• krnl386@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    My guess is that some businesses get tax breaks from municipalities in exchange for filling office spaces with warm bodies. The idea is that people in office buildings support local businesses by buying lunch, and sometimes grabbing a pint after work.

    I’m not trying to excuse this trend, in fact as an IT person myself I 100% agree with the sentiment, I’m just trying to share what I’ve been told.

    • tinkling4938@lemmynsfw.com
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      4 months ago

      This is the excuse my employer gave. So I’m to take a pay cut (gas, wear and tear on my vehicle, loss of time to commute) so I can spend more money to prop up other businesses for a tax break that is likely to go into some rich ass C-levels bonus or shareholders pocket for cut costs?

      Fuuuck that. Its just another way of picking the labor class clean to the bone.

    • friend_of_satan@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      It’s even simpler than that: they leased the office space and have to continue to pay that lease or else pay an early termination fee. This is basically the sunk cost fallacy. But you are right that sometimes additionally they get tax breaks for certain office space, for instance the San Francisco mid-market tax break (AKA the Twitter tax break)

    • gmtom@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Commercial realestste makes up a significant amount of rich people’s investment portfolios. And if people stopped needing office space the property would devalue and those rich people would lose easy money.

      So they have all collectively agreed to force their workers back to the office I order to keep the real estate values up and keep their investments positive.

      • pelerinli@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Also rich can afford to have a investment in busy city areas while regular folk can get a house in urban areas at best. And work from home is leading people to the urban areas where rents are less.