this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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Unpopular Opinion

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-26
I no longer immediately support for WFH policies despite being a left-leaning and working class individual (self.unpopularopinion)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by PP_BOY_ to c/unpopularopinion
25 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

WFH - "Work from home," as in: COVID-era policies of (mostly tech jobs) being administered outside of a central office building.

I was entirely in favor of WFH and the struggle of office workers up until recently. Although my career is functionally incompatible with the idea, I had sympathy for members of my class and supported them fighting against an archaic and unnecessarily authoritative policy of office attendance.

BUT.

WFH-ers and West/East Coast refugees have decimated historically low income communities by flooding to parts of the Southeast and Midwest with salaries that were meant to be competitive in an urban environment, where COL is always going to be higher, and pricing out/displacing local (oftentimes minority) populations. Anecdotally, I've seen rental prices more than triple in my hometown within the past four years, with no real wage increases for local groups in what can only be called gentrification.

This isn't my wording, see:

VICE | Digital Nomads Are the New Gentrifiers

StudyFinds.org | Remote work fuels gentrification? How surge in digital nomads is pricing out local communities worldwide

You can't have your cake and eat it, too, as the saying goes, and I just can't defend the people who have destroyed local economies. Even if that animosity goes against class solidarity, which I do agree with, the damage WFH has done is too direct and too severe for me to support it.

Edit: I've spent the past hour thinking about this post and have thought of a more succinct way to express my argument:

If I want the best for historically low-income communities, and the following are both true:

A) Gentrification is bad for historically low-income communities, and

B) WFH policies have facilitated gentrification, then

it logicially follows that WFH is bad for historically low-income communities and that I should be opposed to WFH policies.

This is the process rationale behind my argument.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

You're against policies that allow them to live where they want working for a company they enjoy. The policies work in favor of them, it's clear you're just resentful that they are doing alright and found a way to live comfortably.

I'll switch this around. A hypothetical. You have a nice lake next to your town. Randomly tomorrow it's featured on "Boating Monthly", a blog for rich kids who own boats. The come in, buy the land around the lake, and do the exact same thing. The cost of land goes up, it becomes a tourist stop overnight where rich tourists come and stay, they buy property and start charging exorbitant amounts for rent. Small grocery stores and dollar stores can't stay open and are replaces with Trader Joes, Whole Foods, and Amazon Go stores so food and goods go up in cost. Cost of living as a normal person is suddenly 3 or 4 times as high.

Is this not the same argument your making, that people who came in drove up the cost of living? You just don't have your scapegoat of WFH policies this time. So I say again - is there a policy you want to blame while being envious of those people - or are misplacing the blame that should be put on local politicians, landlords, and others in charge locally who should be putting in place protections?

That is where I want you to really think about your views.

[–] PP_BOY_ -4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

You’re against policies that allow them to live where they want working for a company they enjoy.

I'm against policies that have been shown to displace historically impoverished peoples, yes. Your weird defense of neogentrification is showing how much you actually hate the lower-class. You haven't even denied that that's what it is: gentrification.

I’ll switch this around...

I don't even understand how this is a relevant proposition. We're talking about (I'm going to say it again) historically low-income people having their generational communities bought out from them overnight by foreign (regionally) people who want to have their cake and eat it too. Where does a lakeside property, which is a luxury item no matter where you are, come into this?

Consider this

Imagine you're a poor member of a community whose society was based around fishing from a lake. You're not rich, but no one in your community is, and that's okay because your local economy is scaled down to accommodate this. Randomly tomorrow it’s featured on “Boating Monthly”, a blog for rich kids who own boats. Rich people come in, make offers for lakeside property that's worth 10x more than it was a year ago. Not even a lifetime of saving your wages, that were once fair, has prepared you for what your town is now like.

In both examples, the conclusion is the same: Gentrification is bad. My overall argument is based on my interpretation that WFH has facilitated gentrification. If you disagree with me, you need to counter this interpretation.

That is where I want you to really think about your views.

I physically cringed when I read this boomer-core paternal text.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Alright, we're done. I tried in good faith to show you another way of thinking about this and you're just refusing to see another point of view, and you're resulting to insults.

Just to really nail it in, I never said gentrification was not bad. You missed the entire point of what I was trying to say. I can tell because your rewording of it is literally saying the same thing, you just can't see it. I'll try to make it painfully obvious what I'm trying to say.

The cause of the rise in costs is irrelevant. The response by local politicians is the crucial factor.

Some examples of things that have been tried and have worked

  • Low income housing
  • Rent control and rent protections. (Many cities have rules like rent can only go up by 10% a year, for example)
  • Lowering taxes for low income individuals
  • Free transit for low income neighborhoods to work
    • Building transit in general is a great-equalizer, suddenly it doesn't matter if you're in a cheaper area or more expensive. Doesn't have to be trains, a great bus system can make all the difference
  • Raising the minimum wage (if business owners aren't doing this themselves)

and if they do it right, raising taxes on those moving in to help pay for these new services.

If your local government is not doing these, then they have failed you. That is literally their job. I would be going to town hall meetings and demanding change. You can't just be mad your town is growing. Literally every city originally started as a small town. You just need to demand they start acting like a city, or you need to choose a different small town.

Anyway, I'll leave you with this. My hometown went through the same thing. My mom lost her house. We were forced to move. We went on foodstamps. We went on unemployment. It was not the people who moved there who caused this. It was taxes going up on low income earners, it was safetynets being removed, and wages remaining stagnant. You know, what I've been fighting for ever since.

and just so you know, I'm a millennial, but hey thanks thanks for resolving my point down to some generational gap issue that you have. Don't expect another reply, I have no interest in you just insulting me so you don't have to see my point.