I can get a bus pass through work for an entire year for $20.
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- Thread starter darksidZz
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I am guessing (and I have heard as well) that most working Americans must have a car, because the public transport is not that reliable (very less, does not reach vast area, and travel infrequently). If you look at the population density by countries, the USA's density is #179, with a density of 32 people/sq.km or 83 people/sq.mi only.
This is not the case with many countries in Europe or in Asia. The population density is very high, so there is a need for more public transports such as trains or buses.
If we see in term of fuel efficiency, the public transport such as train is more efficient than car. Here is an example of fuel efficiency data:
Rail (commuter): 1.964 MJ per passenger-km
Cars: 2.302 MJ per passenger-km
Because of that, maybe more people prefer to work from home (in the USA).
How much does it cost you to travel every month?? Here in Germany, public transport is very cheap. As a student (admitted, cheaper than other adult passengers, who must pay almost 2 times) I have to pay only 200 Euro per semester (that is about 1.1 Euro/day (or about 1.5 USD/day)) to travel the whole NRW province (covers an area of about 13,160 sq.mi) anytime I want. That is almost 200 times bigger than Washington DC (68 sq.mi). So, even IF let say I live in Aachen and must travel to Dortmund (took 3 hours 1 way by train) everyday, I am still travelling within the NRW province, and I still pay flat rate 1.5 USD/day. There is no need for anybody to work from home.
Edit (additional):
Here is additional illustration about transportation in the USA:
Your country is so big, so you must spend a lot of time in long highways to transport things or people from one place to another. In Asia, as in my country, I think the most common mode of transportation is by motorcycle and then public transport. In the Netherlands, I think many people are traveling by trains beside bicycles.
This is not the case with many countries in Europe or in Asia. The population density is very high, so there is a need for more public transports such as trains or buses.
If we see in term of fuel efficiency, the public transport such as train is more efficient than car. Here is an example of fuel efficiency data:
Rail (commuter): 1.964 MJ per passenger-km
Cars: 2.302 MJ per passenger-km
Because of that, maybe more people prefer to work from home (in the USA).
How much does it cost you to travel every month?? Here in Germany, public transport is very cheap. As a student (admitted, cheaper than other adult passengers, who must pay almost 2 times) I have to pay only 200 Euro per semester (that is about 1.1 Euro/day (or about 1.5 USD/day)) to travel the whole NRW province (covers an area of about 13,160 sq.mi) anytime I want. That is almost 200 times bigger than Washington DC (68 sq.mi). So, even IF let say I live in Aachen and must travel to Dortmund (took 3 hours 1 way by train) everyday, I am still travelling within the NRW province, and I still pay flat rate 1.5 USD/day. There is no need for anybody to work from home.
Edit (additional):
Here is additional illustration about transportation in the USA:
Your country is so big, so you must spend a lot of time in long highways to transport things or people from one place to another. In Asia, as in my country, I think the most common mode of transportation is by motorcycle and then public transport. In the Netherlands, I think many people are traveling by trains beside bicycles.
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Is that the case for most people in the USA? If so, I believe there is no need to work from home.
p.s.: the bus is the least efficient (from the table of fuel efficiency in my previous post)
No, it usually costs around $350. But I would have to get up two hours earlier.
FR i wonder what your comments on the loss of the social side of work are if we are all working from home.
For instance you assume that everyone has a family, they may well not. For men most of there friendship circle comes from either partners of there wife's friends or people at work. If you move everything to work from home you are effectivily isolating everyone which isnt healthy.
For instance you assume that everyone has a family, they may well not. For men most of there friendship circle comes from either partners of there wife's friends or people at work. If you move everything to work from home you are effectivily isolating everyone which isnt healthy.
It's better to control the spread of disease.
The Information Revolution is advancing far more rapidly than the Industrial Revolution. It won't take 200 years.There's no good reason for that. But there is a bad reason: today's managers have no actual management skill, so they merely take attendance. I've taught classes to these people. They think managing is something they can do from a checklist.Good thing. We need all those immigrants to prop up the Ponzi Scheme we euphemistically call "Social Security."You keep ignoring the elephant in the room: today's managers don't know how to manage. (One would think that would be obvious from the way their companies are failing. The ones that succeed do so by scavenging, not producing.) All they can do is measure the number of hours you spend at your desk pretending to be busy.You keep making the same lame argument. "I look around and see people doing the same thing they were doing fifty years ago, so I assume that will go on forever."So sorry to hear that you work for one of the companies that is most likely to fail from lack of evolution. I've done plenty of telecommuting and I've attended a great many virtual meetings that were quite successful.
You might consider looking for a new employer that's a little more up to date. There's no reason for people to commute to a central office in order to use the same technology they have at home.And we won't need as many mechanics when people stop driving 15,000 miles a year just to go to work. My current job, as a contractor for a government agency, requires me to put just about that many miles on my car. And I'm a bloody writer! There's absolutely nothing I do in the office that I couldn't do at home, in most cases better and faster.That's one of the few legitimate examples you've cited. Nonetheless, you may have noticed that the food production and distribution industry, taken in aggregate, employs a far smaller fraction of the population than it once did.Most "dentist" visits are simply the semiannual cleaning. How long do you think it will be before we have automated devices that allow us to do it ourselves?Actually a lot of "manufacturing" these days is very short runs on CAD/CAM systems. People in fact do that work at home. Besides, I have no idea what you mean by the word "manufacturer." Factories have far fewer humans working inside them than they once did. The only reason people in Malaysia and Bangladesh have jobs as factory workers is that they can be hired for about two percent of the U.S. minimum wage. Once their economies become more prosperous and their wages rise, their jobs will be automated just like ours. Sure, then they will migrate to Zimbabwe and Turkmenistan, but eventually we'll run out of cheap labor, just about the time when next-generation factory automation doesn't need very much of it.People who telecommute have more spare time and can do more of their own little projects.
That was not hard to figure out. Geeze, you have about zero imagination! Do you work for the government?As I already noted, human doctors in Japan have the technology to examine patients remotely. I'd be very surprised if they didn't alpha-test that system on veterinary patients.No, it's because someone STUPID got into the White House and he had more loyalty to his foreign friends in the petroleum industry than to the people here who elected him.
Let me guess: you work for GM, right? Either that or you're older than I am. I've never met anyone else who was quite so clueless about the future of information technology!
Especially someone talking about it on an internet board.
Nope.
I'm in the information industry (and have been since 1969) and I do work from home and have been for about 15 years so your guesses are wrong.
And I'm well aware of what the info industry can do and also what it can't do over the next 30 years.
And NO, most managers aren't as bad as you claim.
To say the reason we aren't telecommuting is because we have clueless managers is, well CLUELESS.
Your unsubstantiated claim was that the information industry will solve our oil problem, but you are vastly over-estimating how many people can work from home.
First of all there are over 50 million people living in Rural environments in the US, many if not most of them tied to the over 2 million farms in the US
Other people who can't work from home:
People who work in general Goods Producing services, which is about 20 MILLION workers and that number is NOT expected to change much.
http://www.bls.gov/oco/images/overview_chart_04.gif
People who work in Agriculture (field hands/pickers/ranchers/dairymen/poultry/meat packers,farm equipment manufacturers)
Aircraft Building
Airport support and maint/Pilots/FAs
Car Manufacturing (and all the supporting car part manufacturing)
Logging/Paper mills/Textile mills
Mining/Smelting/metal Fabrication
Train Engineers/Workers/Conductors
Plumbers/Electricians/Telephone/Cable installers-repairers
Ship Workers/Captains/Crew
Truckers/Delivery services/USPS
Car Mechanics/Salesman/Car Parts/Washing/Painting/Gas Stations
Police/Fireman/EMTs
Court room workers, Judges/lawyers/Clerks
Jails/Prisons/Youth and Mental facilities/halfway houses
Home Painters/Roofing/Siding/Windows/Decks/Pools
Yard Workers/Trash pickup
Road Workers/Road bridge construction
Water/Sewer/Electrical Generation
Construction Workers/Carpenters
Restaurant Chefs/Waiters/Workers
Real Estate Sales
Garden Center
Clothing Store/Hardware Store/Housewares/Jewelry stores (and of course that takes into account all that is sold online today and the growth in online sales)
Grocers/Deli/Caterers
Hair Dressers/Nails/Salons
TV-Radio station workers/Entertainers/Movie Theaters/Bars/Night clubs/Dance venues etc
Athletes/Sports venues/Sport Stores/
Hospital workers/Doctors/Nurses/Lab Techs (and you can examine but not really treat via video)
Dentists and Hygienists (and no, there won't be a home hygienist anytime soon)
Vets and Grooming and pet store workers
Pharmacists/Drug Store workers
Most Scientists that work in labs or with expensive equipment
Oil & Gas drilling/Refining
Most Schools and Universities
Etc etc etc
I pointed out to you why you are wrong, but feel free to show actual trend lines that support your contention that working from home will more than offset the oil usage of the extra 50 million people we will have in the US by 2030.
Arthur
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Well that statisic is interesting, but maybe a little misleading.
About 250 million of our 310 million live in either Urban or Suburban locations.
The fact that we have Alaska, and huge plains in the midwest and vast stretches of mountains in the West doesn't have much to do with most people's daily commute.
Still, I think you will find that we are more Suburban than Urban and have somewhat longer commutes, on average, than your typical European.
Well again, that statistic might mean more if you had a train stop at your door, but for most of us we have to drive to and from the train station, and for most of us, that makes it less efficient overall in terms of time and energy. So, if a train is convenient, then it makes sense to take it, but in a typical suburban city like Atlanta, the train only works for a small portion of the population, and not at all for the ~50% of commuters that commute, not from Suburb to City but across Suburbs.
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adoucette,
Your post #147.
Your post #147.