How do management teams get to such a point where they’re so wildly out of touch like this?

I guess the only nice thing is that they’re being upfront about it so people know to bail/not join.

Well, it's not a question of whether people are allowed to work on remotely or not. That's not at issue in this situation: Dell's policy is that you can if you want. The issue is on what grounds people should be promoted. This may also be entirely at the discretion of the company, and any silly reasons it wants to use. Or, it may be classified as a form of discrimination, like refusing to promote someone because of ethnicity, gender, disability, age, or other categories. I don't know the law here, if it's even been settled.

The conversation statrted with people who currently work remotely for Dell - Dell has determined that those staff can work remotely but would not be promoted. Obviously elementrary school teachers are not in that group any more than Dell factory and warehouse staff are.