Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is trying a unique strategy to get remote workers to return downtown: insulting them.

“I don’t know if you saw this study the other day,” Frey told an audience of 1,000 at Minneapolis Downtown Council’s annual meeting on Wednesday. “What this study clearly showed … is that when people who have the ability to come downtown to an office don’t — when they stay home sitting on their couch, with their nasty cat blanket, diddling on their laptop — if they do that for a few months, you become a loser!”

The comment was a “complete joke” and the study was made-up, the Minneapolis mayor’s office told Fortune, but there are serious facts to back up Frey’s worry about the impact of remote work on Minneapolis’ downtown economy.

    • SpicyLizards@reddthat.com
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      9 months ago

      Studies definitely exist, but they say remote work is vastly more efficient. Buy the lies or do research.

      • postmateDumbass@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Its that efficency that is the problem.

        There are a lot of other subeconomies that rely on daily commuter herds.

        This guy is upset a broken system has been exposed for what it is.

    • unreasonabro@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      so does corruption in science. once again, you have capitalism to thank for that. Publication pressure everyone’s heard of, but journals don’t like to publish papers that simply refute or fail to reproduce another lab’s results - and without that, it’s not science, it’s just fantasy; without it, there can be no path forward.