Comment on The time and expense of commuting is theft, if that job can be done from home.
spongebue@lemmy.world 22 hours agoComing in hot with my personal financial situation, eh? Nice. For what it’s worth a major reason I was able to buy the home I have is because we’ve been here over a decade - bought just as the crash started to recover. The last thing I want to do is take a “fuck you, I’ve got mine” attitude but that doesn’t mean I can’t point out giant issues with ideas people are coming up with. You’re welcome to pick apart those arguments, but if you feel the need to go after me personally instead, maybe you should think about why that is.
Like when you bring up taking location into account for an office location. I live on one side of the metro area, many of my coworkers live elsewhere. Take a company with enough people working somewhere, and their “average” location will probably end up near the middle of the city - more than likely a downtown area. Which brings us right back to where we started.
What’s more, everything you say may theoretically work for one person going to one workplace from one home. What about a married couple who work in entirely different places? If one person has a job in (for example) Omaha, NE and the other in Lincoln, that couple could conceivably live in between those two cities and each have a sorta long but doable commute. If a company were to “provide a benefit like a subsidized loan for property closer to the work” (you mean like a mortgage?) that would not only be insane for that random shop with 3 employees (not all business owners are automatically in the <1%) but it would put that employee’s partner at a disadvantage by making them have a longer commute.
HubertManne@piefed.social 22 hours ago
I apologize if it felt like a personal attack. It was more dripping sarcasm. But the reason for the employees being so randomly located is because there is no incentive from the employer. Where couples work is often influenced by where the other partner works unless you are in the enviable position where both have great jobs. So when someone gets an incredible opportunity on the other side of the country the other spouse does not stay with their job and take a flight to commute each day. They look for work closer to that great opportunity. Similarly someone married to someone in the military which ironically does have incentives to live close by.
spongebue@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
You’re talking about giant differences in location (cross-country) which, of course, would need some hard decisions to be made. I’m talking about realistic compromises that may have to be made between a couple with very different work locations in the same general area. When I talked about Lincoln vs Omaha, NE, those two cities are an hour apart. But could be a 30-minute commute in opposite directions for each. Maybe one person works in downtown Chicago, while the other works in the O’Hare airport. Maybe people work in two different boroughs of NYC. If the employer incentived an employee to live nearby, what about their family who works across town? Things crumble apart with that.
HubertManne@piefed.social 21 hours ago
Not really. If one spouses makes significantly more than the other it makes sense to go near that spouses work and the other one to find a job close by when the local incentive is in place. The distances was just an example to show that decisions of a couple will line up with the major earner and when there is incentive the other will change jobs.
spongebue@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
From a financial perspective, and IF one does make significantly more, I guess maybe.
From a relationship perspective, using my 2x 30 minute commutes for workplaces an hour apart example, if I had to take two additional hours out of my day away from home every work day, while my partner had to take 2 minutes… Woof. Even if there’s a perfectly logical financial reason that’s hard not to feel resentment over.