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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

#701

Post by finikytou »

tbh it is same in most of the small-sized major cities of Europe. Lisbon, Barcelona and to an extent paris.

What we are seeing more globally in Europe is the disappearance of the middle class. For the last decade this middle class had to bear all the tax (so that poor people can be lifted out of poverty and protected by the system), no reduction, no possibility of evasion (like rich people have), increase of food prices (permanent), electricity (now) and the doubling even tripling of the cost of real estate while our salaries barely grew. Entry level salaries in France or UK or Germany are not that different from 10-15 years ago while everything else exploded in cost. Add to that the fact that your city attracts foreign rich people and investments and you done. Paris real estate is a joke and the city only ends up with rich people and very poor people (hosted in projects) the middle class has to move to suburbia with limited infrastructure , doctors, things to do (obviously a nice suburb will be paris prices if not more).

In the USA you can still make a six digit salary doing blue-collar work (hard one) and many jobs pays high 5 digits for a middle-class worker. Not even talking about software that is really a class-climbing profession that we definitly don't have in europe (software doesn't pay here and its very rare to go six digits while in HCOL cities of USA its standard year 1 pay)

at the end most of the 10year ago middle class became a class of white collar workers that live paycheck by paycheck and when the economy will tank in the coming months many will go back to poverty as soon as they loose their jobs.

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

#702

Post by finikytou »

daemoens wrote: post #525
nextos wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I truly agree with most of what you say. This famous article discusses why housing is becoming a huge problem everywhere and why that's super bad for the economy: https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-e... . It's been discussed here a few times, e.g.: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28531025 . The compromise Barcelona made is not enough. Sadly, that beautiful city is IMHO the prototypical ca…

Rent control usually causes rents to go up in the non-rent controlled areas. It just accelerates the unaffordability of all housing.

not only that. rent control also causes less properties to be for rent. if its not making enough money renting my property with bother? ill just keep it empty until price climbs and ill sell it. in paris they pushed rent control + they forbid you to rent your appartement is the apartment is not energy efficient enough. guess what? people that should renovate for becoming energy efficient have no real incentive to do it because anyway renovating an apartment will not allow them to rent it at higher price. they'll just hold onto it or sell it.

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

#703

Post by pb7 »

joao_lopes wrote: post #329
joshlemer wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1.6k euros per... month?

Also, in Portugal you receive 14 months per year instead of 12 (one extra on summer holiday and another on Christmas).

This is all the more reason to state it as a yearly salary. There are only 12 months in a year. You might get 2 extra paychecks but those are bonuses/irregular payments; there aren’t magically 2 extra months in the year.

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

#704

Post by tdudzik »

imsaw wrote: post #634
epolanski wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I've ever heard the absurd levels of this blog post and I've lived in few expensive cities from italy, poland and switzerland, where it is impossible for middle class locals to live there.

Compared with the 2, how is Poland expensive?

Currently I think it's quite expensive (for locals). E.g. bedroom + living room costs > 3k PLN in Cracow, and probably more in Warsaw. At the same time junior dev can earn about 5-9k PLN net. My non-dev friends often are not even able to live in Cracow.

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

#705

Post by lelanthran »

stainforth wrote: post #228
tumetab1 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope Portugal won't tackle it like my country, with a cap on rent and other market distortions. I think that only makes it worse. That's one of the reasons why portuguese renting market is so bad. There were rent control policies for like 40 years. It has been phased out but the market still has the signs of its damages. There also other contributing policies and the policies change almost every two years. I'm on…

So either we preference your 150000 euros (and of course interest and margin on top) or someone having a roof over their head, running water, and even the ability to stay in the same are and building community instead of moving each year due to capital seeking max gains.

> So either we preference your 150000 euros (and of course interest and margin on top) or someone having a roof over their head, running water, and even the ability to stay in the same are and building community instead of moving each year due to capital seeking max gains.

Unless you are proposing to take his extra 10k euros by force, or let him invest it elsewhere?

If you want him to invest his 150k euros in housing you need to (according to him) lower his risk.

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

#706

Post by Yaa101 »

tbdenney wrote: post #653
intothemild wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish more cities would ban or limit AirBnB. Take Amsterdam for example. A good decade ago, it was crowded in the tourism months (summer), but not too bad. Now it's crowded in the off season too, and during the summer months even more so, to the point where walking around is really hard. The mayor seems to constantly want to get rid of cannabis, which won't solve the problem, the issue isn't the weed tourism... it's…

AirBnB already is limited in Amsterdam: "According to Dutch regulations, you can only rent out your entire home in Amsterdam for a maximum of 30 nights per year, unless you have a specific permit that allows you to rent out your home for more nights, such as a short term stay license." https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/860/amsterdam

But still the problems are not solved, it is not only airbnb, like many places we are in the endgame of neoliberalism which is the wholesale of other peoples property to rich people by the corrupt political class.

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

#707

Post by the_gipsy »

FerociousTimes wrote: post #414
the_gipsy wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's where job opportunities are, and that's why more housing will increase the opportunities, and then the price of housing...

For a post-Covid world where remote job opportunities are on the rise, this is becoming less and less of a pressing matter. People can work from nearby towns where housing costs are relatively moderate and just hit the head office in Lisbon one or two times a week. Corporations and people need to adapt to the changing circumstances and to be open to make the necessary adjustments to advance in this world.

Remote work is certainly a way to de-focus big metropolis, a bit.

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

#708

Post by rlf_dev »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #512
mr90210 wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure why you got downvoted, but you couldn’t be more right. Many young Portugueses fail to benefit from being part of the EU.

With all do respect this is bullshit. Portugal has the 4th highest rate of emmigrated working age population in the EU27, only surpassed by Romania, Lithuania, Croatia. Portugal had one of the single biggest brain drains in history post 2008 crisis. People have absolutely voted with their feet. Those who stayed behind, either stayed because they benefit from the cronyism or are held back by family or lack of marketab…

"Those who stayed behind, either stayed because they benefit from the cronyism or are held back by family or lack of marketable skills."

Or maybe none of those, there are plenty of people with good jobs here and no reason to leave, not all of us make minimum wage or live in Lisbon.

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

#709

Post by DrNosferatu »

WalterBright wrote: post #260
DrNosferatu wrote: post #199

Very difficult to change because, in the "Pax Neoliberalia" world we live in, profits are Sacrosanct - and the higher the capital concentration, the holier so. But some straightforward fixes: 1. Flood the market with affordable state housing, Austria-style - with the bonus of building new, boosting the national economy. 2. Create very progressive (rapidly rising) taxes based on property value - making untenable the c…

Inflation is not the result of profits, gouging, etc. It's the result of funding the deficit by running the printing press. (Or the modern equivalent, creating debt backed by nothing.) The proof is the observation that endemic inflation only happens in countries with fiat money systems.

How do you justify the current record corporate profits?

Also, Quantitative Easing was literally printing money and yet EU rates (inflation & sovereign debt interest) remained low, many times negative - with some EU countries observing actual deflation.

Only when the supply shock did happen (Covid & Ukraine), rates started to increase. And only after that, price gouging practices started by riding the supply shock public perception - resulting in said record corporate profits.

If there was inflation caused by excess money, how could corporate profits be at record highs?

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

#710

Post by golergka »

DrNosferatu wrote: post #199

Very difficult to change because, in the "Pax Neoliberalia" world we live in, profits are Sacrosanct - and the higher the capital concentration, the holier so. But some straightforward fixes: 1. Flood the market with affordable state housing, Austria-style - with the bonus of building new, boosting the national economy. 2. Create very progressive (rapidly rising) taxes based on property value - making untenable the c…

Why don't you include the most obvious, free market, capitalist solution of all: just let people build more housing?

It won't be affordable at first, of course, but as you flood the market with new high-rise apartments, the price will inevitably plummet.

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