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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

#611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Boomers don't like immigrants/workers, therefore life is getting really expensive" mischaracterises my argument. In hindsight I should have left out superfluous phrases. The fully elaborated argument is long and somewhat nuanced. If you want a soundbite, how's this: "Boomers own all the stuff (to a first approximation). Two other things: first, due to their wealth they can outbid Zoomers for real estate as it comes…

Isn't it weird that we allow home/land ownership to a family/individual in perpetuity and then complain about high prices and scarcity for newcomers? Just think about it for a second, we in the west allow people to buy a piece of the Planet Earth, and hold on to it forever, virtually tax free(in Western Europe at least). How is this nothing else but blatant feudalism? And how is it still allowed? Royal families and l…

> we in the west allow people to buy a piece of the Planet Earth, and hold on to it forever, virtually tax free(in Western Europe at least)

What do you mean tax free? There are inheritance taxes for that, which often go up to 50-60% of the value for higher values. That's why the majority of castles in the UK are in trusts and open to the public, paying 50% of the value of the castle and land every generation was too much.

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

#612
post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it weird that we allow home/land ownership to a family/individual in perpetuity and then complain about high prices and scarcity for newcomers? Just think about it for a second, we in the west allow people to buy a piece of the Planet Earth, and hold on to it forever, virtually tax free(in Western Europe at least). How is this nothing else but blatant feudalism? And how is it still allowed? Royal families and l…

> we in the west allow people to buy a piece of the Planet Earth, and hold on to it forever, virtually tax free(in Western Europe at least) What do you mean tax free? There are inheritance taxes for that, which often go up to 50-60% of the value for higher values. That's why the majority of castles in the UK are in trusts and open to the public, paying 50% of the value of the castle and land every generation was too…

50% inheritance taxes are very rare in Europe, for normal homeowners it's mostly negligible, and there are workarounds like donating your property to your kids before you die to avoid the inheritance process and taxes.

And the property taxes are mostly grandfathered to the price the property was last purchased at, rather than at the current market prices.

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

#613
post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prices are dropping in San Francisco, especially condos which are below pre-Covid prices now. And you yourself said "Bellevue and other suburbs are more expensive than Seattle." Which would infer that yes, people are leaving the city and moving to suburbs.

Of course they are as interest rates are rising quickly. Nobody is talking about it, but free (or almost) money was also a good reason why prices increased that much.

Prices were dropping before interest rates went up.

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

#614
The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Lisbon. The rest of Portugal is still quite cheap.

Which has happened everywhere before. Americans can no longer afford to live in NYC and San Francisco. Canadians can no longer afford to live in Vancouver. The Spanish can no longer afford to live in Barcelona. The French can no longer afford to live in Paris.

Professions become obsolete. Your entire career can be for nothing. The city you have live for all life can suddenly get an economic boom, but you do not work in a booming industry, so you won’t share the profits.

(It happened even when capitalism has been taken out of the equation. Do you think the Soviets could afford to live in Moscow? It was a pipe dream for most of the population).

This has happened many times before. Such is life.

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

#615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Also Bangkok, total renters market. New buildings going up every day. Lots of rents are lower than before covid.

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

#616

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…

> politics veered hard left

By hard left do you mean "wokeism" or "communism", because the former is absolutely not hard left

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

#617
post #585

The xenophobia in this thread is shocking. Foreigners have just as much of a right to live in Portugal as people who were born there. Nobody is entitled to live somewhere just because they want to and there are still lots of affordable countries if you don’t want to put in the work

I am a foreigner in Germany. I am very xenophobic and with extreme right views. Because I know many other foreigners who have almost full time jobs milking Germany’s social system. I didn’t calculate very exact numbers, but 2/3 of my earnings go for various taxes and mandatory insurances (including insane expensive public health insurance). I would say it’s really shitty deal for me financing all the immigrants and taking care of my own retirement with already heavily taxed euros.

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

#618
post #561

5 years resident here (as a Brexit refugee). Central city locations in Lisbon and Porto have exploded in price, but this is due to AirBnB rather than rich expats. Portugal's tourism industry has boomed, which has put money in a lot of people's pockets, but has distorted local economies somewhat. Better management is required, for example cracking down on AirBnB and NOT building that new cruise liner terminal. Unfortu…

> Brexit refugee Hard cringe.

EDIT: shitter news won't let me post a reply so I will just delete my comment

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

#619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Came to say the exact same thing. Most in the English-speaking world have no idea cities like Tokyo exist. It’s still a global capital, still growing (for now), but it’s still very affordable for people of all economic classes. And it’s not for lack of foreign speculation; locals mostly aren’t buying up the $10M+ flats in the new Mori building, but there’s plenty of development to meet demand across the spectrum.

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

#620
post #52
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.

Do you have any sources to back that up?
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