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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

#531

Post by dogman144 »

kipchak wrote: post #220
dogman144 wrote: post #99

I don’t know what’s the correct approach with this. I’m a globe trotting engineer who understands globalism and what access tech is opening up to it. I don’t mean being a digital nomad. Rather, tech is collapsing or expanding concepts of borders, nationalism and so on in very meaningful ways. That’s a hugely compelling area to work in vs chasing an OKR for Google ads. I don’t think it’s reversible, and I find a lot o…

I think the fundamental question is by what right does someone have "right" to something like land or the buildings on it, by the open market and wealth or by already living there? Neither is really fair or equitable. But I worry what will happen as more people start to feel (justifiably so) they're getting a raw deal on both fronts.

Yes, I feel critical about capitalism because it decides questions like that and it seems like markets come up with cheap and anti-human solitons. Which is I think is a more important metric. How to get those incentives to work seems difficult and maybe this is better than other options, but I don’t believe it’s doing “right.”

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

#532

Post by DoingIsLearning »

The main problem in Portugal is a lack of wealth generation more than Housing.

It doesn't matter if rents are curbed under 1k a month. The median under 25 earns less than 700 euros a month.

I talk to people in Portugal and I hear more or less the same salary discussions and ranges for more than 20 years. It is a stagnant labour market for literally +20 years! When adjusted to inflation it becomes even more ludicrous.

The iron curtain countries in the Baltic as well as Slovenia and Czechia, have all surpassed Portugal in wage growth. That should give anyone reason to pause.

Portugal has a few succesful SMEs, a wine industry, a cork industry, some textiles and not much more to show.

The Portuguese economy is mostly services which are circular not actualy exported and the obvious exported component which is Tourism.

The majority of Portugal's EU Cohesion Funds were sunk on motorways. The country has suffered from lack of strategy in both Government and Industry since the 80's.

There is only so much we can keep blaming on the dictatorship regime of Salazar 50 years ago. At some point politicians and business owners/investors need to take ownership of their fuck ups.

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

#533

Post by electriclove »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #383
ghaff wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that is the flip side to Prop 13, which a bunch of people like to hate on. Absent Prop 13 (for residential properties) a lot of long-term residents would be forced out by rapidly rising property taxes. Which would-be residents may not like but is not at all clearly a bad thing.

Even if that's your angle, Prop 13 is bizarrely overbroad. If you just wanted to protect long-term residents from needing to move: * Remove its application to commercial property * Remove its application to second/vacation homes * Remove its application to inherited property * Only apply the restriction if the increase would be burdensome on the household's income * Only apply the restriction once someone has lived i…

I started to nod in agreement but as I went down your list I vehemently disagree with where the continuation of that thought goes..

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

#534

Post by [deleted] »

refurb wrote: post #511
nbenitezl wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reason how this happens worldwide may be that 70% of world population is projected to be living in big cities by next decades. I mean, tendency is that most people want to live in the big city, sometimes as necessity (can only find a job there) sometimes as a preference (better services, etc.) the result is traffic jams and expensive real state.

I'd argue that trend is reversing, just like it did in the 1960's. Quality of life issues eventually drive people to live in the outer suburbs, further exacerbating issues within city cores (e.g. San Francisco right now).

[deleted]

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

#535

Post by tjr225 »

refurb wrote: post #511
nbenitezl wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reason how this happens worldwide may be that 70% of world population is projected to be living in big cities by next decades. I mean, tendency is that most people want to live in the big city, sometimes as necessity (can only find a job there) sometimes as a preference (better services, etc.) the result is traffic jams and expensive real state.

I'd argue that trend is reversing, just like it did in the 1960's. Quality of life issues eventually drive people to live in the outer suburbs, further exacerbating issues within city cores (e.g. San Francisco right now).

You can argue it all you want but the numbers don’t support it. If the demand is going down then why is it becoming more expensive?

Also, white flight in the 60s was a move to the suburbs- many would consider that given the density of 2020, the suburbs are feeling the same crunch. Bellevue and other suburbs are more expensive than Seattle. I’m guessing there are suburbs of SF that are more expensive than SF.

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

#536

Post by sokoloff »

jfim wrote: post #524
mike50 wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need a dinning room. That's a luxury feature. It is possible to share bathrooms if you build housing more like school dooms or single room occupancy.

Having a place to eat at home is not a luxury feature, unless the city has a population density that is high enough to support having a broad array of dining options that are open for most of the day. Tokyo is one example of such a city, but having restaurants that are open 24x7 is not common at all in Europe.

Having a place to eat != having a dining room.

Growing up (middle-class; both parents were teachers), we used our dining room to eat maybe 3 times a year. We ate around 1000 meals/year at the kitchen table and maybe 3 at the dining room table.

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

#537

Post by 650REDHAIR »

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…

Where did you end up? Is it better?

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

#538

Post by 650REDHAIR »

stevenwoo wrote: post #402
orthoxerox wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those that owned houses also moved as they were fed up with crime and could get a way better house somewhere else. How do the criminals afford to live in the area?

The freeways make it easy to commute in and out for criminals. My housemate's car was stolen about 15 years ago(!) and used for a bank robbery somewhere else on the peninsula (also close to a freeway) and abandoned in Oakland. There's a regular sweep of my neighborhood on the peninsula for unlocked cars at night, they will take anything, and break into cars for visible bags. It's practically every third topic on Next…

Also public housing…

I live in SF and would watch my old neighbor in the subsidized housing across the street park a new ebike in the garage every day. They would throw away random exhaust bits in the public trash can around midnight once or twice a week. Every few months they would have a “garage sale” and every item on the sidewalk was still new in box. All completely random stuff.

Everyone knew about it. People complained. The cops knew. The postman knew they stole packages. Nothing anyone could do. They still live there. Still stealing.

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

#539

Post by jackcosgrove »

saiya-jin wrote: post #333
armchairhacker wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve literally seen this same exact comment many, many times except with different locations. Eastern Mass, New York, Ontario, Britain, and even starting to hear it from suburban areas. The exact same concepts: cheap grandfathered lease, hoping the landlord doesn’t cancel, can’t afford rent despite making >100k, “luxury apartments”, empty apartments, illegal renting (e.g. AirBnB) and shadiness.

Practically every single capital is like that these days. People of all nations can copy paste same rant and it would be 100% valid. This is how it is, too much buying power with new generation of higher level office workers compared to blue collar ones, on top of financial speculation with either prices skyrocketing, or airbnbs. Let's not forget there is more and more of people in general, and more and more coming f…

> I am not aware of any metropolis/capital where this isn't true, regardless of regime.

Tokyo. It is hoovering up all the Japanese youth, but manages to stay affordable for other factors.

- Permissive zoning - Immigration restrictions - Closed culture - Declining population

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

#540

Post by Tiktaalik »

mistermann wrote: post #493
Tiktaalik wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Poof This has pretty much already been done in Vancouver, which has layers of Foreign Buyer Taxes, Speculation Taxes, Empty Home Taxes and strict Airbnb regulation. It absolutely did not make the problem go 'poof.' All these things were well worth doing and helped in various ways, but it remains that the core underlying problem is that there's not enough homes for everyone and scarcity ensures high rents and high p…

There's been nothing even remotely close to a ban, and it's highly uncertain the degree to which the new rules are even enforced. As with most things, Canadians are expected to Trust The Experts....and trust them they do!

You don't need to trust the "experts" you can look at the data which is publicly available.

> In 2020, the share of foreigners in the fair market value of homes was almost zero.

> It was 0.56 percent to be exact, based on figures compiled by Brendon Ogmundson, chief economist with the B.C. Real Estate Association.

> Ogmundson used official B.C. government data on property transfer taxes.

https://www.straight.com/news/no-scapegoats-this-time-bc-eco...

Previously the government didn't track details around who was buying homes, and this is something that changed along with the foreign buyer tax.

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