Imperialism keeps the periphery underdeveloped and overexploited through various methods so that the wage disparity can continue regardless of the material conditions in the imperial core. For example, if a nation in the periphery were to build their own factories and begin to outproduce the imperial core… they would get bombed… and regime changed… and comprador puppets would be put into power… and those puppets would take out IMF loans… with prerequisite privatization and anti-union measure… and then the core would do direct foreign investment so that the natural resources and infrastructure would be owned by them instead of the locals. That’s an extreme example. It doesn’t always happen exactly that way, but if enough of those boxes get checked, the imperial core can force wages down in the periphery, and continue to use them as a source of cheap labor.

I don’t know if mass adoption of Work From Home would be enough to reverse that. The 1st world has their thumb on the scale big time.