The Most Patriotic Thing Your Boss Could Do Right Now
It costs nothing, it cuts fuel demand, and it puts money back in workers' pockets. So why won't the managerial class allow it?
by David Shuster
One of the marvels of the United States under Trump is the ability of the ruling billionaire class to transform inconvenience into virtue. Gasoline prices rise, and workers are expected to endure it. Commutes become more expensive, and workers are expected to just pay more.
Never mind that countless workers are driving hours each day to a job that largely involves communicating with colleagues by email and video conference.
And yet any suggestion that this arrangement is absurd is treated, at least by many company owners, as a subversive threat.
The actual threat can be seen with basic math. Thanks to Trump’s war against Iran, the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked, global oil reserves are dwindling, and gasoline prices keep going higher.
Before the war, the average U.S. price for regular unleaded was about $3.00/gallon. Now, it is $4.50/gallon and rising.
The most patriotic thing many employers could do today is permit and encourage remote work wherever it is practical. Not next year. Not after another H.R. study. Not after six months of strategic planning and PowerPoint presentations. Now.
Every worker who stays home is one less commuter burning gasoline. Every empty stretch of highway is a small reduction in demand. Every avoided commute leaves more money in the pocket of a family already being squeezed by rising prices. If the nation is confronting an energy shock, then reducing unnecessary fuel consumption is not merely good economics. It is common sense.
Yet common sense has never been the strong suit of America’s managerial aristocracy.
For decades, executives insisted that productivity required fluorescent lighting, open floor plans, and the daily migration of workers into office towers resembling climate-controlled ant colonies.
Then came the Covid pandemic, and millions of Americans worked from home. The prophets of doom, particularly conservatives, predicted catastrophe. They insisted productivity would collapse, innovation would vanish, and civilization itself might crumble.
Instead, a curious thing happened.
Many workers performed just as well as before. Many performed better.
Study after study found what employees had long suspected: remove the commute, reduce the interruptions, eliminate the endless parade of unnecessary conference room meetings, and people often accomplish more. Freed from the rituals and theater of office life, workers got down to the business of working.
This should have settled the matter.
Instead, after the pandemic ended, many corporations launched a crusade to drag employees back to their desks.
The stated reasons often sounded noble: Collaboration. Culture. Team spirit. The actual reasons were less inspiring. Empty office buildings are expensive. Commercial real estate investors dislike vacancies. Managers who measure their worth by the number of subordinates visible from their office windows need audiences.
The worker, meanwhile, is expected to absorb the cost.
This expectation reflects a broad and troubling reality. In recent years, particularly during the Trump era, many corporations and billionaires have exhibited almost no regard for the welfare of ordinary working people.
Labor protections are often treated as inconveniences. Unions are portrayed as nuisances. Employee demands for flexibility, security, and dignity are greeted as though they were extravagant requests for private yachts.
Yet the same corporations, when their own interests are at stake, never hesitate to seek public subsidies, tax advantages, regulatory favors, or government assistance.
The imbalance has become impossible to ignore.
The American economy does not run because hedge fund managers attend conferences in Aspen. It does not function because billionaire investors acquire their fifth mansion. The U.S. economy runs because millions of ordinary people answer phones, write on computers, process accounts, analyze data, guide consumers, serve customers, and perform the countless tasks that keep modern society operating.
Those workers deserve better than lectures about sacrifice from executives arriving at corporate headquarters in chauffeured sedans.
If patriotism means anything beyond bumper stickers and campaign slogans, it must include a willingness to improve the lives of fellow citizens. A company that allows remote work where feasible reduces fuel consumption, lowers household expenses, eases traffic congestion, and grants workers greater control over their lives. It strengthens families. It improves morale. It also almost always improves productivity.
That is not radicalism. It is simply good stewardship.
America faces enough genuine problems without manufacturing additional ones by forcing millions of people into unnecessary commutes.
The closure of a distant waterway may be beyond our control. The daily decisions of employers are not.
If corporate leaders truly wish to demonstrate their devotion to country, they can begin with a remarkably simple act: trust their employees, respect their time, and let them work from home.
America will survive the experience. The economy may even improve.
Cliff’s Note: This is exactly the kind of work we built Blue Amp Media to do: name who’s winning, name who’s paying for it, and refuse to pretend a rigged arrangement is just the weather. David Shuster nailed it here. While the billionaire class lectures you about sacrifice from the back of a chauffeured sedan, you’re handing $4.50 a gallon to commute to a job you could do from your kitchen table. That’s not an accident. That’s a choice somebody made, and it wasn’t you.
We don’t have a corporate parent or a billionaire owner softening what we say, and that’s the whole point. It’s you. If this piece said something out loud that you’ve been feeling, become a paid subscriber so we can keep David and the rest of the team doing it, or drop a few bucks in our Ko-fi if a subscription isn’t in the cards right now. And do the free stuff too: share this with the coworker who’s been stuck in traffic all week, and tell us in the comments whether your job ever actually needed you in that building.
Keep fighting, and stay loud.
—Cliff
Agreed but will never happen since many employers believe their workers are lazy which stems both from their own psychological projection and their fear of losing money that could go in their pockets. Face it, if slave labor were allowed we would be a society of slaves. Think about it. Are the architects guys like Musk and Theil?
Not only that, but the workers who do need to commute would probably be less likely to get stuck in traffic jams.