Assorted Links Wednesday

Is there a booze shortage in your community?  There might be soon.

The promise of carbon-neutral steel:

Instead of using carbon to remove the oxygen from iron ore, creating CO2, we can use hydrogen, creating H2O — that is, water. Many companies are working on this approach; this summer, a Swedish venture used it to make steel at a pilot plant. If the technique were widely employed, it could cut the steel industry’s emissions by ninety per cent, and our global emissions by nearly six per cent.

Spending on 9 of the 14 major components of household spending decreased from 2019 to 2020

How local housing regulations smother the US economy: But what appears to be several local housing crises is actually a much more alarming national crisis: Land-use restrictions are a significant drag on economic growth in the United States.

Let’s redefine “productivity” for the hybrid era:

Study after study has shown that it’s not enough to be guided by simple measures of productivity as we figure out how to move to hybrid work. While it may be tempting to equate high levels of employee activity with success, doing so misses the factors that drive long-term, sustainable innovation.

Managers must expand the way they think about productivity to focus on well-being, social connections, and collaboration and the innovation they bring to drive business success. Based on extensive research from Microsoft, the author offers three ways managers can embrace a more expansive view of productivity in a hybrid world — one that promotes well-being, collaboration, and innovation for you and your team.

US office market outlook (Q2 2021):

Overall U.S. office absorption remained firmly in the red in Q2 2021, at negative 18.6 million square feet, but markedly lower than the negative 46.1 million square feet seen in Q1 2021, which was the worst quarterly total on record.

Rural Utah is training to work at home: Utah’s Rural Online Initiative seeks to keep the existing talent and attract newcomers to rural communities by providing resources and training for stay-at-home work.