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Low income people tend to be doing jobs that cannot be done "over the wire" such as service jobs.
Actually I think the better argument is for the tech-companies to support remote work, so that they stop importing wealthy home-needers. I think it's a really good part of a solution to this problem.
I see where you're coming from. That said, I suspect that the presence of the wealthy homeowners is largely voluntary. If you're talented enough to get hired, you're probably going to be able to negotiate your own terms, including working remotely... but if you're ambitious, you probably want to be where the action is.
When I was at Google, you pretty much needed to be in MTV to get a good shot at the most interesting projects. I'd argue that if you want to have a career there, you should go to the main office where your hallway serendipity is more likely to involve people who can actually bring you into a career-making AI project (instead of typical drudge work). Of course, it's different for everyone, and I was only there for 6 months, but if I were to do it over again, I'd work in MTV. I'd also advise everyone, regardless of traffic or weather, to show up in the physical office 5 days a week.

To make remote work work, you need a culture where in-crowds and promotions and ladders don't matter (they'll always exist, but some companies give them more weight) and where people are pretty much assured that, even if they never get another title bump-- because those things happen less when you're not in-person-- they'll continue to get work that they're happy with.

Yeah, I agree that remote working at a company that hasn't completely embraced it tends to be a bad idea. I'm suggesting more companies completely embrace it. For GOOG that'd be an interesting challenge.

I don't know if the last sentence in your first paragraph was advice for Googlers or portable but I'd advise literally everyone to avoid traffic at every possible opportunity... though as I get older I'm much more 'ambitious' about happiness than title bumps, so YMMV.

Yeah, Bali is not too far away, give me a remote worker job in Singapore and I can fly in for meetings every 2 weeks :-D
Yep, the blue-collar folk are the worst hit.
If anything, remote work allows you to arbitrage cost of living. Remote work is for higher paid, white collar workers, who can then choose to live in very cheap areas.