So, the United States has a history of red-lining and block-busting that ensured pockets of poverty along with pockets of great wealth. We pay taxes based on the geographic area, and how much our property is worth. The taxes pay for the public schools in the area, and this results in great variance in quality of education from one area compared to others. If the area collects lots of taxes, lots of money goes to the schools, the quality of education goes up. There are other factors, such as the population having discretionary income to expose their children to desired experiences such as museums, vacations, extracurricular activities like horse back riding and painting. This also works the opposite way.
There are geographic areas that are undesirable, and sell at prices much lower than other, wealthier areas. These areas usually contain pollutants, industrial business, noise pollution, or other less-desirable living environments. The housing appraised at lower levels than the wealthier areas, so fewer tax dollars flow to the surrounding schools. This results in lower equality of education, and less exposure to desired experiences. The experiences in these lower quality areas usually have crime, negative aesthetics, and illness due to the environment. There becomes a poverty that tends to be generational in nature.
Usually, the most direct path to maintain class is to have access to the institutions mostly held in wealthier areas. Lower income populations have one main bar to entry: affording the housing in an area with good schools, low crime, green spaces, and generally better living conditions. But what happens if those arbitrary boundaries no longer exist?
Enter work-from-home. A person can now live in a depressed area, and can earn more than what normally pays in the areas surrounding lower median-income communities. Now, private schools become affordable, and desirable experiences can be had where normally there are only undesirable experiences. Soon enough, that person can afford to move to an area with a better overall environment. That person can quickly get out of poverty in years as opposed to decades.
Now, all that redlining and block-busting does not have the same result – poverty can no longer be corralled for generations. There is no longer an institutional segregation that holds back large swaths of our population. Think there are some really scared racists/classists out there? Think they could hold positions which could require back-to-the-office mandates?
Tl;dr. Does back-to-work have racist/classist origins?