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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

#241

Post by danans »

zozbot234 wrote: post #237
danans wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> ... Stoking grievances over the increased diversity of those countries ... The underlying grievance is of course not over "increased diversity" per se but rather the long-term decline in civic attitudes. The progressive left expresses the exact same concerns in a different wording, by decrying the increased "marginalization and exclusion" that's seemingly entailed by such diversity. Guess what: they're all looking…

> The underlying grievance is of course not over "increased diversity" per se but rather the long-term decline in civic attitudes.

I fail to see how the previous US president's complaints about people coming from "s*hole countries" and the exhortations from the Charlottesville rioters about how "Jews will not replace us" are grievances about "decline in civic attitudes". Try as one may to dissociate them, but these are the faces, words, and animating motivation of nationalism today.

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

#242

Post by throwayyy479087 »

blfr wrote: post #10

I do think that a state should exist primarily for the benefit of its citizens but this view had long been decried xenophobic at best. However, you can't have it both ways. If > 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 then clearly not > wealthy foreigners from all over the world, to whom we o…

No post body was provided.

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

#243

Post by throwayyy479087 »

paxys wrote: post #52
mtw wrote: post #34

This is not just Portugal. I see similar sentiment in Canada where young professionals in Vancouver or Toronto complain they can't buy their first home and Vancouver has been "sold out" to foreigners. Similar sentiment in Australian major cities as well.

I can't think of any major urban area in the world and any time period in history where "housing is too expensive" hasn't been the popular sentiment.

In NYC in the 70s housing was literally free - Harlem brownstones sold for a dollar. It hasn't always been this way.

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

#244

Post by alephnerd »

klabb3 wrote: post #240
alephnerd wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not parts of Canada - it's all of Canada. A member of our extended family runs a construction firm in Western CA and they've been building suburban tract housing EVERYWHERE - from Nanaimo to Abbotsford to Edmonton. And the same kind of sprawly suburban tract housing thaat exissts in North America is a popular status symbol in India, Vietnam, Malaysia, and China to name a few. Drive around Chandigarh, Delhi NCR,…

Interesting, thanks for the pointers. Now that I think of it, I think Saudi Arabia and UAE may be added to that list.

Yep! They also prefer suburban tract housing. Also in Ireland and UK in my experience (my coworkers in the London office all moved to Reading, MK, Newbury, etc once they started familes). Amsterdam as well after visiting another cousin in Amsteveel, and Aahrus and Espoo to meet a buddy of mine who went to Aarhus Universitet and started at Nokia

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

#245

Post by throwayyy479087 »

immibis wrote: post #209
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

Step 4: say "oops, we can't afford to pay you the stuff we promised, but you should have known that, because you are smart investors and you checked our balance sheet and houseflow first" and then default on the investments. I wonder why these places are so desperate not to do that.

Because the international class that sets policy - and is heavily represented on this site - would lose money if they did so. Better to focus on idpol like ingroup/outgroup blame.

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

#246

Post by stjohnswarts »

speakfreely wrote: post #147
notch656a wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

MAGAs are blaming this on Biden rather than on deteriorating political situations all through Mexico, Central, and South America lol. It's a lot easier to blame the president tho.

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

#247

Post by stjohnswarts »

petre wrote: post #102
rmbyrro wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Portuguese case is quite different, I think. Canada has a well-developed and diversified economy. Portugal needs to import a lot from the world, but has very little to offer in exchange. They found something: their real estate and city center spaces. The country NEEDS this foreign income. It's not a self-sustainable economy and the world won't work for them for free. If the Portuguese want to solve this issue, on…

> The country NEEDS this foreign income. It's just parking money. It's the last thing a socialist country like Portugal needs, because it screws up the real estate market making housing unafordable to the general population, who lives, works there, pays taxes and maybe has kids. What they can do is tax all property as if one is renting it, like Switzerland does and use the 6 month median rent as the tax base.

do the people moving there not pay taxes, work there, and raise kids also? I think I'm missing the point. It's simple to solve it by making foreigners pay much higher annual taxes on the privilege to live there and capping real estate prices for locals vs foreigners. Prevent foreigners from actually being able to buy real estate. Then everyone wins.

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

#248

Post by swearwolf »

subsubzero wrote: post #171

This sounds like what happened in the SFbay area(south bay/pennisula), I grew up there and it used to be a great place to live, center left politics, lots of families and a diverse set of industries with many middle class opportunities. right around 10-15 years ago things started to change dramatically for the worse, housing and costs everywhere skyrocketed, homeless population exploded, politics veered hard left. Mo…

As a resident, what do you think was the catalyst for these changes?

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

#249

Post by pkaye »

brabel wrote: post #222
pdpi wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Portuguese IT is pretty good in general, and that could easily have been part of the solution. The problem is that there was a large exodus of talent in the early 2010s (including yours truly), and that has caused some serious brain drain.

The company I work for has 3 devs in Portugal, working remotely... good people, very skilled, and it's much more affordable to pay them well compared to their local market than trying to hire locally, even if locally (more expensive European country), salaries are still a far cry from those of the USA, let alone Silicon Valley. With remote becoming widespread, it's hard to believe Silicon Valley is still willing to p…

> With remote becoming widespread, it's hard to believe Silicon Valley is still willing to pay so much more money for devs than hire remote workers in Portugal and numerous other countries with high education and infrastructure, but much, much lower salaries.

In the US there are 50 states to choose from for remote workers. And then outside that is the rest of North/South America all within a narrow time zone band.

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

#250

Post by elforce002 »

notch656a wrote: post #40
Victerius wrote: post #3

Unsustainable. If you're a wealthy individual living in an expensive residence surrounded by other wealthy individuals living in expensive residences, you still need garbagemen to collect your garbage. You still need food. Whether you order from local restaurants staffed by employees, or buy your groceries at the supermarket, staffed by employees, janitorial personnel, security guards, and managers, you're still rely…

San Francisco solved it with homeless camps and effectively decriminalizing theft under $950.

My God. Really?!
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