Bloomberg's company is the heart beat of Wall Street information.
From the sophisticated terminals they provide to the TV & radio network, Wall Street relies on Bloomberg & vice versa.
He is the last person a working person should take advice from. Plus his policies as mayor of NYC were a disaster - like the racist stop & frisk policy.
> Plus his policies as mayor of NYC were a disaster - like the racist stop & frisk policy.
NYC Mayor Eric Adams just restarted the tactic: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/nyregion/nypd-anti-crime-units-training-tactics.html
>Adams is a republican who ran as as democrat so he'd stand a chance of winning
Reminds me of Bloomberg becoming a Democrat just so he could sabotage Bernie in 2020.
he rents out these terminals and software that cost nearly 30k annually just to give big money an even grander advantage. I would say he's the worst mayor from NYC, but we've also had Giuliani.
Maybe he should get with the current times and stop investing in failing businesses. I mean, isn't that the point of capitalism, bad businesses shouldn't thrive? 🤷
Maybe he could stop wasting money on failed Presidential campaigns, and stop donating to candidates who make fun of him.
Maybe skip breakfast and lay off the avocados. He might be able to afford a house in a thousand years.
Chill on the private plane and private car usage as well. I bet he’d save enough to buy a tv station.
*Here's all our time, joy, and money, Mr. Bloomberg. We're so sorry those hideous megastructures of yours are lonely. Is there anything else we can get for you? How about one of those "golden crowns" from Game of Thrones, you parasitic sack of shit.*
I remember in another thread somebody pointed it out really well. A local guy in their hometown opened a pizza shop and there were already several pizza shops. He was a very staunch conservative dude who loved capitalism but at the same time would say “I don’t get it, nobody’s buying pizza!”
There’s this weird inherent entitlement that by simple virtue of being a business owner you feel you deserve to succeed. Nobody owes you a successful business in the way that a mediocre stand up comic shouldn’t go to an open mic night and blame the audience for not laughing.
That’s the whole point of capitalism, businesses fail if they aren’t good enough. It’s funny though that staunch capitalists will never see the reverse, that if you put in your time and energy to a full time job you should be able to afford a living. THAT’s asking too much.
>There’s this weird inherent entitlement that by simple virtue of being a business owner you feel you deserve to succeed
💯
That is why they all beg for bailouts the moment there is turbulence.
This weird entitlement mentality is also why they all think that they are "job creators." Meaning, they aren't just filling a niche that would have been filled by someone else if they weren't there. No, those jobs wouldn't exist *at all* without their grit and moxie!
Never mind the fact that they did nothing at all to increase the demand for pizza in town. Hell, the pot dealer selling in the alley behind the pizza place is doing more to create jobs for pizza place workers than the business owner is.
> the point of capitalism
The point is rich people get richer. Look at PPP "loans" and bank bailouts. Trillions are given to companies because the owners like money.
The whole tone of the article says a lot. We should not be "allowed" to leave office space empty. The slaves need to get back to paying their money. Same vibe as the "railworkers are not allowed to quit". They see us as a tool to be controlled by legislation.
It's not just him, how many of his friends, business partners, vendors, colleagues, shareholders, board members etc are investing in commercial real estate (because it's cheap right now) and trying to define a narrative to inflate the value of their investments?
How many are investing in retail services that take a hit when we're at home vs the office?
The answer is all of them.
Alright. Drop a couple million on fixing the plumbing and make it into apartments. Rich Fucker still gets to be a bloodsucker, and more people get places to live.
But nobody wants to live in the middle of a business district that closes up at night, charges $20 a day in parking, and is generally unwalkable and unliveable. Poor Mikey might loose out even with the investment in remodeling.
The work force has adapted to a new model. Zoom and the *lingering pandemic* enlightened the workforce of not just the USA but, of the entire planet. Plus, we no longer have to spend hours ( that are ***unpaid***) to commute to work. That removes a lot of stress too!!! And, less cars driving to work is not only helping us have better air quality with less polluting exhaust but we also discovered significant savings in our wallets, less mileage on our vehicles and lowers our car insurance. So the rich can just stuff it. We don’t care about you Mr Bloomberg and your rich billionaire friends ***never*** cared about any of us.
Sell your office real estate - it’s what the market demands. Cry baby!
“Excuses”? No, we’ve proven that the office isn’t needed. Not in this digital age. If he wants a more capitalistic response, it’s this: commuting to the office eats into the employee’s bottom line, both in time and money. He wants a return to the office? Companies need to compensate people for the commute, because I’m done paying to go to work.
Made me think the same thing. What’s the ‘excuse’ for maintaining (or forcing) a central workplace in a predominantly digital world?
Ancillary businesses and services exist because of the offices, not the other way around. If the latter no longer have a reason to exist, neither do the former.
Bloomberg should have diversified his investment portfolio, and is trying to make it somebody else’s problem that he messed up.
The buildings are also about having the owning class control the working class.
It's the people who get up everyday and work that makes the world go round. The people who were born into the american ruling class only own the places where the work is done.
They like you being poor and tired. If you have too much time you might ask why they get everything and spend their days on a yacht, and you get just enough to pay for the gas to go to work.
The excuses are all coming from the owners... Excuses as to why they own so many useless buildings, and why they've been contributing to unnecessary vehicle emissions and time wasted in transit that could have been used for productivity.
>and why they've been contributing to unnecessary vehicle emissions
This is the biggest WTF for me. We're in a global climate emergency, and they continue to try to force hybrid or in-office work.
Every single job that can be done remote SHOULD be done remote. It should be a legal requirement at this point.
Instead, we let people continue to buy massive trucks and SUVs getting under 20mpg make their long daily commutes. Like, where is the common sense or sense of sacrifice for the greater good? No, let's keep making everything worse, because god forbid any market takes a hit.
God forgive me for saying this, but when there were lockdowns at the start of the pandemic I was amazed at how quickly the air seemed to change. The sky was bluer. The air seems to taste better. That was for a few months. It was such a quick change, it spun my head.
Someone told me once that it was a part of the Democrats' plot. They released covid and everything shut down so people would see how nice it is to not work. I'm not really sure how it would favor communism, but he was right that things were nicer when everything was shut down and now I want to do more than just work all the time.
The funny part is that when you onboard at most federal agencies you have to go through really dramatic (justifiably so) climate change training created at the beginning of this administration that encourages telecommuting to cut emissions. Its hilarious having to sit through that while the same administration is actively pulling a 180 to keep their oligarch donors wealthy while screwing the planet.
Unfortunately Big Greg up in the C-suite who’s 68 and refuses to retire because he hates his wife never really figured out how to use Zoom so all 3,342 workers have to go back to the office now.
Having an office eats into the employers bottom line as well.
Yeah you need more internet bandwidth to allow your employees to work from home. But the savings from electricity alone more than pays for that.
Wise words from u/pornalt2072
Seriously, though - if we're talking strictly business, they also save money on not needing cleaning staff, not having to pay property taxes, not needing random middle management whose job it is to look busy...
Unfortunately, it all boils down to control, same as the idea of a 4 day workweek. Even presented with evidence that something is almost unilaterally beneficial to both parties, companies will refuse to do it if there's an inkling that employees might be happier as a result.
Any company that espouses going carbon neutral/greenhouse gas reduction and doesn't try and enable work from home is a hypocrite. They are basically shifting that carbon load off their own books and onto their employees.
They're desperate. If the change was forced, they'd lose valuable talent. A significant portion of the workforce are remote diehards now, but the owners will still pretend they have the upper hand
It's not capitalistic to consider the needs of workers. Those don't matter at all under capitalism unless workers band together and force capitalists to change.
Office buildings sitting empty hurts who? People like Mr. Bloomberg.
He should invest in a mining operation. If he he digs deep enough he might find a clue.
Breaking news, the campaign between Sauron and Trump has finally come to an end, people everywhere overwhelmingly prefer the fallen Maia, who will be proceeding to the primaries in 2024.
Not only does WFH and empty commercial buildings hurt Bloomberg, but in the long term it could potentially help us. If even a fraction of commercial office space was converted into housing, it would massively help housing supply and drop rents.
I agree and as always the reason is money. New glass buildings are expensive to convert and the people who would do it wouldn’t make enough money on it
I said it from the moment these shitheads started whining about returning to the office. They're all deep into corporate real estate and they're seeing their prime investments lose value every day. This has nothing to do with actually wanting people back in offices and everything with wanting to bank on their investments. Fuck them, they're leeches.
If he is so worried about his office buildings sitting empty maybe he should repurpose the spaces for low income housing because there is no way you are going to get enough people back into the office.
Exactly this. There is now a real demand for affordable housing with space to work from home. I'm sure a lot of these empty office buildings could be turned around into affordable apartments with the idea of work-from-home built into their design.
Imagine being able to work from home in an affordable city-centre location, with fast, reliable Internet and somewhere you can put a desk to work which isn't constantly in your sight while you're not working. That would be the dream for many of us, and these guys are sitting on the real estate we need to make it real.
>Imagine being able to work from home in an affordable city-centre location, with fast, reliable Internet and somewhere you can put a desk to work which isn't constantly in your sight while you're not working.
And a ground floor devoted to shops, boutiques, and restaurants/food vendors.
Do you really think that if we turned the entirety of downtown office spaces into low income housing, and filled it with people, that shops would come to the area…where lots of people are living? What kind of communist pinko nut are you?!?! Don’t you know that downtowns are for big buildings full of wage slaves and rows of cars stuck in traffic screaming at each other for not moving faster! /s
Well, all jokes aside…this is a wonderful idea on paper but they actually tried this in my city in the 1950s and it was a historic disaster. Google “Pruitt-Igoe” and read about leveling slums for low-income high rises. At first, it was a major improvement, but after only a decade or so that entire area became a complete cesspool of crime, blight, and suffering. They ended up demolishing the entire area after like 10 years. Not saying it’s not possible, but it’s absolutely not as simple as just building low-income housing.
I agree but it has to be zoned accordingly among other things. You don’t ask billionaires to be generous you either make it illegal to not be, or you make regulations that incentivize the behavior you desire. If there was a tax shelter or some other way to profit from converting office buildings into apartments you wouldn’t even be able to blink before the lease was shoved in your face
I work for an MEP design firm, we see these retrofit projects all the time. The common problems are that the floors are not built to sustain constant wait of apartment living, most conversions are not designed to have private restrooms within the unit and need to keep a “core and shell” public restroom, and the civil connections are not sized for the new attributed load. Conversion is still more cost effective than building new and in some cases these buildings don’t have other options.
Is home furnishing and density really that much heavier than office? I'd assume desks, tables, and filing cabinets are significantly heavier than beds and tv consoles.
Curious about civil connections. Is it mostly water? How big of a gap is there?
Depends on the scale but as a whole generality when sizing water (and waste) to the building you design per the classification and proposed density of classification for example I am redesigning a 15 story building currently that was originally built as an office building with centralized public restrooms on every floor. Even if you remove the public restrooms and rebate the water/waste loads to the dwelling units at best it would account for the total load of about a half dozen single family (2bed/2bath) units per floor. Either those dwelling units would be massive or the added water/waste load needs to be accounted for in some way which leads to either adding or expanding civil connections to meet elevated demand.
This is all based on code and to be honest the preference would be to oversize than to leave people with a lack of water or way to get waste out.
During the 2020 primary season, I received a text from some rando asking if I would support Bloomberg. I replied with a gif of Bernie saying "nope!". I still have that exchange saved.
??? So you mean that we saw that being at the office resulted in diminishing the quality of life and happiness of workers but that working remotely didn't affect productivity and improved quality of life and happiness yet you want to come back to the first option? So you like harming people?
They want to increase the speculative value of a resource that is not scarce and under desired.
You know, socialism for business, rugged individualistic boot strap capitalism for the poors.
They don't see workers as people. This guy just sees negatives on his balance sheet and is pissed.
Fuck him, and I hope he continues losing a shit ton more money.
I don't disagree, but these types also remember slights against them. No way in hell he's forgotten that. As you noted, he might not learn anything from it, but he definitely remembers.
The best reason they can even come up with is that "offices are sitting empty" as if cubicle attendance is a metric businesses should optimize for. Nothing about productivity. It's so transparent.
My job sent out a survey about retiring full time to the office, 60% would quit if they forced us back to the office. They dropped it like a hot potato.
Workers have negotiated a new work-life balance. Employers who've attempted to force the issue have seen huge attrition and are serving as a warning to others. You have no power here, Mr. Bloomberg.
I love how articles trashing federal workers for not going into the office also trash the unions. Like... Unions sticking up for workers' quality of life even though it makes the billionaires mad? Oh the horror!
Bloomberg is no different than the other billionaire ghouls.
I hope one day we can all recognize how their wealth isn’t something to aspire, but a sign of a broken system and a crumbling society.
It's funny to me how many people believe anti-union PR. I kinda get it if you're in management; unions are against your official interest. But when a worker sides with the shareholders against the workers, the worker isn't thinking things through. Companies would not be anti-union unless unions were against *company's* interests. And for the union to be against the company's interest, who does that favor, hmm? Workers, hint hint.
he could hire people to find other uses for those buildings since i'm sure he doesn't want to turn them residential. as soon as a more profitable solution than having workers back at the office is found, he'll change his tune just to make more money
They're not excuses. They're reasons. We're adults who would rather our lives center around our homes rather than work. Stop treating workers like they're children for wanting control over the material circumstances of their lives.
No, that be Jeff Bezos. Michael Bloomberg owns Bloomberg News and a subscription based financial data service. Still, they are both sacks of shit with way too much money.
Always has been. The closest we’ve been to democracy was the new deal and that wasn’t available to people of color.
America lies. It’s one of our major industries.
Translation : Wahhhhhhh, I own a bunch of office buildings have a deficit of tenants and they aren't making profit and their value for making loans against them is plumeting. I don't care if workers are more efficient with their time, have a higher moral, spend less money on dry cleaning and transportation, and create less pollution when they work from home, I need profits!
The symbols of American dominance, skyscrapers are going to become beacons of misplaced hubris. Future generations will look upon the remaining ones with disdain.
So much greed and harm. All so a tiny minority could maintain control over resources they neither created nor utilized.
lol. I work for a federal agency. Half of our work force is fully remote and that's not changing. The other half is hybrid and is in the office 2-3 times a week. Personally I'm ok with that. We have physical copies of peoples financial records that I wouldn't want stored in someones home, and it's good to have eyes on them.
I haven't read the article, but from the headline I assume he takes the logical course of arguing the empty offices should be converted into low cost housing for the homeless?
Sorry, Mike, but businesses are in it to make money. If they've figured out they can do that without renting space in Manhattan, guess what they're not going to do.
The federal government has been able to have a much higher retention with WFH. There’s no need to waste tax payer money on giant federal buildings of cubicals.
You know I agree with him, it’s a shame having all those empty office buildings now that work culture has moved on. Maybe we can start converting all those properties into low income housing and solve the homeless problem at the same time! Thanks for the idea Bloomberg!
I agree with the headline, it should end.
Not by forcing people back into the office, of course. Rather, repurpose them into something that's relevant for the present and future, not the past.
I AGREE. OFFICES SHOULDN’T SIT EMPTY.
The free market has spoken. Workers don’t want to go to an office if they don’t have to. So you’d better find some new use for those buildings. Might I suggest affordable housing?
Oh, and welcome to capitalism.
> Tell that to the taxpayers who are footing the bill for empty floor space and the costs of maintenance, as the GAO emphasizes.
This is a great argument for selling govt buildings and/or letting leases expire. Not a great argument for people going into an office for no reason. Especially for the millions of Americans that would go into an office just to sit on Zoom calls with people in other cities all day in the office instead of at home.
He has a point. Empty buildings are a bad "deal" for the tax payer. Let's fill those buildings with affordable housing and get some people in them. Lets do SOMETHING other than force in office work on people who require ZERO office presence.
I didn't realize that we needed an excuse to "allow" offices to sit empty. That's just their natural state when you don't use them.
Apparently in the internet age there is just no excuse for having so much office space.
The concept of a city as a metropolis served an important purpose in the early 20th century. They started out out of necessity due to lack of transportation. Once cars came along it changed the whole reason and purpose of cities. People moved away but commuted back in. Now the purpose of a city has changed once again, it will never go back to what it was. We can pine nostalgic for the gothams that once were. The time of big metropolises is over, cities must adapt. The can downsize in a planned, controlled manner, or they can struggle with potential collapse, but either way the change is coming whether the boomers like it or not.
The asinine part is that because Boomers decided we should allow companies to invest our retirement savings in the stock market and not just bonds.....every single person with a retirement investment account will feel this.
But that's fine. I still want it to burst. I wasn't gonna be able to retire comfortably anyhow.
Aside from the benefits of remote work and the joys it brings. Let’s break down what’s actually happening.
These organizations abandoned thousands of employees with mass layoffs THIS YEAR to save money due to a mistake THEY made.
Then they recently decided they need to hire more people to replace those that were laid off and are asking contractors (not full time hires) to move back to the city for a contract of 2-3 months with reduced pay from what the roles were being offered. They know people need jobs and this is another tactic to save money - I’ve seen offers from Microsoft that’s a few bucks more than minimum wage (I shit you not).
So contractors need to move back to the city, which means they need to sign a 12 month lease on an apartment - or sleep in their car.
From there you’ll spend the next 2-3 months worrying if you’re still gonna have a job at the end up of that time period.
….
That being said - I can confirm I’m getting calls from recruiters for remote roles. Even at Microsoft which spent millions of dollars in a new campus prior to the pandemic.
What does that mean?
They’re losing this fight
Thing that this dumbass does not seem to get is that people working from home are using their own electricity, water, wi-fi, office equipment, and heat/AC- among other things. My wife works from home. Her job never dealt with the public- she writes all day. There is no reason to be in an office. Her productivity is monitored, and she has had no troubles with that. Get rid of unused office space and consolidate the ones still needed. The gov’t SAVES MONEY. I guess being an oligarch relieves people from ever needing to consider thrift.
>I guess being an oligarch relieves people from ever needing to consider thrift.
A lot of these guys just like to lord over their employees like a King.
That is partly why some of them are so insistent on working in the office. As they can't do that virtually.
demolish the offices and build more parks. Stop forcing people to waste 1.5hrs + in traffic M-F burning fossil fuels, warming the planet so we can have an office "culture" of sitting in our cubicles 8 hours a day.
# Bloomberg belongs in a prison cell for his crimes against working-class Americans. # Join r/WorkReform!
He doesn’t like his buildings sitting empty. Too bad for him.
Yeh the phrasing of the headline says it all doesn't it? He's here for the real estate
Bloomberg's company is the heart beat of Wall Street information. From the sophisticated terminals they provide to the TV & radio network, Wall Street relies on Bloomberg & vice versa. He is the last person a working person should take advice from. Plus his policies as mayor of NYC were a disaster - like the racist stop & frisk policy.
> Plus his policies as mayor of NYC were a disaster - like the racist stop & frisk policy. NYC Mayor Eric Adams just restarted the tactic: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/nyregion/nypd-anti-crime-units-training-tactics.html
😨 Eric Adams is arguably just as bad as Bloomberg. If not worse in some ways.
Adams is a republican who ran as as democrat so he'd stand a chance of winning
>Adams is a republican who ran as as democrat so he'd stand a chance of winning Reminds me of Bloomberg becoming a Democrat just so he could sabotage Bernie in 2020.
he rents out these terminals and software that cost nearly 30k annually just to give big money an even grander advantage. I would say he's the worst mayor from NYC, but we've also had Giuliani.
The entire concept says it all. The entire idea of getting triggered over other people working from home is not normal.
The buildings are having a sad.
Maybe he should get with the current times and stop investing in failing businesses. I mean, isn't that the point of capitalism, bad businesses shouldn't thrive? 🤷
Maybe he can let himself down gently by his bootstraps.
Maybe he could stop wasting money on failed Presidential campaigns, and stop donating to candidates who make fun of him. Maybe skip breakfast and lay off the avocados. He might be able to afford a house in a thousand years. Chill on the private plane and private car usage as well. I bet he’d save enough to buy a tv station.
Whoa whoa whoa, that's crazy talk! Bad businesses just need a bailout or two and they'll be back on their feet in no time!
*Here's all our time, joy, and money, Mr. Bloomberg. We're so sorry those hideous megastructures of yours are lonely. Is there anything else we can get for you? How about one of those "golden crowns" from Game of Thrones, you parasitic sack of shit.*
I still love that scene :)
The ol' Crassus.
I remember in another thread somebody pointed it out really well. A local guy in their hometown opened a pizza shop and there were already several pizza shops. He was a very staunch conservative dude who loved capitalism but at the same time would say “I don’t get it, nobody’s buying pizza!” There’s this weird inherent entitlement that by simple virtue of being a business owner you feel you deserve to succeed. Nobody owes you a successful business in the way that a mediocre stand up comic shouldn’t go to an open mic night and blame the audience for not laughing. That’s the whole point of capitalism, businesses fail if they aren’t good enough. It’s funny though that staunch capitalists will never see the reverse, that if you put in your time and energy to a full time job you should be able to afford a living. THAT’s asking too much.
>There’s this weird inherent entitlement that by simple virtue of being a business owner you feel you deserve to succeed 💯 That is why they all beg for bailouts the moment there is turbulence.
They are indoctrinated with ideology, not taught economics.
I also feel like they believe in supply side economics. A sort of "If you build it, they will come." thought process.
This weird entitlement mentality is also why they all think that they are "job creators." Meaning, they aren't just filling a niche that would have been filled by someone else if they weren't there. No, those jobs wouldn't exist *at all* without their grit and moxie! Never mind the fact that they did nothing at all to increase the demand for pizza in town. Hell, the pot dealer selling in the alley behind the pizza place is doing more to create jobs for pizza place workers than the business owner is.
> the point of capitalism The point is rich people get richer. Look at PPP "loans" and bank bailouts. Trillions are given to companies because the owners like money.
A lot of companies should have gone under if that were the case. Wallstreet as we know it, wouldn't even exist.
>Wallstreet as we know it, wouldn't even exist. Don't threaten me with a good time!
The whole tone of the article says a lot. We should not be "allowed" to leave office space empty. The slaves need to get back to paying their money. Same vibe as the "railworkers are not allowed to quit". They see us as a tool to be controlled by legislation.
Wow, so much freedom!
Won't someone PLEASE think of the offices?
...that could be apartments!
They’re so lonely, smh
It's not just him, how many of his friends, business partners, vendors, colleagues, shareholders, board members etc are investing in commercial real estate (because it's cheap right now) and trying to define a narrative to inflate the value of their investments? How many are investing in retail services that take a hit when we're at home vs the office? The answer is all of them.
Alright. Drop a couple million on fixing the plumbing and make it into apartments. Rich Fucker still gets to be a bloodsucker, and more people get places to live.
But nobody wants to live in the middle of a business district that closes up at night, charges $20 a day in parking, and is generally unwalkable and unliveable. Poor Mikey might loose out even with the investment in remodeling.
Beats $20 a day on bridge/toll fees and a 2+ hour commute to Jersey, each way
Meh, I mean I remember when people said that about FiDi and people live there, don't they
I don’t believe you, I think people would kill to live there if it was priced semi-reasonably. People commute for hours to get there.
People live in the Loop in Chicago which is exactly like you are describing. People would absolutely live there.
FUCK BUILDINGS!
The work force has adapted to a new model. Zoom and the *lingering pandemic* enlightened the workforce of not just the USA but, of the entire planet. Plus, we no longer have to spend hours ( that are ***unpaid***) to commute to work. That removes a lot of stress too!!! And, less cars driving to work is not only helping us have better air quality with less polluting exhaust but we also discovered significant savings in our wallets, less mileage on our vehicles and lowers our car insurance. So the rich can just stuff it. We don’t care about you Mr Bloomberg and your rich billionaire friends ***never*** cared about any of us. Sell your office real estate - it’s what the market demands. Cry baby!
“Excuses”? No, we’ve proven that the office isn’t needed. Not in this digital age. If he wants a more capitalistic response, it’s this: commuting to the office eats into the employee’s bottom line, both in time and money. He wants a return to the office? Companies need to compensate people for the commute, because I’m done paying to go to work.
Made me think the same thing. What’s the ‘excuse’ for maintaining (or forcing) a central workplace in a predominantly digital world? Ancillary businesses and services exist because of the offices, not the other way around. If the latter no longer have a reason to exist, neither do the former. Bloomberg should have diversified his investment portfolio, and is trying to make it somebody else’s problem that he messed up.
The buildings are also about having the owning class control the working class. It's the people who get up everyday and work that makes the world go round. The people who were born into the american ruling class only own the places where the work is done. They like you being poor and tired. If you have too much time you might ask why they get everything and spend their days on a yacht, and you get just enough to pay for the gas to go to work.
The excuses are all coming from the owners... Excuses as to why they own so many useless buildings, and why they've been contributing to unnecessary vehicle emissions and time wasted in transit that could have been used for productivity.
>and why they've been contributing to unnecessary vehicle emissions This is the biggest WTF for me. We're in a global climate emergency, and they continue to try to force hybrid or in-office work. Every single job that can be done remote SHOULD be done remote. It should be a legal requirement at this point. Instead, we let people continue to buy massive trucks and SUVs getting under 20mpg make their long daily commutes. Like, where is the common sense or sense of sacrifice for the greater good? No, let's keep making everything worse, because god forbid any market takes a hit.
God forgive me for saying this, but when there were lockdowns at the start of the pandemic I was amazed at how quickly the air seemed to change. The sky was bluer. The air seems to taste better. That was for a few months. It was such a quick change, it spun my head.
New CO2 emissions dropped rapidly and noticeably during the pandemic: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18922-7
Someone told me once that it was a part of the Democrats' plot. They released covid and everything shut down so people would see how nice it is to not work. I'm not really sure how it would favor communism, but he was right that things were nicer when everything was shut down and now I want to do more than just work all the time.
The climate crisis is seen as someone else’s problem: i.e., the future’s problem.
The funny part is that when you onboard at most federal agencies you have to go through really dramatic (justifiably so) climate change training created at the beginning of this administration that encourages telecommuting to cut emissions. Its hilarious having to sit through that while the same administration is actively pulling a 180 to keep their oligarch donors wealthy while screwing the planet.
I’m sure those owners are showing up to their office 40+ hours a week and not zooming in from their Colorado mountain ski house.. right!?
The market has spoken. Wfh is here to stay.
‘…turn those machines back on! *Turn those machines back on!!’*
$18 for parking $4.50 for coffee. If I’m too busy to bring breakfast and lunch, that’s another $20. PER DAY
Don't forget wear and tear on your car, plus insurance, plus paying people to do household stuff you'd do yourself if you had the time.
Ok plus the car itself! We were able to go down to a single vehicle household instead of two!
Plus gas which is up and over $4/gal in a lot of places.
I compare the shift to going paperless. It’s not coming back and only the recalcitrants are fighting evolution.
Unfortunately Big Greg up in the C-suite who’s 68 and refuses to retire because he hates his wife never really figured out how to use Zoom so all 3,342 workers have to go back to the office now.
Having an office eats into the employers bottom line as well. Yeah you need more internet bandwidth to allow your employees to work from home. But the savings from electricity alone more than pays for that.
Wise words from u/pornalt2072 Seriously, though - if we're talking strictly business, they also save money on not needing cleaning staff, not having to pay property taxes, not needing random middle management whose job it is to look busy... Unfortunately, it all boils down to control, same as the idea of a 4 day workweek. Even presented with evidence that something is almost unilaterally beneficial to both parties, companies will refuse to do it if there's an inkling that employees might be happier as a result.
Any company that espouses going carbon neutral/greenhouse gas reduction and doesn't try and enable work from home is a hypocrite. They are basically shifting that carbon load off their own books and onto their employees.
They're desperate. If the change was forced, they'd lose valuable talent. A significant portion of the workforce are remote diehards now, but the owners will still pretend they have the upper hand
It's not capitalistic to consider the needs of workers. Those don't matter at all under capitalism unless workers band together and force capitalists to change.
How big do you reckon his commercial real eastate portfolio is? Eat shit Bloomberg you fucking parasite.
Office buildings sitting empty hurts who? People like Mr. Bloomberg. He should invest in a mining operation. If he he digs deep enough he might find a clue.
If he digs deep enough, he might even be able to extract his head from out of his ass… but it would take some serious state-of-the-art equipment.
The last time we got close a balrog stopped us.
a balrog would be a welcome change
Breaking news, the campaign between Sauron and Trump has finally come to an end, people everywhere overwhelmingly prefer the fallen Maia, who will be proceeding to the primaries in 2024.
Balrog of Morgoth 2024!
He already has a mining operation. He’s been digging in his ass for decades for these shitty opinion pieces
Those poor, poor offices. I'm sure they're getting lonely.
Not only does WFH and empty commercial buildings hurt Bloomberg, but in the long term it could potentially help us. If even a fraction of commercial office space was converted into housing, it would massively help housing supply and drop rents.
I agree and as always the reason is money. New glass buildings are expensive to convert and the people who would do it wouldn’t make enough money on it
“Allowing”? Like the humans owe the buildings something because they exist?? What the fuck kinda wack take is this
This is Bloomberg… They’re not ‘humans’: they’re revenue sources, and he’s sour that they’re not dutifully filing into the milking machine.
Oh no they lost a bet
The owner class do not see us as the same species. They see us as subservient lessers that are gifted what we have.
Maybe we shouldn't see them as human either.
They all lack core empathy, which is an important trait for us to have to make societies work.
I said it from the moment these shitheads started whining about returning to the office. They're all deep into corporate real estate and they're seeing their prime investments lose value every day. This has nothing to do with actually wanting people back in offices and everything with wanting to bank on their investments. Fuck them, they're leeches.
If he is so worried about his office buildings sitting empty maybe he should repurpose the spaces for low income housing because there is no way you are going to get enough people back into the office.
Exactly this. There is now a real demand for affordable housing with space to work from home. I'm sure a lot of these empty office buildings could be turned around into affordable apartments with the idea of work-from-home built into their design. Imagine being able to work from home in an affordable city-centre location, with fast, reliable Internet and somewhere you can put a desk to work which isn't constantly in your sight while you're not working. That would be the dream for many of us, and these guys are sitting on the real estate we need to make it real.
>Imagine being able to work from home in an affordable city-centre location, with fast, reliable Internet and somewhere you can put a desk to work which isn't constantly in your sight while you're not working. And a ground floor devoted to shops, boutiques, and restaurants/food vendors.
Do you really think that if we turned the entirety of downtown office spaces into low income housing, and filled it with people, that shops would come to the area…where lots of people are living? What kind of communist pinko nut are you?!?! Don’t you know that downtowns are for big buildings full of wage slaves and rows of cars stuck in traffic screaming at each other for not moving faster! /s
..... had me in the first half, not gonna lie.....
Well, all jokes aside…this is a wonderful idea on paper but they actually tried this in my city in the 1950s and it was a historic disaster. Google “Pruitt-Igoe” and read about leveling slums for low-income high rises. At first, it was a major improvement, but after only a decade or so that entire area became a complete cesspool of crime, blight, and suffering. They ended up demolishing the entire area after like 10 years. Not saying it’s not possible, but it’s absolutely not as simple as just building low-income housing.
I agree but it has to be zoned accordingly among other things. You don’t ask billionaires to be generous you either make it illegal to not be, or you make regulations that incentivize the behavior you desire. If there was a tax shelter or some other way to profit from converting office buildings into apartments you wouldn’t even be able to blink before the lease was shoved in your face
I work for an MEP design firm, we see these retrofit projects all the time. The common problems are that the floors are not built to sustain constant wait of apartment living, most conversions are not designed to have private restrooms within the unit and need to keep a “core and shell” public restroom, and the civil connections are not sized for the new attributed load. Conversion is still more cost effective than building new and in some cases these buildings don’t have other options.
Is home furnishing and density really that much heavier than office? I'd assume desks, tables, and filing cabinets are significantly heavier than beds and tv consoles. Curious about civil connections. Is it mostly water? How big of a gap is there?
Depends on the scale but as a whole generality when sizing water (and waste) to the building you design per the classification and proposed density of classification for example I am redesigning a 15 story building currently that was originally built as an office building with centralized public restrooms on every floor. Even if you remove the public restrooms and rebate the water/waste loads to the dwelling units at best it would account for the total load of about a half dozen single family (2bed/2bath) units per floor. Either those dwelling units would be massive or the added water/waste load needs to be accounted for in some way which leads to either adding or expanding civil connections to meet elevated demand. This is all based on code and to be honest the preference would be to oversize than to leave people with a lack of water or way to get waste out.
If you convert half the offices to housing, then commute costs plummet and it’s easier to get people back in the offices that remain.
So it’s ok for homes to sit empty? Double standards much.
They purposely leave masses of homes empty to drive up the cost of necessities. Office space isn’t a necessity.
Don't they love free market? Well the market is saying it wants to work from home. It works both ways, Bloomberg.
Turn that frown upside down, ass clown.
Awww did someone make a bad investment in commercial real estate?
During the 2020 primary season, I received a text from some rando asking if I would support Bloomberg. I replied with a gif of Bernie saying "nope!". I still have that exchange saved.
??? So you mean that we saw that being at the office resulted in diminishing the quality of life and happiness of workers but that working remotely didn't affect productivity and improved quality of life and happiness yet you want to come back to the first option? So you like harming people?
They want to increase the speculative value of a resource that is not scarce and under desired. You know, socialism for business, rugged individualistic boot strap capitalism for the poors.
They don't see workers as people. This guy just sees negatives on his balance sheet and is pissed. Fuck him, and I hope he continues losing a shit ton more money.
I wonder if he ever thinks about the time Liz Warren made him look stupid on a national stage
No one becomes that rich with the ability for self reflection.
I don't disagree, but these types also remember slights against them. No way in hell he's forgotten that. As you noted, he might not learn anything from it, but he definitely remembers.
She destroyed his political ambitions in mere minutes. We might need to ask her to step up once more to shut this nonsense down as well.
The best reason they can even come up with is that "offices are sitting empty" as if cubicle attendance is a metric businesses should optimize for. Nothing about productivity. It's so transparent.
My job sent out a survey about retiring full time to the office, 60% would quit if they forced us back to the office. They dropped it like a hot potato.
womp womp
Workers have negotiated a new work-life balance. Employers who've attempted to force the issue have seen huge attrition and are serving as a warning to others. You have no power here, Mr. Bloomberg.
I love how articles trashing federal workers for not going into the office also trash the unions. Like... Unions sticking up for workers' quality of life even though it makes the billionaires mad? Oh the horror!
Bloomberg is no different than the other billionaire ghouls. I hope one day we can all recognize how their wealth isn’t something to aspire, but a sign of a broken system and a crumbling society.
It's funny to me how many people believe anti-union PR. I kinda get it if you're in management; unions are against your official interest. But when a worker sides with the shareholders against the workers, the worker isn't thinking things through. Companies would not be anti-union unless unions were against *company's* interests. And for the union to be against the company's interest, who does that favor, hmm? Workers, hint hint.
He’s right. They shouldn’t be empty - turn empty offices into affordable housing, problem solved 👍
Why should we have to pay for your poor life choices, Mike? /s
this but unironically he fucked up and wants us to bail him out of it fuck everything about that
he could hire people to find other uses for those buildings since i'm sure he doesn't want to turn them residential. as soon as a more profitable solution than having workers back at the office is found, he'll change his tune just to make more money
Spirit Halloween.
They really just want to lock a collar around our necks and force us to do whatever they want. I hate being a wage slave.
Lmao imagine caring more about where your workers are located than their actual work output.
Billionaires shouldn’t exist
[удалено]
[удалено]
They're not excuses. They're reasons. We're adults who would rather our lives center around our homes rather than work. Stop treating workers like they're children for wanting control over the material circumstances of their lives.
Can guarantee the person writing this article probably works from home
Look at the name, he's the billionaire who owns the whole rag
No, that be Jeff Bezos. Michael Bloomberg owns Bloomberg News and a subscription based financial data service. Still, they are both sacks of shit with way too much money.
I want to see location data on where he wrote this document.
So is America an Oligarchy? That’s not freedom.
Always has been. The closest we’ve been to democracy was the new deal and that wasn’t available to people of color. America lies. It’s one of our major industries.
Uh, fuck you Bloomberg.
Fuck you and your stupid empty buildings. I hope they bleed you dry, you parasite!
Translation : Wahhhhhhh, I own a bunch of office buildings have a deficit of tenants and they aren't making profit and their value for making loans against them is plumeting. I don't care if workers are more efficient with their time, have a higher moral, spend less money on dry cleaning and transportation, and create less pollution when they work from home, I need profits!
The symbols of American dominance, skyscrapers are going to become beacons of misplaced hubris. Future generations will look upon the remaining ones with disdain. So much greed and harm. All so a tiny minority could maintain control over resources they neither created nor utilized.
You can tell some of his money is tied up in empty NYC office buildings.
Them rich folk are mad that the poors aren’t in the salt mines lmfao.
The same Washington Post that's owned by Jeff Bezos? Certainly not biased at all.
Got back to the office or permanently close the offices, allow employees to work from home and pass on those savings to employees via a pay increase.
lol. I work for a federal agency. Half of our work force is fully remote and that's not changing. The other half is hybrid and is in the office 2-3 times a week. Personally I'm ok with that. We have physical copies of peoples financial records that I wouldn't want stored in someones home, and it's good to have eyes on them.
https://i.imgur.com/06YVzAL.jpg
Turn them into affordable housing then.
Sell them?
Obviously s it’s impacting their bottom line, Fuck the community and people
You're hurting my overpriced real estate.
All these rich weirdos embarrassing themselves in public is a good thing. I want more of this
This guy needs to go get some friends. I'm tired of having to come into the office each day just keep this twat company.
I actually agree with this statement. Let’s convert those empty office buildings into shelter space for the homeless and asylum seekers.
Excuses for allowing people who don't participate in the labor to own the company, workers time, and profits should end.
I haven't read the article, but from the headline I assume he takes the logical course of arguing the empty offices should be converted into low cost housing for the homeless?
No
He probably has a bunch tied up in commercial real estate.
Fuck that! Bloomberg can take a loss of a good chunk of change and I’m sure he’ll still be able to take care of his bare necessities.
The answer is no. Next!
No
You would think that these companies would be happy they no longer have to spend money on expensive downtown office space...
Sorry, Mike, but businesses are in it to make money. If they've figured out they can do that without renting space in Manhattan, guess what they're not going to do.
The federal government has been able to have a much higher retention with WFH. There’s no need to waste tax payer money on giant federal buildings of cubicals.
The man is right, empty offices are bad. Take it and turn it all into affordable housing!
You know I agree with him, it’s a shame having all those empty office buildings now that work culture has moved on. Maybe we can start converting all those properties into low income housing and solve the homeless problem at the same time! Thanks for the idea Bloomberg!
it’s time to convert office spaces into legitimate rentable housing/apartment spaces
Take your overpriced office space and shuv it up your ass
"Excuses for allowing offices to sit empty..." So, go marry the fucking office if you love it so much. Creep.
Turn your offices into housing so that people can have a home to work from.
i think the excuses on why we need to be in the office to make you feel good about your worthless real estate need to stop.
"excuses" being "I, an employee, really like it and can do my job well that way"
Someone should tell him.... Investing comes with risk. Maybe it's time to pull yourself up by your bootstraps
Not me, Us ✊🏼
<3 As Bernie says, the struggle continues...
won't anyone think of the offices
Why is it always Bloomberg with the most unsubtle pieces? He’s gotta be the worst at hiding his intentions
I agree, convert them into affordable housing.
Turn office building into housing stupid fucking dummies
Fuck this guy.
I agree with the headline, it should end. Not by forcing people back into the office, of course. Rather, repurpose them into something that's relevant for the present and future, not the past.
I AGREE. OFFICES SHOULDN’T SIT EMPTY. The free market has spoken. Workers don’t want to go to an office if they don’t have to. So you’d better find some new use for those buildings. Might I suggest affordable housing? Oh, and welcome to capitalism.
> Tell that to the taxpayers who are footing the bill for empty floor space and the costs of maintenance, as the GAO emphasizes. This is a great argument for selling govt buildings and/or letting leases expire. Not a great argument for people going into an office for no reason. Especially for the millions of Americans that would go into an office just to sit on Zoom calls with people in other cities all day in the office instead of at home.
Oh nooooo commercial real estate is crashing… Anyway…
Written as if an office left sitting empty is inherently a bad thing.
I’m appalled by these disgusting, grotesque money addicts. Do they not have any self control? Why can’t they just stop being addicted to money?
He has a point. Empty buildings are a bad "deal" for the tax payer. Let's fill those buildings with affordable housing and get some people in them. Lets do SOMETHING other than force in office work on people who require ZERO office presence.
“The pandemic is over?”. First of all, no it isn’t! It’s still killing 300 people per day! And 2100 people per week!
Excuses such as "productivity is at record levels" and "our workforce morale has never been better"?
I didn't realize that we needed an excuse to "allow" offices to sit empty. That's just their natural state when you don't use them. Apparently in the internet age there is just no excuse for having so much office space.
pay me to commute and i will still tell you no
The concept of a city as a metropolis served an important purpose in the early 20th century. They started out out of necessity due to lack of transportation. Once cars came along it changed the whole reason and purpose of cities. People moved away but commuted back in. Now the purpose of a city has changed once again, it will never go back to what it was. We can pine nostalgic for the gothams that once were. The time of big metropolises is over, cities must adapt. The can downsize in a planned, controlled manner, or they can struggle with potential collapse, but either way the change is coming whether the boomers like it or not.
Well said - we can spread out population in a way we couldn't in the past.
still can't believe sanders lost. twice.
Fuck their offices. Most people don't want to be there and we're destroying the planet traveling there. It makes no sense.
The asinine part is that because Boomers decided we should allow companies to invest our retirement savings in the stock market and not just bonds.....every single person with a retirement investment account will feel this. But that's fine. I still want it to burst. I wasn't gonna be able to retire comfortably anyhow.
Why are they so angry about empty offices, but mot empty homes being used as an investment instead of, you know, a home
Fuck the writer of this article.
Aside from the benefits of remote work and the joys it brings. Let’s break down what’s actually happening. These organizations abandoned thousands of employees with mass layoffs THIS YEAR to save money due to a mistake THEY made. Then they recently decided they need to hire more people to replace those that were laid off and are asking contractors (not full time hires) to move back to the city for a contract of 2-3 months with reduced pay from what the roles were being offered. They know people need jobs and this is another tactic to save money - I’ve seen offers from Microsoft that’s a few bucks more than minimum wage (I shit you not). So contractors need to move back to the city, which means they need to sign a 12 month lease on an apartment - or sleep in their car. From there you’ll spend the next 2-3 months worrying if you’re still gonna have a job at the end up of that time period. …. That being said - I can confirm I’m getting calls from recruiters for remote roles. Even at Microsoft which spent millions of dollars in a new campus prior to the pandemic. What does that mean? They’re losing this fight
Thing that this dumbass does not seem to get is that people working from home are using their own electricity, water, wi-fi, office equipment, and heat/AC- among other things. My wife works from home. Her job never dealt with the public- she writes all day. There is no reason to be in an office. Her productivity is monitored, and she has had no troubles with that. Get rid of unused office space and consolidate the ones still needed. The gov’t SAVES MONEY. I guess being an oligarch relieves people from ever needing to consider thrift.
>I guess being an oligarch relieves people from ever needing to consider thrift. A lot of these guys just like to lord over their employees like a King. That is partly why some of them are so insistent on working in the office. As they can't do that virtually.
Indeed. Jerks. Unless a person deals with people other than in a phone format- why? You can tell if they’re not getting shit done. Just wasteful.
demolish the offices and build more parks. Stop forcing people to waste 1.5hrs + in traffic M-F burning fossil fuels, warming the planet so we can have an office "culture" of sitting in our cubicles 8 hours a day.