This article describes the real reason behind the push back to the office. It’s about rich people gambling on real estate and now office buildings are empty.
These same people own newspapers and media channels which is why their crying voices are being pushed.
I think a lot of the “article” is on point but what’s with this blaming the Fed for corporations making bad real estate investments? Inflation has been a huge problem over the last several years. The average person, who can’t simply wish more wages into existence to deal with rising costs, has borne the brunt of it. The Federal Reserve has few and limited tools to deal with inflation. The primary tool being the federal funds rate. Raising the rate is one of the only things they could do in this situation. Doing nothing would ultimately have been catastrophic.
Really depends on whether you think inflation or corporate greed is the underlying problem. The average worker tends to disagree with Fed chair Powell that unemployment needs to be very high and profits skyrocketing. The average gambler tends to agree with Powell that power should be solidified at the top. When the average value creator was getting fucked every which way, the Fed said the economy was strong and we are not in a recession. The average rapacious hedge fund took advantage of the slow rise in rates to buy everything under the sun.
Same data, very different conclusions, all depends on your perspective. I can link solid center US publications to back the worker and solid conservative publications to back the corporation. Should the Fed have been raising rates over the last four years? Yeah, absolutely. Where is the disagreement and the complete lack of any other tool plus the root of rising prices as well.
Just to further add, stock buybacks were considered “stock market manipulation” for a reason. Though the rules were put in place to protect investors, not the rest of us. This still has created a situation that most of us would agree on the framework conflicting with the concept of public trust. That being the concentration of wealth at the top and the SEC’s rules having been changed in 1982 through the efforts of lobbyists over the years. Were the SEC’s rules about securities, and the FTC to return to accountability exempt from lobbied interests, exactly what you just described would be flipped on its head, as we’d be having conversations about the Public Trust and anti-trust instead of bullshit about how the Fed does stuff that benefits wealthy vs fucking over the 98% of US citizens.
I’m just firmly in the position that this prime land would be better used for places people want to go
Yes, but that takes effort and creativity. It’s much easier to just force you to go.