Yes, I think pixie and deskdiary were at cross-purposes. I think there is no disagreement with pixie's point that many jobs will go and new ones will be created as the environment changes. Covid has definitely speeded that process up and in some cases moved it in a different direction. If enough people don't want to pay for a service the business will not survive.
What I think deskdiary disagrees with (and I and others do too) is that allen was suggesting millions of office jobs are not needed-and weren't pre-covid- because they are just pushing paper and not adding value. Whilst my experience of business is that there is a lot of 'make work' at management level in some office environments, most office staff are actually doing things that are vital to the business- processing payments, customer services, selling houses, providing legal services, developing and maintaining systems, doing business planning, advertising and marketing, recruiting and training staff, looking after our pension funds auditing and ensuring compliance, accounting services, etc etc etc.