Reply to Real talk about the city’s economy, federal buildings leases, and telework impacts

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Reply to "Real talk about the city’s economy, federal buildings leases, and telework impacts"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If telework is indeed here to stay, my prediction is that the DC area will weather this better than many other cities and states. 
 
If people keep resisting requests/commands to head back to the office and continue to insist they are just as productive at home, at some point corporate leaders will simply offshore those jobs. They did this before with blue collar jobs; they will do it to knowledge workers. Why pay for an accountant/graphic designer/engineer in the US, when you can hire one for a 1/10 of the cost and without pesky employment regulations in Costa Rica or Ghana or India? Even if these employees are (initially) less productive, they will cost so much less that it won't matter. The tax revenue consequences of this will be felt throughout the country.

The safest jobs are going to be jobs that cannot be outsourced: service jobs, professional jobs that require physical interaction (e.g., some doctors), the military, and many government jobs. The latter will make the DC area more offshore-proof than the rest of the country.

In addition, vengeful Republicans will eventually force federal government employees back to the office. They will be delighted at upsetting what they perceive to be lazy government workers. Which will help DC and surrounding areas.[/quote]

Every time I have been downtown it seems quite busy. Also, I agree that the “vengeful” Republicans are going to force federal workers back into the office. It is only a matter of time. [/quote]

The House already has a bill introduced by GOP sponsors to end federal telework, as it happens.[/quote]

Will it pass the Senate?  And even if it does, can it reverse or supersede signed bargaining agreements?  Not sure it can, on either of those questions.[/quote]
It’s not likely this will pass the Senate unless it gets included in the debt ceiling package or something like that. The most likely outcome would probably be to lead more agencies to move to the suburbs and that’s likely to happen anyway. [/quote]

Yep. GSA won't allow my agency to justify new leases or buildings in DC because of the cost savings in PG, Alexandria, and Fairfax.[/quote]

If more fed agencies move out, wouldn’t that mean a federal city (at least one as big as it is now) is unnecessary? Wouldn’t the exit of more federal agencies bolster DC’s chances of statehood? [/quote]

The people objecting to DC's statehood by citing the number of government jobs in the city aren't arguing in good faith. They object to DC statehood because the city votes for Democrats by a 80 point margins. Their stated reasoning is merely intellectual window dressing.[/quote]
Perhaps. But politics aside, the strongest argument against statehood is that DC has not sufficiently proven that it can govern itself. [/quote]

And Mississippi has? Please . . . [/quote]
The government of Mississippi hasn’t been taken over by the Feseral government since reconstruction. So objectively yes, they have a longer track record of successful self-government than DC. [/quote]

Mississippi is a ward of the state. It receives way more tax dollars that it pays. It cannot even provide portable drinking water to the citizens of its largest city. The Feds had to step in

[/quote]
Not sure you want to play the federal dependency game. DC is screaming that it’s going to go broke because federal workers are only going to the office 1-2 days per week. [/quote]

Do you have issues with reading comprehension or do you deliberately misinterpret public statements to suit your silly agenda?[/quote]
The whole point of this thread is that DC is angry at the WH for not forcing federal employees back to the office 3 days per week because unless they do it will destroy the city’s economy. DCs own head of economic development said that the federal government is directly responsible for 25% of DCs economy. And you want to talk about Mississippi? Last I checked Mississippi hasn’t care one way or another if the federal government works from home or not because their whole economy is not dependent on the Federal government. [/quote]

Bowser asked the Feds to either return to the office OR give up the huge amount of office space currently sitting idle so that it could be repurposed. Sh*t or get off the pot, in common parlance.

The point about Mississippi was that DC seems to govern itself a hell of a lot better than states that, among other severe failures of governance, can't even provide clean drinking water to residents of their own capital city.[/quote]

Not quite the apt analogy. DC said send back the workers or give us the land (for free). That's sh*t or give me your bathroom.

Does DC provide clean drinking water?

https://www.nrdc.org/experts/valerie-baron/hiding-plain-view-dc-waters-data-suggests-contamination
[/quote]

Why should the federal government turn over buildings for free?  And what about multi-year leases?  Is Bowser going to buy out GSA's outstanding lease commitments and give fair, market-rate compensation back to federal taxpayers for buildings owned outright?[/quote]

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