I heard a couple weeks ago an unconfirmed rumor that a major corporation, employing several thousand people, decided to close most of its offices in a major American city. Eli Lilly, in Indianapolis specifically. This may or may not be true, but this impulse seems to be generalized. All accountants always want to cut costs, and this lockdown has amounted to a prolonged experiment in working from home.
Talking to a guy familiar with all this yesterday, he said that many companies are finding people are more productive at home. This means they don’t need to come into the office, which means they don’t NEED an office, which after all costs money, both in terms of monthly rent (or outright purchase), and in terms of facility staff. Many are concluding they can abandon the real estate and save that money, and fire the Facilities staff.
Adding to this temptation is all the bullshit going on in major American cities, the boarded up buildings, the riots, the crime and violence. Why not stay in the suburbs, where the cops will come when you call?
Arguably, this round of rioting, since it is prolonged, ideological, fascistic, and unavoidable, will be WORSE than the riots which ruined for several generations the inner cities of many American cities, like Detroit, Watts, and elsewhere.
Big companies will move out, and take with them all the associated jobs. They won’t need janitors for example. They won’t need security guards. All the restaurants where all those people ate lunch will be forced to close for lack of business. They won’t be getting hair cuts. They won’t be stopping into the corner mart at lunch for a Coke and some aspirin.
I’ve personally known and in some cases employed inner city blacks. A great many of them take the bus everywhere. A great many of them work in service jobs downtown. If those jobs disappear, then they are more fucked than they were before. And simple extortion is a stupid way to try and fix the problem. It won’t work. Not in the long run. It will prove easier for many businesses to relocate or close than to try and deal with gangsters.
The Left is more or less professionally stupid and destructive. Solutions in nearly all cases will involve electing reasonable, solution oriented, practical Republicans. I really think this is the case. Less Democrats everywhere tends to equal less problems.
To be sure, not all Republicans are competent or honest. But we are not blinded by idiotic ideas, leaving the problems to be generated by individual incompetence, corruption, and greed.