Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country • Hacker News Board

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#121

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 2:52 PM UTC

Iwan-Zotow wrote: post #88

alipang wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a company in Bulgaria while working remotely for a high-salary EU country, and it's almost shocking to realise how much you spend on taxes in most European countries when you see the difference in your bank account. It's quite a good deal if you want to be a digital nomad since it's an EU country and you can get a really small apartment for almost nothing to use as your official address while travelling. (You'…

> small apartment for almost nothing ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, the only problem is with people gone infrastructure around those apartment is quickly going down the drain

[deleted]

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#122

Post by probono322 » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 2:53 PM UTC

hydraxis wrote: post #119

joefourier wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 10% income tax is slightly misleading in that you'll also have to pay social security on your personal income, which is up to 26%. So it's not as if you can pay yourself 100k€ and get 90k€ in your pocket (and while a 10% corporate tax is attractive, it's not out of line with other EU countries like Ireland, Hungary, Estonia, Malta...).

You can pay the social insurance for the equivalent of the minimum salary (around 75€ monthly) and pay yourself a dividend. Personal tax on the dividends is 5%.

The minimum salary is about 280eu, how do you pay for 75eu?

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#123

Post by chewyland » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 2:54 PM UTC

Moved from Vancouver, Canada to Bulgaria 6 years ago. Best decision I've ever made. Sooooo much fun here and living in a free country is really relaxing.

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#124

Post by slavoingilizov » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 2:55 PM UTC

Iwan-Zotow wrote: post #103

axegon_ wrote: post #74

Bulgarian here, there are a lot of aspects the article does not cover. First one is that up until 1989, Bulgaria was largely an agriculture state with the soviet union being the only market. A heavily controlled market at that. Some might argue that Bulgaria used to produce computers but it was mostly a small assembly line using Intel chips, so no, not really. Mind you the math education was on a good level, hence th…

> First one is that up until 1989, Bulgaria was largely an agriculture state where did you get this nonsense? FYI, you've got 6 (SIX!) nuclear reactors build during those times 0 since 1990

What proportion of the GDP before 1990 was from power production then? Your argument is anecdotal. Those reactors were vanity projects, not big contributors to economy.

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#125

Post by hydraxis » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 2:55 PM UTC

probono322 wrote: post #122

hydraxis wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can pay the social insurance for the equivalent of the minimum salary (around 75€ monthly) and pay yourself a dividend. Personal tax on the dividends is 5%.

The minimum salary is about 280eu, how do you pay for 75eu?

You do not have to pay the salary, just the social insurance.

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#126

Post by jhoechtl » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 2:55 PM UTC

slavoingilizov wrote: post #108

Another Bulgarian here, living in London and contributing to the problem. This is a good article, but fails to show the breadth of the topic. I also disagree with many of the comments here, which (expectedly) are on the pessimistic side. This pattern of a big spike in migrants when a country joins the EU isn't new. The Polish, the Czech, the Hungarians all experienced this. It might be frightening to project a % of t…

> There's a trend of economic equalization which starts after a country joins the EU, ...

This is true for both sides. As a resident of a wealth EU country working conditions have become so dire with the constant flow of workforce from countries like Bulgaria, Montenegro, Macedonia and others.

Good for the employer who benefits from reduced employee power, bad for those who have ever been there.

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#127

Post by burntoutfire » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 2:56 PM UTC

wil421 wrote: post #91

tbojanin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My cousin is in his 20's, roughly makes 10,000/ month (~ $5600 USD). That salary is absolutely amazing. The article states the minimum monthly salary is $320 ( which a large amount of people make, given that Bulgaria lacks a middle class). The reason he stays in Bulgaria is because of that, he wanted to come join me in the US, but he didn't want to emigrate. edit: mrtksn's comment hits the nail on top of the head.

That’s an insane salary for Eastern Europe. I worked with people in the Balkans who grossed that much a year.

The $5k range is not uncommon in Poland for senior people. You can even see this much in stack overflow ads.

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#128

Post by jhoechtl » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 2:59 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #52

paganel wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am Romanian, I entered the comment section to say the same thing. More than half my friends and work acquaintances from the last 10-15 years have moved abroad.

My company has opened an office in Bucharest, mainly hiring tech workers. Windows and Unix admins, DBAs, app support but I'm sure other areas as well. I'll be hiring my first employees over there soon. From what I understand, salaries over there in these areas are comparable to elsewhere in Europe as various tech companies have opened offices there as well, but I'm just beginning to learn more about the economy as a…

Salary is one thing. How is work attitude combined with usabke education?

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#129

Post by gdy » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 3:00 PM UTC

Iwan-Zotow wrote: post #92

_hao wrote: post #12

As a Bulgarian living and working in London for more than a year now, I have no intention of going back. The IT sector in the country is booming and the money you can make relative to the cost of living is insane - you can live like a king. To me that is not enough. Money are not enough to make me go back, even though I miss my friends and family. One of the biggest problems for me is that the country is stuck in thi…

> and Russian influence wtf are you talking about? you are in EU and NATO, what is the problem?

South Stream, Belena nuclear plant

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#130

Post by axegon_ » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 3:00 PM UTC

Iwan-Zotow wrote: post #103

axegon_ wrote: post #74

Bulgarian here, there are a lot of aspects the article does not cover. First one is that up until 1989, Bulgaria was largely an agriculture state with the soviet union being the only market. A heavily controlled market at that. Some might argue that Bulgaria used to produce computers but it was mostly a small assembly line using Intel chips, so no, not really. Mind you the math education was on a good level, hence th…

> First one is that up until 1989, Bulgaria was largely an agriculture state where did you get this nonsense? FYI, you've got 6 (SIX!) nuclear reactors build during those times 0 since 1990

Nuclear reactors contribute very little to the job market. We still export electricity to Romania and Greece afaik but still... As in most communist regimes go, few people were allowed to pursue the more prestigious careers, unless you were a guy who knows a guy. So whether you wanted something more or not, it boiled down to who you were. On top of that you couldn't pack your bag and move to a bigger city without a permission of the authorities. As a result of all that and the appropriate weather conditions, agriculture was a safe bet for just about everyone.