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
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.
You blame a lot of people who make decent salaries, but put none on your employer, your local government, your states, or anything else. There’s a plethora of things your own government could do to help out. Why blame the people who obviously left the west coast due to cost of living (the same thing you’re complaining about), and not blame the system and people who allowed it to happen in the first place?
Adding on the whole literally calling them “refugees” like they’re leaving some barron hellscape behind while literally just exposing the same problems in capitalism as a whole. Just because you were isolated from these problems before doesn’t mean they didn’t exist.
I just don’t get it. You claim to be left leaning and working class - but the second these issues we fight for literally start affecting you you don’t like them anymore? What do you think we’ve been fighting for this whole time. The ironic thing is that those who probably moved in are probably more left leaning and in more of support for policies which your politicians refuse to enact. (Higher taxes for higher earners, more safety nets, rent control, etc)
Blame the system that allows it in the first place and those who uphold that system. Blaming them just comes off as pure envy to me.
Simply put, if I have to choose between homelessness and standing up for people who want to make urban-adjusted wages in rural, historically low-income areas, I’m going to look out for myself first.
EDIT: You blame a lot of people who make decent salaries, but put none on your employer, your local government, your states, or anything else.
EDIT: Genuinely curious if you’d say this to a person facing homelessness in a city like Mexico City or members of the black community in New Orleans who are voicing their concerns with gentrification. It would take years or maybe decades of economic/social infrastructure for historically low-income communities to be able to offer competitive wages for locals who are being priced out of living right now. This isn’t the immediate solution you’re proposing it to be.
You blame a lot of people who make decent salaries
Except these salaries are far more than decent in the communities I’m describing. Six-figure salaries, even low ones, usually place these gentrifiers in the top 10% of earners overnight.
Why blame the people who obviously left the west coast due to cost of living
Where do you see me blaming the people specifically? I worded by title very carefully hoping to avoid people making this assumption. I don’t blame people for taking advantage of a system that obviously benefits them, but I do want that system - which is causing harm to other causes more relevant to me - to be abolished. Those concepts aren’t contradictory.
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.
