Stop me if you heard this one, but a billionaire doesn’t think you worked hard enough for your meager scrap of the America economy during lockdown due to working from home. As a reminder, saying nothing is still free in this country.
That’s right, Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO of Blackstone, a private equity group you’ve never heard of but has probably negatively impacted your life nonetheless, thinks the American worker had it far too easy during the COVID-19 lockdowns. You can’t make this crap up. Per CNN:
Schwarzman, the Blackstone CEO whose fortune is estimated at $32 billion, told a crowd of investors at a ritzy Saudi Arabia conference known as “Davos in the Desert” that people who worked remotely during the pandemic “didn’t work as hard – regardless of what they told you.”
I’m sorry, what? Who the hell are you, Schwarzman? What exactly was the problem here, guy? How often are you in the office because it sure does seem you’re at camp for rich people right now?
If you think he’s whining about this to his fellow billionaires because he has a vested interest in making workers return to the office, you are correct! You don’t win a prize or anything because I imagine this would be obvious to basically anyone. Per CNN:
Schwarzman addressed remote work on Tuesday in the context of the impact on the commercial real estate market, where Blackstone has significant exposure as a major real estate investor.
“During the pandemic, people got used to staying at home,” Schwarzman said. “It was actually more profitable for them to stay home because one, they didn’t work as hard, regardless of what they told you. Second, they don’t spend money to commute. They can make their lunch at home. They don’t have to buy expensive clothes, so their incomes are higher.”
That’s right, Moneybags McGee is at the Billionaires Social Club meeting and has taken it upon himself to remind the other billionaires how life incrementally got better for the average person in the American workforce and why it was bad for the interests of the people sitting at the top. You know, the people who already have far more than their fair share of resources in the world.
God forbid profit get funneled towards the America worker, as Schwarzman is lamenting above, as opposed to its normal trajectory of towards him and the other billionaire’s pockets. Heaven forbid! That just upsets the natural order of things, don’t you know?!
Fellow billionaire Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase was also there during the panel and clearly agreed with Schwarzman because, again, billionaires are an embarrassment to society and simply shouldn’t exist. It means that the system is being exploited by individuals, and the collective group suffers as a result, but I digress. Per the above source:
During Schwarzman’s same panel discussion, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon discussed how 60% of his company’s employees are now in the office five days a week, while 30% are required to be in the office three days a week. “We track it,” DImon said.
You’ll recall that Dimon has been leading the charge against working from home for quite some time, and stepped in it earlier this year when he intimated that taking care of children was only a woman’s responsibility in the home, which in turn affected productivity during working from home hours. It always comes down to productivity and making sure that the common worker gets drained like a bite from vampire to these billionaires. They don’t care about you, the person; they care about how you, the worker, affect their bottom line. It’s disgusting.
So basically, if you’re reading between the lines, here, the billionaires have gotten together and are patting each other on the back that work from home is bad for business. What they really mean is that it’s bad for their business because at least one of them has a stake in commercial real estate, a once lucrative industry that has suffered from a push from workers to work from home. Per CNN:
Schwarzman, the Blackstone CEO, estimated that 20% of US office buildings are vacant and another 20% are leased but empty. He predicted that when existing leases expire, companies will cut back on the amount of office space they lease, leaving many office buildings – especially older ones – “un-survivable as economic entities.”
“That’s going to have a very bad ending,” Schwarzman said.
Bad for who, exactly? Certainly not for me, I don’t own a stake in commercial real estate investments. I’m a millennial, I own nothing in this life!
(Featured Image: Disney)
