There's also the roads which allow you to get from point A to point B which are subsidizing you
Most of which are maintained by the county, to which I pay taxes.
and there's the federal gas subsidy which is also subsidizing your lifestyle.
From the FEDERAL government, to which I also pay taxes.
Much of the road maintenance is also done by the state government, to which I pay taxes as well.
And if the city proper really did nothing for you, then why would you be working there?
Because decades ago, my employer put offices in the city and it's more expensive to move them than it is to stay put.
Not all of us are working for start-ups. Some of us have employers that predate the interstate highway system.
As telecommuting becomes more of a factor, I will spend less and less time in the city. Hopefully, it'll get to the point where I spend one day here every five years.
> 2.) A lot of employees live 1+ hour away. The bus doesn't work in these situations.
I live in large dense city in the US (Los Angeles). I live a 15-20 minute car ride from work. The city is going to be doing some construction on my route and have asked the businesses to encourage their employees to take public transit, walk, bike, etc. during the construction. I looked into taking the bus, which for the first time in my life, is a reasonable walk from my home. It would increase my commute time (one way) from 20 minutes to 50 minutes! Sorry, but I don't have an extra hour I can take out of my day for that. It would be better to just work from home, but my employer won't let me do that for the duration of the construction which is supposed to last a year or two.
EDIT: For about a month, my office was at the Santa Monica end of the train. (Like literally right next to the train stop.) Sadly it no longer is. Even then, a coworker decided to take the train once from his place in Pasadena. His normally 45-60 minute commute increased to an hour and 50 minutes taking public transport. Sorry, but he'll just drive instead.
> But serious question: do you think your employer should pay you to commute?
In a practical sense, most employers should or do. Not for your personal choice of commute, that's on you, but an employer in downtown LA or rural Nebraska does end up having to compensate people for living somewhere so hard to get to.
Unless you're claiming that by working in the city and commuting home to the suburbs, people are being subsidized by the city. But that would be silly.
Well, maybe there is a lesson in that. We have to think about what the benefits of each person commuting is. Does it make sense to fill up highways with people going to work in e.g. fast food restaurants?
If the McDonalds employee has to pay $50 in fees to get to their job, it changes their financial calculations around whether that is a viable job. If enough of them decide to quit because of this, the restaurant will need to pay its employees more, subsidize their commutes or shut down.
If the restaurant shuts down, then it didn't make sense for them to be in an expensive urban hub, and the negative externality of the traffic their employees generated is gone. I suspect a lot of only-barely-viable jobs would go this way, and that's where traffic reduction would come from.
If they pay more, or subsidize commutes, they are paying to paying for the negative externality of filling up the highways to bring their employees in. The people who want cheap cheeseburgers in an expensive urban hub will decide if they want to pay more for cheap cheeseburgers to cover the cost. If they don't, it doesn't make sense for it to be there and the traffic isn't worth it.
1. Completely, since I now work fully remotely. I rarely drive. When I leave the house, it's almost always on foot.
2. The local city government has shut down or restricted use of public transit. The federal government is worse than useless and has not instituted any real changes.
3. Minneapolis traffic is 70% lower than it was this time in 2019. Most of us who can work remotely are working remotely.
==On the other hand, commuting is usually not cheap==
Not cheap, but tax advantaged and sometimes even reimbursed. The tax advantages for working-from-home are much harder to unlock, especially in the short-term or if you work from your bedroom.
Anyways, I thought it was an interesting economic thought-exercise to discuss the second-level impacts of a work-from-home society. I've seen a lot of talk on people fleeing cities, but I think there is a lot more nuance to the discussion.
> companies seem to ignore they are asking all their workers to unnecessarily spend an hour or more a day driving
Um - not all. A number of people use public transportation. Some walk to the office. I chose a home location close to a subway station that gets me downtown with a 25-minute commute if necessary - not that I have needed it since I do work from home :)
Everything in the valley back in the day was 15 min away.
Now that same 15 min takes 1.5 hrs. Because everyone's now here.
Who pays for that?
You can move Google out of Mountain View to Bumfuck, Idaho. Then you lose the centralization and plugging into the network.
Who pays for that?
But to be honest, most prefer it this way. This crazy doo-dad lifestyle of fighting that 3 hour traffic. Because the thing is, if you work hard to win (or more likely you're just fortunate enough to win), then you get to enjoy central networking, get to enjoy the year over year growth of your property, get to enjoy the convenience of job hopping, get to enjoy that the smartest and the brightest all want in on this action.
So I don't know. I paid for my own uniforms in the marine corps. Someone should be sending me checks!
> Might ask for 20, 25 grand more if I have to go back to the office.
Here's a source you can use for hard numbers[1].
Commutes are responsible for a 9.91% drop in wages. They're also responsible for an average of nearly 10 entire days of driving a year, or 30 full 8-hr work days of driving each year.
> For those of us who have to commute, it's not exactly the norm to be saving money while commuting
This is true. I choose to live within walking distance of my office, and it has vastly improved my life - prior to this job, I commuted 2.5 hours a day, and that was awful.
These choices of course have complex tradeoffs, but you don't have to commute, it is a choice.
One thing that the author does not account for is the cost of the commute. If the average total daily commute is 1 hour, over 10% of the day is lost to the commute.
That coupled with the gas (and pollution) necessary to get the workforce from point A to point B, means there is a heavy tax on our resources and time on having everybody work in a particular spot.
Collaborative technology is getting better. Many times email (or the next iteration of communication technology) is better than meetings.
I also personally find I get more done from home than from the office because it is a more relaxed atmosphere. I can focus and easily pace around (which helps me think) without bothering anybody. At work, I'm often distracted and am not as happy (that has got to count for something).
Anyways, I cannot wait to have the freedom to work from a location of my choice.
> If commuting is work then employers should pay for it or have the time taken to commute deducted from work hours.
If your employer requires you to come to the office, then getting there is part of the job, and I think you should be compensated for that time. Commuting during rush hour certainly isn't a pleasure activity that I'd be doing without obligation.
> I can wake up later since I don't have a commute. I don't lose two hours a day due to the commute.
Commutes are also dangerous if they're by car. Not only are roadway congested, everyone is in a rush, and people are driving after just waking up and then again after a full day of work.
From a purely economic standpoint, commutes are responsible for a 10% drop in hourly wages[1].
I'd come to the office on a daily basis if companies began subsidizing my commute. I used to spend nearly 2 hours every day sitting in traffic, uncompensated, to get to/from the office. That's a _very_ large % of my life doing absolutely nothing of value to anyone, pumping emissions into the air.
> But how can organizations encourage their employees to commute differently?
Instead of expecting the employees to fix things themselves, why not hire some busses and pick the employees up?
It is expensive to do so, but nicer commutes often correlate strongly with lower turnover. There is a reason Facebook, Google, and the like pay for it.
Most of which are maintained by the county, to which I pay taxes.
and there's the federal gas subsidy which is also subsidizing your lifestyle.
From the FEDERAL government, to which I also pay taxes.
Much of the road maintenance is also done by the state government, to which I pay taxes as well.
And if the city proper really did nothing for you, then why would you be working there?
Because decades ago, my employer put offices in the city and it's more expensive to move them than it is to stay put.
Not all of us are working for start-ups. Some of us have employers that predate the interstate highway system.
As telecommuting becomes more of a factor, I will spend less and less time in the city. Hopefully, it'll get to the point where I spend one day here every five years.
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