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.
minneapolis mayor can foresee the coming commercial real-estate bubble collapsing - they must get a lot of tax dollars from businesses
Wouldn’t be surprised if he himself or any number of people who fronted the money to get them elected are invested in that business
He’s losing money and is furious.
Because of how property tax works in the U.S, denser areas pay more property tax and cost less in relative terms with regards to infrastructure, so it’s a pretty safe bet that he’s going to be losing money here.
Except for when the city goes bankrupt, he’s not personally on the hook - the tax payers get to absorb that loss instead.
Property tax in the U.S is pretty dumb in general to be honest. Should probably replace it with LVT tbh