But it seems that the number of marks is exploding, so I guess it's ok.

The question is, how can we repeat it?

I know those models, but they have a flaw: The expect people to act rationally.

It is more than a month of worktime, indeed. But I don't know how much time you work where you are. In my country, the average monthly work time is about 168 hours a month. But then again, we have about a month of paid vacation, so... It highly depends on where you are, how many hours a day, how many days a week and how many weeks a year you work.

I'm fairly sure that if you try to reduce the pay of people, they'll give you the finger and find something new.

Generally speaking, if the quality of the job that needs to be done is independent of the location it is done in, WFH generally produces better results. YMMV, of course, but that's the general direction.

It saves you more.

I don't know what your commute is per day, but let's assume it takes you 45 minutes to get to work (including getting ready, dressed, check your windows for being closed and so on) and 45 minutes to get back home. 90 minutes a day. 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year. That is 375 hours per year.

A standard work month at 38.5 hours is on average 168 hours a month. In other words, you invest 2 months of unpaid labor into your commute.

I don't know about you, but I can actually sell my time. That would translate to 2 additional months of payed time. And I don't know how much you make, but for me, that would be considerably more than just 6k.

I fail to see the problem.

I have a contract with a company. I provide work, they provide money. It's not a relationship.

We're heading into a huge demographics shift. Take a look at the age pyramids of countries and pay close attention to the 20-25 age bracket and the 60-65 age bracket. You will notice that the former is smaller than the latter. For the first time in history, too. We used to have more people joining the workforce than leaving. Until about, well, now. Most countries in Europe face the problem that every year only 4 people join the workforce for every 5 that retire. Every year, only 80% of the people retiring get replaced by new workers. And that will not change until about 2035 or 2040, and even then, it will level out, it will not recover. By then, the workforce will be at about 80% of today.

Yes, yes, immigration. Cool idea, but it's not gonna solve the issue. Sure, we'll have a lot of food delivery people and bicycle couriers, Fast Food workers and shopping mall employees. But unfortunately that's not all that retires. Skilled labor will be in very short supply.

Companies will have to get used to competing for skilled staff. And in that regard, they have another problem to deal with: People are harder to blackmail.

My generation, GenX, is probably the last generation that can be blackmailed. We managed to secure mortgages and buy houses. And we're paying those mortgages off. Slowly. We fear the loss of our job because without a job, how should I keep paying for my house? A lot of us have to accept whatever our employer demands because we cannot afford losing our job.

Today's younger people can't get a mortgage for a house anymore. To qualify for a mortgage, you would have to have 20% of what the house you want to buy costs already. And your payments must not exceed 40% of your income. And the mortgage must not run more than 35 years. Now compare that to the average price of a house and you realize that they will NEVER EVER qualify for a mortgage. Never. Plus, they don't own anything else either. How do you want to blackmail someone like that? You try to squeeze him and you get the finger and a "I quit". Yeah, he'll get kicked out of the apartment he rents. No biggie. He'll crash on the couch of a friend, the friend that stayed on his couch 6 months earlier when it was the other way around. What physical belongings he has fits into a box anyway that he'll stow somewhere.

You cannot blackmail someone like that.

You can only try to give them what they want, and with a hint of luck, they will work for you.

In the most idiotic way possible, too.

Who will quit? And who will bite the bullet because he cannot? The go-getter with a ton of projects under his belts he can show off and is instantly gobbled up by a company if he puts his resume out on LinkedIn? Or the dud that has been here for 20 years, stopped acquiring new skills 19.5 years ago and it working minimum effort to not get fired?

Yes, there are jobs that cannot be done in a WFH environment.

That doesn't mean that those that can shouldn't.

Tax laws in Europe, at least income tax, usually put a huge emphasis on where you park your cadaver for half the year plus one day. That makes a huge difference since income tax laws are very different between countries here (and generally higher than in the US, most of all, it's common around here that your employer has to pay a considerable portion of the tax owed himself).

So I can see why they're wary of employing someone from abroad (when I was working for a US based company, they required me to open up my own company and bill them as a contractor instead of simply "hiring" me, for exactly this reason). Why they'd be against you working from Hawaii on the other hand is not a tax issue. That's a control issue.

I live 5 minutes walk time from the office. And you'll find me in the office if you pay me for it.

It's not the way. It is the office.

Most cultures in corporations belong in Petri dishes, that's how toxic they are.

At the very least, they make you puke, at worst, they can kill you.

Even if your commute is a single hour a day, i.e. only 30 minute to, 30 minutes from, what you lose is more than what you work in a whole month, i.e. you are down one MONTH of payment.