Deutsche Bank proposes taxing people for working from home

previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25057794

Instead of penalizing change, why not encourage it? When you work from home, you don't put anywhere near the carbon into the atmosphere that you would commuting. You also spend a lot less on lunch, and you don't need to put your children into state-run schools that are really there to function as daycare centers as much as they are to educate. If all of that office space in downtown areas stays dark, and the zoning laws are altered or removed, it can be redeveloped into housing that's actually affordable.

We really are running into a wall on the methane crisis, and we we simply don't have the time to integrate these changes at a slower pace.

Let's focus on changing our regulations that prohibit building neighborhoods for pedestrians. Let's work on getting homes with solar roofs and big batteries. Let's get drone delivery everywhere. Let's electrify the transport system with electric cars, electric trucks, eVTOL aircraft. Let's tunnel underneath and between cities and connect them with hyperloops. Let's connect people in rural areas with low-cost, low-latency satellite internet access.

Doing these things will directly provide a great number of jobs for a great number of people. It will make a great number of new jobs possible. It will improve the natural environment. I think this is a much more positive direction to take than to try to slow things down.

> The bank argues that those working from home are saving money and the tax creates a fairer system.

While some might be saving money from not driving to work every day, they're spending more in other places like their heating/AC bill, Water Bill, groceries if their employer provided any kind of food or snacks.

In my case I'm actually spending more working from home.

I was taking public transit to work which was affordable, my company had great snacks (but no full meals) so I could get by without eating breakfast and eat at work instead, my heat was automated to turn super low during the day while I was gone, and I didn't need to shell out for an AC Unit since I was gone for most of the day anyway.

It seems to me they are incentivizing companies to ban their workers from working at home where they would incur far less Covid-19 risk.

Instead, they should consider taxing companies that don't let their workers work from home in jobs where they could. Sure that might bring them less money, but it isn't making it financially more worthwhile keeping their office seats full at all times.

Makes me wonder how much more un-repealable multinational-friendly garbage is making its way through legislatures worldwide under the guise of COVID relief. Surveillance, new taxes, repeal of tax breaks, new regulation, prohibition of assembly (in direct contradiction with 1a in the US, but only for certain groups) - think of the children, the ends justify the means! This very much reminds me of the legislative abuse that happened in the US after 9/11, consequences of which were extremely far reaching, and are getting worse over time even today, nearly 20 years later.