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The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

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Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#141

Post by klabb3 »

speeder wrote: post #95
outworlder wrote: post #64

The article seems odd and is all over the place. > The government has taken desirable measures for foreigners, making it easier for them to get golden visas if someone invests a certain amount of money. My husband, who works in real estate, tells me countless stories of flats left uninhabited by some rich person who arrived at the building, bought two flats so that he could get a visa, and doesn’t even live there. Th…

Indeed there is some weirdness in this article. For example, it claims Brazillians are going to Portugal in large numbers because Bolsonaro... Except, Brazillians are going to Portugal in large numbers, because the Portuguese government invited them, out of necessity since the country is depopulated and has low birth rates. I am one of the Brazilians that intend to move to Portugal, and part of the reason is that I a…

> Lisbon and other metropolises indeed are bad, but because a incredible amount of people want to live there despite lack of enough land there.

And infrastructure. Lisbon is incredibly dense, partly due to its historical neighborhoods that's impenetrable by modern surface traffic, and a subway network with insufficient reach for a growing metropolis, resulting in everyone packing themselves denser in the few desirable areas.

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#143

Post by rcarmo »

joshlemer wrote: post #133
marcodiego wrote: post #31

One of my students got a job offer in Portugal before the pandemic. He personally came to thank me for being his teacher; he is a good, dedicated student. Pandemic came, he stayed in Brazil doing remote work. Found him a few days ago. He told me he gave up going to Portugal and decided to stay in Brazil for now mostly because cost of living there. His initial salary would be 1.6K euros.

1.6k euros per... month?

Yeah, that would be the kind of money you’d get as a junior “anything”, even outside tech.

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#144

Post by [deleted] »

outworlder wrote: post #86
fbanon wrote: post #54

Step 1: nearly bankrupt your country Step 2: sell out your country to wealthy foreigners to "stimulate the economy" Step 3: act surprised that you can't afford living in your country, that got sold out to wealthy foreigners

In this case, the 'wealthy foreigners' are large corporations (and foreign governments). Not the occasional gringo that decides to bridge the language barrier and buy property there.

[deleted]

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#145

Post by Dma54rhs »

beebeepka wrote: post #55
cpach wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you have really crappy weather, like here in Sweden :-p

With global warming, the north is going to have the best weather in a few decades, maybe less. You guys are going to have it all.

It will still be over half of the year, I don't thinking climate change will change that.

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#146

Post by zelphirkalt »

jersak wrote: post #37
aprdm wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's just a matter of time? In Canada even the small cities got unaffordable , mainly after COVID started. With the interest rate raise a lot of people are hoping for a crash, some banks are saying it will be up to this 20-40% in some cities. Hopefully that helps. There's no where livable in Canada that is affordable to have a house right now.

Not gonna lie, im considering moving from BC to a farm in NS. With the mortgage i have on a 2 bdr apartment in the lower mainland i can buy up to 3 farms in NS, which is comically sad.

Side fact, not really criticism: When I see abbreviations for US states, my brain starts inserting anything that comes to mind and is a location. In this case:

"BC? British Columbia? NS? New Jersey, no that's not with an 's' ... Arg, no idea!"

It is not mandatory for me to understand all the abbreviations. Just that sometimes I would like to understand more, without having to guess states.

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#147

Post by speakfreely »

notch656a wrote: post #94
rmbyrro wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at Singapore, for example. Its situation was orders of magnitude worse than Portugal decades ago. Now they are probably twice as better. The key is: stop complaining about "the rich is this, the rich is that" and start thinking about how to be competitive in the 21st century. There are many opportunities, but are Portuguese citizens interested in taking the effort and sacrifice to explore them? The answer to thi…

Singapore's public housing is propped up by the fact that they have a huge proportion of their population that are totally ineligible for it, but pay the taxes to support it. I think something like only 60% of Singapore has the citizenship or correct criteria of permanent residency to obtain public housing. If the US can put 40% of its working populace into some lower-rights having class, like strip their citizenship…

> If the US can put 40% of its working populace into some lower-rights having class, like strip their citizenship, we would have a comparable public housing tax base.

The US is already working on this, albeit unintentionally.

Undocumented immigrants were at 3.3% of the population in 2016 and the numbers have absolutely exploded since the beginning of the Biden administration, with 2 million apprehensions so far for in 2022 [0]. The cumulative effect of this over just a single term of the Biden administration will completely reshape the demographics of most of the border states (and most major cities of the country), as the majority of immigrants are arriving with very little means, extremely limited ability to speak English, and will be mostly restricted from accessing the US financial system without legal residence status, hobbling them financially and forcing them into informal work arrangements.

[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/illegal-immigration-arrests-hit...

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#148

Post by [deleted] »

joshlemer wrote: post #133
marcodiego wrote: post #31

One of my students got a job offer in Portugal before the pandemic. He personally came to thank me for being his teacher; he is a good, dedicated student. Pandemic came, he stayed in Brazil doing remote work. Found him a few days ago. He told me he gave up going to Portugal and decided to stay in Brazil for now mostly because cost of living there. His initial salary would be 1.6K euros.

1.6k euros per... month?

[deleted]

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#149

Post by dougmwne »

tumetab1 wrote: post #126
dougmwne wrote: post #16

Sounds like the Portuguese government should start building flats as fast as possible. Other countries in the EU do it and it works.

I doubt that even 30% of people would consider having government as a landlord good alternative. There are so many news of poor management that depending on the government to fix your plumbing in your house seems like a nightmare scenario to me.

This is actually a good role for government intervention. The exact mechanism is not important, but the concept is. Builders tend to be out of cycle with housing need due to the length time it takes to get a project to completion. After a bust, they get very skittish and underinvest for the first half of the cycle creating a shortage and boom. Government can provide a base level of housing builds to make sure the market doesn’t go too deep into shortage. And it doesn’t have to literally build them itself, just run programs that keep building housing. Ideally it even pays for itself.

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#150

Post by klabb3 »

kmeisthax wrote: post #48

I see three colluding factors causing a global cost-of-living crisis: - Increasing income inequality short-circuiting the backpressure role of market pricing (and, more specifically, the use of home ownership and immigrant-investor programs as a way to sidestep restrictive immigration systems) - Countries attempting to replicate the American suburban lifestyle, which is economically unsustainable as voters are incent…

> - Countries attempting to replicate the American suburban lifestyle

Really, where? I thought only fractions of the anglosphere replicated this (like parts of Canada). Extremely few Europeans would want that lifestyle, for instance. The trend seems to be moving aggressively in the opposite direction, with large and dense cities attracting the majority of new people.

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