tokyo, friends of mine running bars and restaurants are terrified of how badly this winter is going to go. Workers in offices, those bars and restaurants exist because there was a demand for them. Workers want lunch, there are restaurants that serve it. Workers want a drink after work, or don't cook at home, so they want food and drink, and restaurants and bars supply that.
When restaurants start to go under, they stop being able to pay suppliers. When suppliers start to go under, agriculture starts to feel the pinch. Hell, outside of restaurants, what about office cleaning staff (nearly always outsourced/contract labor, so the company using the service doesn't have to worry about unemployment or benefits)? All of these businesses that have sprung up to be the support network that made it possible for downtown to exist, they're being hollowed out by corona, and if/when WFH becomes the standard, you're going to see a shocking level of business closures. Hell, I would imagine any company that's gone so far as to talk about a long term switch to WFH has started identifying the office support staff (clerical, etc) that make offices workable, but will be "unnecessary" in a WFH environment.
Offices don't exist in a vacuum, and when they're empty, the businesses that sprang up to support them are going to crash, hard.
posted by Ghidorah at 1:33 AM on November 15, 2020 [16 favorites]
The thing about labour-saving devices is that they save labour.
Given that pretty much the entire history of technology can be summed up as humanity inventing ever more effective labour-saving devices, the amount of labour required to sustain a present-day lifestyle has been trending steadily downward and I can see no reason why it would ever stop doing so.
Since approximately the end of the Second World War, policy makers have been reacting to this by promoting compensatory increases in the material consumption generally regarded as defining an acceptable lifestyle, so as to keep the amount of labour required by the economy roughly the same. This is marketed as an "increasing standard of living" and because most people don't spend much time deconstructing the prevailing propaganda it's been widely accepted as a universal good.
But especially since the self-accelerating information technologies really started to hit their straps in the sixties and seventies, the pace at which technologies save labour has increasingly been outrunning the rate at which most people can be persuaded to accept new kinds of luxury as unavoidably necessary. Note that both of these effects are indeed increasing at accelerating rates - but technological capability is increasing faster.
And yes, there are always new kinds of labour that technological advances expose a use for; but the overall effect of technological advances is and always has been to save - i.e. reduce - labour overall. This creates a structural relative oversupply of available labour that leads inevitably to reduced prices for the sale of it.
I can't see humanity giving up on inventing labour-saving devices, regardless of prevailing economic model. Capitalism, socialism, doesn't matter. Collectively we're really really good at implementing new ways to make hard work easier and I can't see that ever changing.
So it seems to me that if we're going to achieve anything even vaguely resembling an equitable apportionment of the resources available on this planet, at some point we're going to have to accept that we don't need to work anywhere near as hard as we did a hundred years ago, increase the general rate of passive income, and reduce the general reliance on selling our labour as the primary mechanism for allocating wealth.
At present, passive incomes are really only available to people who are already very wealthy. Such people receive passive incomes roughly in proportion to their existing wealth, and this creates the positive feedback loop that has lead to the grotesque inequalities we see everywhere today.
And no, unemployment benefits don't count as passive income. These are available only to people willing to perform some arbitrarily decided amount of the onerous and largely meaningless work of documenting their participation in the approved ritual forms of failure to be the one of several hundred applicants for every available job who actually gets it. Being a recipient of unemployment benefits is indistinguishable, economically speaking, from being employed in a totally bullshit job with a ridiculously low hourly rate and ridiculously high marginal income tax.
Whether we call our more widespread passive income a "universal basic income" or a "universal sovereign wealth fund dividend" or something else really doesn't matter. Whatever bullshit justification we need to invent in order to shoehorn it into our present conception of how economies work, we really need to get done.
Because technology will keep on improving and it will keep making it harder to sustain the illusion that the sale of labour can remain the basis of our economic systems. And this will remain the case regardless of the efforts of DB and others like it to preserve what the blinkered rich fucks who run it have mistaken for the status quo.
posted by flabdablet at 5:31 AM on November 15, 2020 [32 favorites]
Given that pretty much the entire history of technology can be summed up as humanity inventing ever more effective labour-saving devices, the amount of labour required to sustain a present-day lifestyle has been trending steadily downward and I can see no reason why it would ever stop doing so.
Since approximately the end of the Second World War, policy makers have been reacting to this by promoting compensatory increases in the material consumption generally regarded as defining an acceptable lifestyle, so as to keep the amount of labour required by the economy roughly the same. This is marketed as an "increasing standard of living" and because most people don't spend much time deconstructing the prevailing propaganda it's been widely accepted as a universal good.
But especially since the self-accelerating information technologies really started to hit their straps in the sixties and seventies, the pace at which technologies save labour has increasingly been outrunning the rate at which most people can be persuaded to accept new kinds of luxury as unavoidably necessary. Note that both of these effects are indeed increasing at accelerating rates - but technological capability is increasing faster.
And yes, there are always new kinds of labour that technological advances expose a use for; but the overall effect of technological advances is and always has been to save - i.e. reduce - labour overall. This creates a structural relative oversupply of available labour that leads inevitably to reduced prices for the sale of it.
I can't see humanity giving up on inventing labour-saving devices, regardless of prevailing economic model. Capitalism, socialism, doesn't matter. Collectively we're really really good at implementing new ways to make hard work easier and I can't see that ever changing.
So it seems to me that if we're going to achieve anything even vaguely resembling an equitable apportionment of the resources available on this planet, at some point we're going to have to accept that we don't need to work anywhere near as hard as we did a hundred years ago, increase the general rate of passive income, and reduce the general reliance on selling our labour as the primary mechanism for allocating wealth.
At present, passive incomes are really only available to people who are already very wealthy. Such people receive passive incomes roughly in proportion to their existing wealth, and this creates the positive feedback loop that has lead to the grotesque inequalities we see everywhere today.
And no, unemployment benefits don't count as passive income. These are available only to people willing to perform some arbitrarily decided amount of the onerous and largely meaningless work of documenting their participation in the approved ritual forms of failure to be the one of several hundred applicants for every available job who actually gets it. Being a recipient of unemployment benefits is indistinguishable, economically speaking, from being employed in a totally bullshit job with a ridiculously low hourly rate and ridiculously high marginal income tax.
Whether we call our more widespread passive income a "universal basic income" or a "universal sovereign wealth fund dividend" or something else really doesn't matter. Whatever bullshit justification we need to invent in order to shoehorn it into our present conception of how economies work, we really need to get done.
Because technology will keep on improving and it will keep making it harder to sustain the illusion that the sale of labour can remain the basis of our economic systems. And this will remain the case regardless of the efforts of DB and others like it to preserve what the blinkered rich fucks who run it have mistaken for the status quo.
posted by flabdablet at 5:31 AM on November 15, 2020 [32 favorites]
Deutsche Bank, who are massively invested in commercial real estate, think people should be taxed for not going to an office.
I cannot stress this enough, Deutsche is the worst bank. They are bad and everything they do is bad.
posted by DoveBrown at 6:31 AM on November 15, 2020 [18 favorites]
I cannot stress this enough, Deutsche is the worst bank. They are bad and everything they do is bad.
posted by DoveBrown at 6:31 AM on November 15, 2020 [18 favorites]
DoveBrown. I just want to acknowledge your willpower in resisting the urge to make a sausage pun.
posted by biffa at 6:40 AM on November 15, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by biffa at 6:40 AM on November 15, 2020 [4 favorites]
Retrofitting office towers for residential use would be a lot of work but somehow it's been managed for old mills, factories, and warehouses. People will still want to live in high density areas despite the current plague. Imagine Manhattan with a glut of affordable* housing. Why, even service workers would be able to live there!
*handwaving the economics of this but, government grant programs that shut out the Kushner-types would be a start.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 7:31 AM on November 15, 2020 [7 favorites]
*handwaving the economics of this but, government grant programs that shut out the Kushner-types would be a start.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 7:31 AM on November 15, 2020 [7 favorites]
Just compulsorily acquiring a few thousand vacant offices to be refitted as publicly-owned social housing, with compensation paid somewhat below market rates, ought to kickstart a price collapse that makes keeping on doing that even more affordable.
The only people who would really suffer would be those heavily invested in corporate real estate, like Deutsche Bank; it's win-win for everybody else - and, frankly, fuck Deutsche Bank. They had their chance to be decent corporate citizens and encourage those they do business with to be likewise, and they blew it. If they don't like the consequences of the conditions their decades of corrupt dealings have helped to shape, well, sucks to be them.
posted by flabdablet at 7:38 AM on November 15, 2020 [11 favorites]
The only people who would really suffer would be those heavily invested in corporate real estate, like Deutsche Bank; it's win-win for everybody else - and, frankly, fuck Deutsche Bank. They had their chance to be decent corporate citizens and encourage those they do business with to be likewise, and they blew it. If they don't like the consequences of the conditions their decades of corrupt dealings have helped to shape, well, sucks to be them.
posted by flabdablet at 7:38 AM on November 15, 2020 [11 favorites]
Yes, WFH workers gain all of these benefits like needing to pay more for the additional use of electricity, heating, A/C, water, cell, wifi as well trying to cram workspace into an apartment that wasn't intended for this, additional TP costs that their employer would normally cover. Maybe someone can quantify those additional costs to see if they are equivalent to 5%.
posted by JJ86 at 8:10 AM on November 15, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by JJ86 at 8:10 AM on November 15, 2020 [4 favorites]
it's also worth maybe mentioning that even if folks are in businesses that survive in a WFH context, there can still be downward pressure on revenue and therefore wages in various sectors.
I'm personally aware of at least one case where a commercial landlord failed to make a deal with a long term tenant to continue to use the space. Affixing the blame and the bill for their blunders on labor is pretty serious 'let them eat cake' stuff.
Come to think, a stake through the heart is also known to destroy bloodsucking monsters.
posted by StarkRoads at 9:43 AM on November 15, 2020 [3 favorites]
I'm personally aware of at least one case where a commercial landlord failed to make a deal with a long term tenant to continue to use the space. Affixing the blame and the bill for their blunders on labor is pretty serious 'let them eat cake' stuff.
Come to think, a stake through the heart is also known to destroy bloodsucking monsters.
posted by StarkRoads at 9:43 AM on November 15, 2020 [3 favorites]
Yes, WFH workers gain all of these benefits like needing to pay more for the additional use of electricity, heating, A/C, water, cell, wifi as well trying to cram workspace into an apartment that wasn't intended for this, additional TP costs that their employer would normally cover. Maybe someone can quantify those additional costs to see if they are equivalent to 5%.
I keep trying to figure out whether they're equivalent to my monthly transit pass plus the work wardrobe. There's also the nebulous hypothetical rent increase, since I wouldn't have rented an apartment so far from the train if I had to commute.
It might all balance out, considering that I have no patience whatsoever for slow cheap internet and would be paying for the premium service regardless. But there's no way I'm coming out ahead of the game.
If this wasn't coming from DoucheBank, I would say it is an unfair conflation of "remote job" with "high salary/high earner job," which is emphatically not universal but which I run into a lot in the wild from people who are (fully justifiably) angry that they can't afford to quit their dangerous public-facing jobs for lack of government support.
But given the source, yes, I'd say it's a desperate attempt to prop up their downtown core real estate portfolio.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:29 PM on November 15, 2020 [1 favorite]
I keep trying to figure out whether they're equivalent to my monthly transit pass plus the work wardrobe. There's also the nebulous hypothetical rent increase, since I wouldn't have rented an apartment so far from the train if I had to commute.
It might all balance out, considering that I have no patience whatsoever for slow cheap internet and would be paying for the premium service regardless. But there's no way I'm coming out ahead of the game.
If this wasn't coming from DoucheBank, I would say it is an unfair conflation of "remote job" with "high salary/high earner job," which is emphatically not universal but which I run into a lot in the wild from people who are (fully justifiably) angry that they can't afford to quit their dangerous public-facing jobs for lack of government support.
But given the source, yes, I'd say it's a desperate attempt to prop up their downtown core real estate portfolio.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:29 PM on November 15, 2020 [1 favorite]
This has little to do with propping up their commercial real estate portfolio, only because that would imply a level of strategic co-ordination that they just don't have. These notes are put together purely to generate media interest and so their salespeople have something to talk to clients about, they're neither particularly internally coherent nor aligned to overall bank strategy (except in the loose sense of obviously not recommending Global Socialism Now), nor are the individual suggestions particularly well thought through.
Certainly if some subset of people have been able to weather the pandemic without incurring either a loss of income or an increase in costs (in fact, for very many people so far at least in the UK they will have saved a lot more in travel than in additional home electricity costs but I guess that will be different in places with residential air conditioning) while others have seen their incomes plummet, it is sensible to redistribute that. A flat % tax on anyone working from home over that period is obviously daft, both because retrospective taxation is politically unpalatable and because it withdraws money from the economy just in time for things to re-open and people to otherwise spend it, because it is regressive, and because it doesn't address holders of share capital who have seen the least impact on their income.
The rest of it is equally thin.
The Hydrogen suggestion has no serious consideration of what actual role it will play as a future energy carrier and what the strategic case may be for using CCS SMR now. There actually is one that could be made but they didn't bother. Where's the maps showing the limited areas in which that would work due to availability of cheap gas and depleted reservoirs? Where's the analysis that it will help reduce emissions now but risk locking in a non-net-zero path because you can't get 100% capture even with (yet to be scaled) ATR let alone SMR? Where's the analysis on why hydrogen even has a role to play? (all about total system costs and the difficulty of fully decarbonising heating in old building stock and/or transportation fuel for some cases)
The thinking on a "realistic green deal" mentions the competitiveness impact of high EU carbon prices relative to the rest of the world but doesn't mention a carbon adjustment tax to deal with it. Something that the EU is heavily debating internally and is very likely to emerge soon to prevent exactly that kind of carbon leakage and deindustrialisation.
None of this nonsense has any numbers or charts either. If one of my summer students produced this I would have a chat with them about backing up your ideas and the importance of quantitative information.
posted by atrazine at 2:40 AM on November 16, 2020 [5 favorites]
Certainly if some subset of people have been able to weather the pandemic without incurring either a loss of income or an increase in costs (in fact, for very many people so far at least in the UK they will have saved a lot more in travel than in additional home electricity costs but I guess that will be different in places with residential air conditioning) while others have seen their incomes plummet, it is sensible to redistribute that. A flat % tax on anyone working from home over that period is obviously daft, both because retrospective taxation is politically unpalatable and because it withdraws money from the economy just in time for things to re-open and people to otherwise spend it, because it is regressive, and because it doesn't address holders of share capital who have seen the least impact on their income.
The rest of it is equally thin.
The Hydrogen suggestion has no serious consideration of what actual role it will play as a future energy carrier and what the strategic case may be for using CCS SMR now. There actually is one that could be made but they didn't bother. Where's the maps showing the limited areas in which that would work due to availability of cheap gas and depleted reservoirs? Where's the analysis that it will help reduce emissions now but risk locking in a non-net-zero path because you can't get 100% capture even with (yet to be scaled) ATR let alone SMR? Where's the analysis on why hydrogen even has a role to play? (all about total system costs and the difficulty of fully decarbonising heating in old building stock and/or transportation fuel for some cases)
The thinking on a "realistic green deal" mentions the competitiveness impact of high EU carbon prices relative to the rest of the world but doesn't mention a carbon adjustment tax to deal with it. Something that the EU is heavily debating internally and is very likely to emerge soon to prevent exactly that kind of carbon leakage and deindustrialisation.
None of this nonsense has any numbers or charts either. If one of my summer students produced this I would have a chat with them about backing up your ideas and the importance of quantitative information.
posted by atrazine at 2:40 AM on November 16, 2020 [5 favorites]
DoucheBank
Thinks: is that a thing? Because that absolutely needs to be a thing.
(checks DuckDuckGo)
Yep. That's a thing. Excellent!
posted by flabdablet at 4:59 AM on November 16, 2020 [2 favorites]
Thinks: is that a thing? Because that absolutely needs to be a thing.
(checks DuckDuckGo)
Yep. That's a thing. Excellent!
posted by flabdablet at 4:59 AM on November 16, 2020 [2 favorites]
Honestly, I didn’t know it was a thing, and thought I was being all witty. That’ll teach me.
posted by Ghidorah at 1:56 PM on November 16, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Ghidorah at 1:56 PM on November 16, 2020 [1 favorite]
Neither did I, and so did I. Well played!
posted by flabdablet at 6:21 PM on November 16, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by flabdablet at 6:21 PM on November 16, 2020 [1 favorite]
Anybody who remains in any doubt about the relative amounts of labour that technology saves and creates could usefully ponder washing machines.
posted by flabdablet at 12:43 AM on November 18, 2020
posted by flabdablet at 12:43 AM on November 18, 2020
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posted by evilDoug at 3:37 PM on November 14, 2020 [67 favorites]