Premise: Commuting is bad public policy. We need to discourage it.

I have commuted between small towns I lived in, and larger cities I worked in for most of my life. I drove 35 minutes to get to work, or 55 minutes to get to work, or 40 minutes to get to work. We liked living and raising kids in the small town, but the management jobs with a decent wage were in cities. I poured a lot of dirt into the air, I clogged the freeways. I never took a bus, or car-pooled to work because no buses ran and nobody in my town worked near where I did. I made my 'carbon footprint' much larger and eventually I began to feel guilty about it, but never guilty enough to take a major cut in my wage, or move my family to the city and my employer had no reason to care how many of its employees were creating smog, burning up the ozone to get their money. Now my kids are grown and I have taken the paycheck hit to work five minutes away. Its great now but my retirement account is not doing very well.

I think with this 'new economy' we are trying to create, we ought to find ways to discourage commuting to your school or your job, encourage work from home etc.

My question is how do we go about incentivizing companies to train local workers rather than headhunt from a 60 mile radius. How do we encourage workers to move close to their jobs, or settle for less income and stay near home. How do we encourage traditional colleges to let go of their 'campus' experience, and move all that learning online?

 

If you look back at the history of why so many people commute long distances to work today, much of it goes back to race issues, and middle class flight out of the cities.
Back then there were efforts to "integrate the schools" (both racially and socioeconomically from different neighborhoods). This caused what white / middle class people perceived to be schools "turning bad", and so they left to outlying suburb areas because they wanted their children to go to "good schools".

That trend has been somewhat reversing in the most recent years, as many young professionals have flocked to trendy big cities. (With gradually falling crime rates and gentrification) However, these particular young professionals are mostly not having families, due to declining birthrate trends and low birthrates among the more educated demographic.

Another issue has been that with large population increases (and most immigrants headed to the city), there is not enough room for everyone to live where the job opportunities are concentrated.
The rich often live in the cities because they can afford ample space and privacy there, despite the high costs, and so the businesses that employ people remain concentrated there.

Basically, and ironically, the policies supported by progressives led to an environmental catastrophe.

 

No one is "burning up the ozone". We couldn't destroy the ozone layer even if we tried to. As long as there is sunlight and oxygen, there WILL be ozone. This is why there are ozone holes at both poles during their respective winters (no sunlight). Once spring comes around again, the holes go away (sunlight returns).

Remember all the fuss just over the last month or whatever about the "super huge" ozone hole in the Arctic?? Well, guess what... that ozone hole is now gone. The Church of the Ozone Hole is nothing more than religious fanatics freaking out about a regular and natural occurrence.

 

Telecommuting will, indeed, change many things. We will see abandoned office buildings all around the cities and surrounding suburbs. Which, in my opinion, is a great thing for companies and employees.

 

All that, and as deliberate globalization policy, rural areas have been robbed of their local employment opportunities.

People gotta work or everybody's dead, and people gotta do what they gotta do to get to work.

 

Well, here's another dimension to that worth considering, discussed in this thread:
online job ads have forced professional workers to become nomadic

It's real easy for people to find jobs that may be 55 minutes away from them these days, in ways that weren't so easy before.
You could have two different people living in two different cities, 55 minutes apart, and they are each commuting to separate cities (that the other person lives in), simply because that happens to be the job they were able to find in an online job search. And the one person couldn't get that job in their own city because their counterpart took it.
If you understand where this logic is going here.

Basically, people have to take the jobs they can get. More possibilities also mean more competition for jobs, so in reality, more possibilities could oftentimes simply mean people are having to look farther out from their local commuting areas to get jobs.

It's one of the downsides of online job adds. It's like a paradox: increasing information efficiency leads to decrease in efficiency.

That might require some thought on your part to understand this, and wrap your brain around this concept I am trying to explain here.

 

First, commuting is not public policy.

Commuting is caused by people who work jobs that are not located near where they live. Good luck solving this...

 

Commuting is a choice that shouldn't be encouraged or discouraged by government, you or my busy body neighbors. People make decisions that best suit them and their families and is their business.

 

Another issue is that in countries like Japan, and traditionally Germany, normal middle class business people are accustomed to taking trains and public transportation. This hasn't worked out so well in racially diverse American cities because people (anyone who can afford it) are reluctant to take public transportation due to the lower levels of cleanliness and public safety, as well as probably also the discomfort of being crowded in close proximity to people who are not like them and do not seem to have as much respect for various things such as quietness.

 

Another factor; most public transit systems outside of the US are thorough and efficient and are supported by excellent bus service to most all areas...I have never seen this in the USA...

 

I think it may be a self-reinforcing cycle. Middle class people don't want to take it, therefore little public money is allocated to it.
(remember it's typically middle class people appointed to government positions making the decisions)

There's also another feedback mechanism: The more cars on the road, the more unpleasant it becomes to wait at a bus stop (due to the noise and air pollution), so the less people will want to take a bus, putting more cars on the road.

The US also has many more newer cities (constructed after 1930) than Europe, and most of these newer cities have a layout designed for car travel, not so convenient for walking. This is because America is not as old as Europe, and also the population of the US drastically increased (mainly due to immigration) after the time cars became commonly owned by normal households.
Europe, by comparison, has many older cities that were built when people had to walk, before cars existed.
In many American cities it's virtually impossible (or at least incredibly difficult) to get around without a car.

 

once satellite internet is a reality, which it almost is, things could change

of course this could mean trouble in the future if we no longer maintain land lines and all become dependent on satellites and something happens to those satellites

 

In 98% of the US, public transit is a joke...this is why most will not use public transit. The coverage is horrible, the schedules are lacking, and the trains/cars are usually filthy and/or unkept, and expensive for average people. Most all lose money and require public funding assistance. IMO public transit planning and implementation in the US has been a miserable failure...

 

My company has sent about 40,000 employees to work from home in the past few months. They've made a decision that if an employee and supervisor agree that employee is doing fine working at home, then they should not return to the office again.

Lots of $$ will be saved by having employees at home.

I've been working from home for almost 20 years, now. I'm a bit of a trailblazer; when I started working from home, there were only about 100 of us. Now there's closer to 75,000.

My husband was sent home in March - every month they change the "guess" on when they can return to the office. It was June, then July, then August --- last Friday, they changed it to mid-October. I doubt he returns to work before next Spring.

I'm so much more productive at home.

 

Hang on to those citizen band radios!!

 

Satellite internet will never be a viable substitute for terrestrial based wireless or wireline internet.

 

not so sure about that, this new satellite based internet "Starlink" is looking very promising

"Elon Musk: Starlink latency will be good enough for competitive gaming"

https://arstechnica.com/information...for-big-cities-wont-be-huge-threat-to-telcos/

this kind of speed and latency would be enough for me to move out to a small town in the middle of no where

 

I believe that we need a law mandating that employers allow 100% work from home for all jobs that don't involve equipment. This would be a great start. As a result, fewer people will live in large cities as they can live in smaller cheaper areas. Cost of living will decline in large cities and we will see greatly reduced traffic. We will see a smaller carbon footprint and people with a lot more time to do what they really want.

 

Really, then why did the FCC eliminate them from any funding, because they realistically and technically cannot meet the requirements of a low latency ISP?

 

probably because they are a threat to telco's and cable companies, and they put a lot of money into politics - but time will tell

The question is, why if the FCC funding ISP's and telco's anyways

 

Totally untrue.

Like Musk is short on money, get a clue.

Because Congress has required them too.

 

we will see, testing may begin by end of this year, time will tell

 

Testing has begin and is not going well already.

 

link?

have not heard this, where did you hear they were not below the 100ms requirement for funding

 

if Starlink can pull it off and for a competitive price, that would be great news for rural America