There is an SWE on the other side of this API - and I imagine they are enjoying a government salary and pension for operating it... people accessing it for free wouldn't impact them.
There's just something about Japan that makes its simplicity so beautiful. Yes, we all know Japan has dealt with economic problems, lost decades, declining fertility, etc.
But they still manage to keep the beautiful simplicity of life that makes their culture one of the world's richest.
It’s a great place but what’s on the surface is a total illusion to the complexity and rules Japanese people have to deal with to make it seem this way. I’ve always believed that the beauty of Japanese society comes at the cost of the Japanese themselves. They have to sacrifice a lot to make it what it is.
Conformity is huge, there was even a row a few years ago when a school demanded to inspect girls underwear and make sure they're wearing the correct colored panties. Asking children to dye their hair black or straighten it is also not unheard of.
Shukumōkyosei literally means “to shrink and correct hair”. It’s a permanent straightening treatment that removes 70 to 90% of curls, volume, and frizz by chemically restructuring hair bonds.
My theory is, the level of rules, bureaucracy, and society pressure is why innovation and having children is just too hard. It's very hard to find the space live, but the rules based high pressure society is all they know since the end of WW2.
If you're interested, have a read about the Zen period, and the way it sort of liberated society. It's faced challenges since the Kamakura period (it's golden age) but it was a fascinating period of brilliant art, innovation and reform.
I hope what I said doesn't come across as negative either. Like I said, it's a wonderful place and fascinating culture, it truly is, but it's as I said, not free nor is it at all simple.
There's an excellent book by economist Michael Hudson called "America's Protectionist Takeoff" that discusses how the US used tariffs to promote certain industries in order to compete on the world stage. It was part of Alexander Hamilton's American System. Friedrich List, the German economist that wrote "The National System of Political Economy", used the American System to advocate for the same policies in Germany. Germany eventually adopted these policies and became an economic powerhouse themselves. Likewise, Meiji Japan went so far as to adopt the ideas of Friedrich List's economic policies, which resulted in them becoming a great power in a generation.
Tariffs can work, but only if they are targeted towards certain industries/sectors. They can't just be slapped across the board and be expected to work properly. Furthermore, they must be attached to certain KPIs such as exports (i.e., the ability to effectively compete on the international market). Joe Studwell's "How Asia Works" argues that Japan, Korea, and Taiwan all used tariffs and subsidies to promote their own "national champions". In turn, they forced those companies export their products rather than just sell domestically in order to compete. If they didn't meet those export targets, those companies were cut off from state support. Ha Joon Chang, a Korean developmental economist, likens this to raising a child: you spend their initial formative years supporting them until they are able to support themselves without your help.
If I remember correctly, India is manufacturing iPhones for export because the government would not let Apple expand sale of iPhones(or was it open Apple stores) in the country unless they produced the phones locally?
So Apple setup production in India starting with old model iPhones. Then expanded to today…
The last thing Trump's tariffs could be described as is targeted industrial policy. They are intentionally a sledge-hammer. They are intentionally emotional. Intentionally full of jingoistic rhetoric and victimhood rhetoric.
Sadly there has been zero discussion of doing targeted industrial policy (like China's) in the US. The irony is that Trump's approach benefits China tremendously.
It would also involve support for science research and reasonable immigration, plus widespread acceptance for moderately higher consumer prices. People should have a real conversation about what it means to make clothing in the US instead of in Bangladesh (just for example). While the "zero sum game" is generally considered to be a sign of ignorance when discussing economics, in the short term the number of available workers is a zero sum game, and unemployment is relatively low right now.
In a way it de-NIMBYizes Americans, forcing them to face the environmental costs of their consumer behaviours. The re-engineering part is the opportunity I see in all this. How do you make manufacturing cleaner and more worker-friendly (or even better: don’t even require human labour).
People who downvote the above comment: please provide an actual response.
The comment isn't wrong about factories. Factories are far less productive than providing services (e.g. software), and per comparative advantage the US should be importing manufactured stuff and exporting highly labor-efficient services.
If the US expands its manufacturing without it being profitable to do so (profitable without state subsidies, I mean), that will be bad for the economy , because it will drive up the cost of labor for other stuff without an accompanying flow of profit into the economy to stimulate the demand to match said higher costs.
> A sober approach to promoting the redevelopment of production industry in America would likely involve some tariffs and could make a lot of sense.
If American production was optimal, or even economically feasible, it would already be in place. Take, for example, textiles.
Why would an American business go through the hassle of getting a foreign company to make textile products, get them shipped across vast oceans, taking weeks if not months to do so, only to have them in stores in relatively close proximity?
We all wear clothes and purchase them regularly. So why are they not now largely made in the US?
> I think people are downvoting you because it sounds like you're advocating textiles be produced in the US (I know you're not).
Probably.
Sometimes exploring the implications of an ill thought position leads to an unpopular conclusion. If the worst result is a few people hit a down arrow and others contemplate the exploration, so be it.
> They are intentionally a sledge-hammer. They are intentionally emotional. Intentionally full of jingoistic rhetoric and victimhood rhetoric.
A sledgehammer sounds almost like an instrument of precision relative to the Trump administration tariffs. If they're applied and reversed on a whim, US companies would be fools to invest in building fabrication capability domestically only for the rug to be pulled out from under them tomorrow.
And apparently Trump doesn't want the prices on imports to rise [1]? So, if importers and retailers eat the costs of the new tariffs, how can domestic production compete any easier than it could with the baseline conditions?
It's not jingoism or victimhood, it's just ineptitude writ large. Trump can't achieve his own policy goals because he's standing in his own way.
A more generous interpretation might be that he doesn’t expect anyone to retool until things settle down, and he is actually implementing tariffs as a shock tactic to force negotiations starting on strong terms. I haven’t read his book but my understanding is that this is an instantiating of the abstract negotiation pattern he endorses in the art of the deal.
The alternative would be to negotiate quietly in back rooms before announcing, which is what is usually done. Would that be less chaotic? Definitely. Would it result in equally good or better trade deals as the shock method? Unclear, it’s not obvious that it would.
He also likes dramatic optics.
I don’t agree with the guy on most things, but I really think many people mischaracterize him pretty severely.
> A more generous interpretation might be that he doesn’t expect anyone to retool until things settle down.
A sizable "retooling" already took place with Canadian oil. As of last month, Canada is now exporting more oil to China than to the US. US oil exports to China have stopped.[1] This is not projected. This has already happened.
This is a win for China. Getting oil from Canada reduces China's dependence on the Middle East. Getting tankers across the Pacific is a straight run in open water. No bottlenecks at the Straits of Hormutz, no Suez Canal, no war zones.
Expect West Coast gasoline prices to go up.
(Much of this is related to where pipeline are. Pipeline connections to the Western US from Texas barely exist. Meanwhile, in 2024, a major pipeline between the Alberta oil fields and the Vancouver region ports was completed and is in operation.)
> I don’t agree with the guy on most things, but I really think many people mischaracterize him pretty severely.
How? What do you think people think of him that’s untrue?
Since he first got seriously involved into politics I haven’t seen any evidence that he has a sophisticated understanding of anything, except two things: how to negotiate when he’s in a strong position to bully his counterparty, and pandering to his base.
Like a sibling comment points out, you refer to The Art of the Deal, but that was written entirely by his ghostwriter Tony Schwartz (according to both the author and the publisher). Schwartz has even said he thinks it should be recategorized as fiction.
What we normally see is a stage persona. He also speaks differently when dealing with hostiles vs people acting like he's a human being. Rogan's style brings out people's real personalities better.
Is there any particular segment of this chat where he said something you found insightful or thought showed his deep understanding of some complex topic? I don’t doubt that he can be pleasant and charismatic when shooting the breeze with people in a friendly atmosphere, that’s not the critique I have of him.
Well, gigantic tariffs with china were dropped to just huge ... and he got nothing for it. Asian counties that were willing to do deals have none, because Trump administration frustrates them by not knowing wtf they want.Talks with EU are stalled and UK deal amounts to not much.
It is easy to argue normal negotiations work better.
A less generous---and probably more accurate, given Trump's business and legal history---interpretation is that the tariffs are not for any legitimate public policy reason at all, but are simply to give Trump personal leverage to extort foreign nations for the gain of himself and his family.
Thank you for articulating this. I think it's what a lot of his supporters think is happening. What perplexes me are the following:
1) Is "The Art of the Deal" respected among actual business leaders and negotiators as a substantive contribution to negotiation tactics?
2) If what Trump is doing is in fact a highly effective tactic, how is it possible that so many people who are skilled at negotiation, skilled a business, far more wealthy and successful than Trump, etc., etc., fail to see the genius of it? I'm pretty sure that if there were actually something to it, at least some of those types of people would "come around" to supporting it and they would explain what he's doing to the American people (if it's right out of "The Art of the Deal" then clearly any negotiating adversary would be familiar with the tactic since the book is a short, quick read).
3) How would the negotiation tactics Trump is using be described/framed by traditional game theorists and tacticians? Suppose Trump is actually highly disciplined in the execution of a grand strategy, what would there be to object to, the tactic of acting unpredictably? Or would there be criticism of the downside risk of the strategy being unacceptable?
4) What has Trump or the US gained in the past from these kind of tactics? I'm serious when I say that I don't think Trump has improved the US negotiated position in any of the domains he's promised to. His revisions to NAFTA were trivial, his revisions to the Iran deal resulted in the US having a far weaker hand, his negotiations with N. Korea were inconsequential, and his negotiations (so far) with Mexico and Canada have seemingly harmed all parties and reduced trust, thus reducing the chances for a better outcome in the future. on Ukraine/Russia there is not really any negotiating to be done, it's more of a question of whether the US wants to keep spending money on an expensive and risky war that we are losing while pretending we are not actually in one.
5) In trade negotiations, what is the "back room"? I realize the US is opaque domestically and internationally about what is US "national interest", but typically with trade the incentives are extremely clear -- there are always domestic factions on both sides who are the relative winners or losers of any change to tariffs or trade policy, etc.
> I don’t agree with the guy on most things, but I really think many people mischaracterize him pretty severely.
I'm not so sure you're right about that. He's dishonest, corrupt, and vain. So a lot of the disgust that is directed his way seems well-deserved.
I would believe it if you told me that if he somehow proposed a policy that was for the genuine benefit of all of his constituents that some would knee-jerk oppose it. But -- due to his vanity and corruption - we'll never see that come to pass.
There's been tons of discussion and several actual laws - IRA, CHIPS etc.
A large part of why you're seeing the Trump insanity is because there's increasingly little connection between reality (ie CHIPS, IRA) and people's perception (ie your comment)
Is this a GPT-generated comment? Half your previous comments aren't capitalized, and the Biden Administration has already been replaced by the equivalent of a napalm flamethrower torching a village.
The IRA was supposed to reduce inflation, and did nothing of the sort. It exasperated it to a level beyond recognition, to the point the national housing market is still incredibly unstable and overpriced.
The worst part is that no one in DC , except some of the MAGA folks, care that housing is twice the price it was 5 years ago, and that the Middle Class was getting completely hounded over the past 4 years.
I'd argue it did reduce inflation, but I suspect you and I have different understandings of the term.
So, inflation is not prices. Reducing inflation does not mean prices go down, it doesn't even mean they-dont-go-up. It means they go up less rapidly.
If inflation is 0% prices don't go down. (Prices going down is deflation, which has all kinds of bad side effects. It's really bad, you don't want that.)
The original driver of inflation (which is complicated, but simplified) was supply chain issues caused by covid. This lead to imbalanced supply and demand which in turn leads to inflation.
That drives prices up.
Yes, restored supply can bring prices down, but only if there is competition. Otherwise companies simply keep prices high.
Generally speaking, the increase of house prices isn't really an "inflation" thing. Inflation tends to be measured as a collection of inputs. It's more "daily shopping" and less "buying a house is a specific location".
Of course house pricing is important, and a big issue, but there are reasons for that which are not inflation. Inflation affects the price of materials, and labor, for building a new home, and that's one part of the equation- but for housing there are also issues like zoning etc.
One could take another example, eggs, where external factors (bird flu, lack of competition in the supply chain etc) are driving up prices, mostly as an experiment to see what the market will bear.
So, personally I think IRA did have an effect. The US had one of the lowest inflations globally post covid, which reduced the fastest. Which is not to say prices came down, they went up less quickly.
Of course, that's all out the window now. Today's policies are pretty much what you would do if you wanted to drive inflation up. Or more accurately if you wanted to maximize corporate profits. Reduce competition (by excluding foreign suppliers), remove regulatory oversight (which work to prevent illegal collusion), and extend corporate tax cuts (growing the deficit.)
The lazy way tarrifs have been implemented of course leads to inflated prices for things the US does not produce (like coffee) but that's just just collateral damage.
All of these inputs, coupled with a reduction of the physical labor force (with via deportation or simple fear) will drive up the cost of construction, hence making new housing more expensive and less attractive to construct. If you think MSGA cares about this, then you and I are seeing different MAGA. I thought voters care, but since T campaigned on all these things, MAGA voters, it would appear, do not care.
MAGA politicians certainly do not care. MAGA politicians are out to enrich themselves. And non-MAGA Republicans are either too scared or too cowardly to do anything about it.
It’s interesting that you don’t see the cause in your second paragraph being what leads to the effect in your first paragraph. We got Trump because of the bipartisan consensus on free trade that wouldn’t admit any sort of industrial policy.
Now that Trump has blown the Overton window open, someone should offer the alternative of smarter tariffs.
Plus EV tariffs + banning of TikTok unless sold to a U.S. firm.
The Biden administration had already taken several targeted measures to defend local industry from China.
One can argue whether this was good policy or not, but it’s hilariously wrong to argue that Trump was the first person to recognize the threat of China.
In fact, Trump has been extraordinarily useful to China. One of the first steps he took in his first term was to withdraw from the TPP.
Again, one can legitimately argue whether the TPP was good or not, but the entire purpose of the TPP was to reduce dependence on and create alternatives to China, which is why the trans Pacific partnership did not include the second largest world economy despite it lying on the Pacific Ocean.
Clearly insufficient to prevent the destruction of major sectors and industries over decades. The neoliberals argued this was a normal and good thing for the country. The voters appear to disagree.
It is kind of impossible for 2022 legislation to prevent something that was happening decades ago. Tho, America is actually producing more then ever.
Republican voters did not cared about any of that. They wanted to own the libs, they wanted the destruction of project 2025 and wanted to harm the people they look down at. They did not wanted to work in factories, they did not want industrial policy and they do not want USA to be a tech leader anymore. Conservatives are not making economical choice, they are just throwing concerns around when they want to bear democrats. They dont care a put putcomes when Republicans rule.
You complaining that legislature from 2022 did not traveled back in time to change something in 2010 is quite on point here. This is not about strategy, law nor economics.
An interesting point, but it's not really a fair comparison: Jesus was the son of God and able to perform miracles, so maybe he felt he could afford to reject an offer of all the riches in all the kingdoms of the world (which tbh Jesus must have known that Satan was lying about anyway). Whereas Faust was just a man.
> As Wilson writes in his expansive and somewhat baggily written introduction, now—amid increasingly dire ecological and political conditions—we can see our own world in Faust more clearly than ever before. For Faust, he writes, is “about a world which had taken leave of God but did not know how to live.”
Man has a natural inclination to worship something. For most of human history, that has been the divine/supernatural/metaphysical. Nowadays, rationalism and materialism have become the main objects of worship. But rationalism and materialism do not have answers to the existential questions and crises that humans face.
Similar to Christ saying that "man cannot live on bread alone", man cannot live on materialism alone - spiritual nourishment is a very real and necessary thing.
Well, yeah. That’s just the central problem of modernity and it’s been the preoccupation of the last two hundred years of philosophy and literature: c.f. existentialism and many other isms. Nietzsche and Dostoevsky and a legion of other philosophers and novelists address this exact question. There’s a lot of answers out there that don’t require signing up to an old religion, you can go and take your pick!
> There’s a lot of answers out there that don’t require signing up to an old religion, you can go and take your pick!
There appear to be a few dubious presuppositions at play here.
The first is religious indifferentism. That is, that is makes no difference which you pick, or that what you pick is simply a matter of "what's 'right' for you". The question of truth never enters the picture. This makes religious belief a matter of utility: I believe X because I derive some kind of perceived or real benefit from believing X.
The first problem with religious indifferentism is exactly that it is indifferent to the truth. If you believe something because of the utility it provides, it means you don't really believe in that thing. You believe in the utility of the thing. So while a Christian will believe that Christ is God Incarnate because he believes this to be true, an indifferentist wouldn't really believe Christ in God, but he might "use" that belief. There is a lack of integrity, a kind of bad faith, at work here. The pretense of this lack of integrity never produces any peace or alleviates the misery of nihilism plaguing the indifferentist. He's still where he started.
While Nietzsche and others had valuable insights (and misconceptions), he and most others did not themselves find a solution to the basic problem of nihilism.
> There appear to be a few dubious presuppositions at play here.
>
> The first is religious indifferentism. That is, that is makes no difference which you pick, or that what you pick is simply a matter of "what's 'right' for you".
Of course it could also be humility rather than indifference to truth. Who is to say that any of us possesses the whole truth? At best individuals see only some small part of it. On the other hand I believe very strongly in the utility of many religious virtues, such as charity, humility, forgiveness, etc., because there's abundant proof of their benefits.
> There is a lack of integrity, a kind of bad faith, at work here.
It's possible for people to believe two conflicting things at the same time. Especially in this context.
Like someone could be psychologically dependent on believing that Christ rose on the third day even though the rational part knows that that's biologically impossible. This isn't a bug, it's a feature
Religions deliberately target things like this where there's cognitive dissonance. Because once there's cognitive dissonance it creates this weird emotional reaction for people. When they go the religion route they're just chasing this high
That's very handwavy and unconvincing TBH. I can't imagine who'd argue that humans "worship" rationalism and materialism, that's a pretty big stretch of the word.
What definition of the word do you use?
That man has a natural inclination to it is another pretty big assumption, whether "natural inclinations" are even a thing at all has been debated for centuries
You're committing the same fallacy that many do which is to lump them all under "gods" and then make it a problem of distinguishing which of these possible beings exists.
But this fails to distinguish between a being and Being. You and I are beings, beings among many. The pagan gods, personifications of various natural phenomena, were like us, in this sense: they were beings among, only more powerful. Being, on the other hand, is the verb to be. You exist, I exist, all the beings of the world exist. The pagan gods, I submit, do not exist, save as fictions.
So how do you relate to your existence? We all exist, so it isn't particular to you. And you are not the cause of your own existence, here and now. Rather existence is something prior to any particular existing things in the order of causes. This cause, this existence, this Being itself, is God, and you can know quite a bit about it, analogously, through unaided reason and without appealing to authority.
Causation is a higher-level emergent phenomenon. At the fundamental level of physics, causation does not exist, not the least due to the time symmetry of the physical laws of nature. The future correlates to the past just as the past correlates to the future.
Also, facts are true without any cause. There is no cause of why 2 + 2 is 4. It just is what it is. (One might call it “being”.)
> Man has a natural inclination to worship something. For most of human history, that has been the divine/supernatural/metaphysical. Nowadays, rationalism and materialism have become the main objects of worship. But rationalism and materialism do not have answers to the existential questions and crises that humans face.
This paintbrush is far too wide. I think many of us have, at least from time to time, felt something between an inclination and need to worship, and many of us feel that all their lives, but I would assert (and die upon this hill) that many lose that [inclination..need].
Personally, I felt it most strongly in my late teens up until my mid twenties when my questioning of everything was at its strongest and my, uh, personality? resolve? acceptance? not sure... was insufficient counter. Like The Stranglers said, I wish(ed) I was a believer, they spend less time being sad.
Eventually, my mechanistic reductionist self made peace with both the many unknowns and the utter ridiculousness of life. The universe is a cold, harsh place, and even our little goldilocks corner of it has an overwhelming imbalance to it, a ruthless "unfairness", at least when viewed through the lens of a humane equity.
Believing in some greater thing does nothing to resolve or address that, though some take solace in believing in some teleology or ultimate reward. Or punishment.
Neither does anything for me and neither is necessary to my life.
> Similar to Christ saying that "man cannot live on bread alone", man cannot live on materialism alone - spiritual nourishment is a very real and necessary thing.
Hard disagree. You might say that my deep breaths and long stares in the woods are spiritual, but I will respectfully disagree. I do not worship those woods, or the lakes or camping with friends or moments of great discovery or satisfaction, whether there or at work, and I find nothing "spiritual" in them.
I accept and rejoice in their being internal affectations, basal responses, and I am quite happy with my reptilian brain. I don't need any sense of anything external or greater or other to celebrate moments of beauty or discovery or to condemn moments of cruelty and injustice.
Please do remember that there are other very different views of the world.
Materialism and our reptile brains are all we've got. I'm content with that. (Unless and until I watch the news, but that is another subject altogether.)
> Similar to Christ saying that "man cannot live on bread alone", man cannot live on materialism alone - spiritual nourishment is a very real and necessary thing.
I'm a Christian, and your interpretation is exactly how I have always understood that passage (Matthew 4:4). It is among a small number of biblical passages that have been the foundation of my adult life.
Even if you do not believe in a specific deity, the bible and for that matter most other core religious scriptures are still a treasury of knowledge about the human condition. It's sad that so many people think they have outgrown the wisdom you find there. There are a lot of false gods.
> Nowadays, rationalism and materialism have become the main objects of worship.
Nobody worships rationalism. Using reason to understand the world isn't a form of worship. It's the opposite of worship.
> But rationalism and materialism do not have answers to the existential questions and crises that humans face.
Existential crisis is a by-product of rationalism. When advances in science essentially debunked religious claims on nature and humanity, it removed the need for god ( aka "god is dead" - uh oh existential crisis ). It's hard to reconcile god making man out of dirt and evolution. To demand rationalism provide answers to the exstential crisis is irrational because existential crisis is the "answer" provided by rationalism.
> Similar to Christ saying that "man cannot live on bread alone", man cannot live on materialism alone - spiritual nourishment is a very real and necessary thing.
Man has, does and will live on materialism alone. Whether man can lead a more fulfilling life believing in religion is another story. Do kids who believe in santa claus lead better lives than those who do not. It's up for debate.
But rationalism can't have an answer for existential crisis. You cannot reason your way out of the existential crisis because reason and logic will lead you to it rather than religion. The only way out of existential crisis is to reject reason and logic to some degree.
No offense, but you have to be an idiot to not even consider the possibility that your data was going to be sold. What do they think they were going to do with the data? Just keep it safe in storage?
There may be some cases--if a person is on the edge of being eligible for SNAP, or for SSDI for a dependent adult in their houshold, where getting a raise might actually make them poorer. It's wrong to say people do this because they're too stupid to know about marginal tax rates.
My state fixed this so the marginal rate was never over 100%, but there is a rather wide range where the marginal rate is about 75%. For every dollar you earn, you keep 25¢, and are paying in 75¢ in the form of getting fewer refundable tax credits, food stamps, energy bill assistance, and so on. (If I include the energy bill assistance, the marginal rate is 85% in a few bands.)
Is it? There are situations where it makes sense to avoid a rise and stay in the tax bracket. Like if with 5k rise you loose a 10k childcare benefits provided by local municipality.
Yes, the anecdote about misunderstanding a particular thing may be broken if you introduce additional factors.
The absurd thing in your scenario is the steep cliff on the benefit...this doesn't change the observation that some people have absurd beliefs about how progressive taxes are implemented.
That's not tax brackets though, that's income. Talking about tax brackets is weirdly indirect way to talk about income. The people who avoid raises because they think they'll be taxed higher on all their income because they don't understand how brackets work aren't the same people who avoid raises because it'll cause them to earn too much to be eligible for government assistance programs.
Can someone tell me what the point of RTO is? These companies made insane profits during the pandemic and when everyone was WFH. Why rock the boat? Is it just corporate real estate prices? Is that all it comes down to?
Soft layoffs. Now with most of the software "done", big tech doesn't need an army of engineers. Revenue is not going to go up strong anymore so only way to increase profit is cutting cost.
In addition to the excellent points already made by others, some of it just comes down to the simple reality that some people are very poor performers in remote work settings. They should be dealt with individually on a case by case basis, but unfortunately blanket RTO mandates are much easier.
And usually from executives who seem to be away on "business trips" more often than not and when they join a Zoom, they're obviously in their home office.
We're in a time where all CEOs have to do "the current thing" because now there is no free money to paper over bad decisions. When the hammer drops, board is going to take inventory and say: "did you do these four things that everyone else was doing?", if one of those things is NOT implement RTO, they are out. This is a common groupthink problem at the top, encouraged by Linkedin thought pieces by similarly out of touch people, or whatever the flavor of the month book idea is.
It comes and goes in waves, this is just a current trend we have to surf.
Municipalities where the office is located threatening higher taxation if they don’t return to office. Mostly corporations who own their buildings are impacted.
A lot of people cite executive ego which I think is not entirely the case. But the board and execs are capitalist, and likely are financially incentivized by their holdings and portfolios to have a successful commercial real estate market and active municipal economy.
I think this is definitely a factor. I've seen companies do some weird shit with work-locations to get those sweet, sweet tax incentives. Think things like moving most of the people in one office across a parking lot to a new building for just a couple months, to meet occupancy targets for tax incentives, before they had enough hires to fill the new building with new people. Terribly disruptive, who knows what it cost, plus did exactly nothing for the spirit of the thing, just a total farce.
Totally believe that things like this are playing a role in RTO decisions. I also think the soft-layoff thing is a major factor, and generally that execs get uncomfortable when workers gain... anything, really, but especially perks of a higher "class" than they're "due".
Even those who own their own buildings, that's hardly an excuse. Buildings cost money. Every in-office employee has a cost associated with him or her, the cost of the facility itself. If they don't have in-office employees, the building can be sold (it's not an asset, just an ongoing cost).
Financially, it does not make sense to want to pay extra for each employee for square footage for the desk. Even if only some employees work remotely, that opens up the possibility of selling the building and leasing/purchasing a smaller one that costs less. Basically, remote work shifts the burden of paying for the desk to the employee... something you might be tempted to think the company would want to do.
Source? I have yet to see a single US government levy taxes as a function of how many employees work within their jurisdiction.
I don’t even understand how the logistics of that would work, nor if it would be legal, and especially politically unpopular since now small businesses are getting hit with taxes simply for being small.
This is a state thing, usually some N-year break an payroll taxes if they have M people working in the office. These deals are really about butts-in-seats unfortunately, and there is usually a non-trivial clawback clause.
Source: I was hired by a well-known hyperscalar cloud company that didn't want to send me to HQ, but wanted to place me at some random remote satellite offices. I looked into why, and it was this payroll / other tax break by the locality. (I sorta forced them to send me to HQ, as I don't deal with the heat / humidity well in the remote locations, which were in the US south).
