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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

#751

Post by speakfreely »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #246
speakfreely wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Not a MAGA so I can't speak for them, but the "root causes" angle is really just a dead end talking point to deflect and allow inaction on this issue.

As long as salaries in the US are double, triple, or more than people can make in their home countries, there will always be more economic migrants than the US system can accommodate. It's a very simple case of supply and demand. No "root causes" strategy is going to change anything about the situation facing destitute, rural laborers in the Northern Triangle countries in the next 5-10 years. It will always make economic sense for them to attempt to immigrate to the US. The only thing that will stop them is a significant deterrence policy from the US government.

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

#752

Post by speakfreely »

lovich wrote: post #198
speakfreely wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

A record number of arrests can mean there is a record number of immigrants but does not guarantee that is the cause. Increased enforcement of the border would also lead to higher arrests and subsequently reduce the inflow of immigration

The current administration has gone back and forth on this. Initially the policy was to be as "Un-Trumpy" as possible on border policy, but that had the predictable effect of encouraging more illegal immigration simply by changing the narrative in the source countries. Now they've quietly restarted a fair amount of border wall construction but their options for solving it logistically are very limited, as the only way to address the massive influx is to rapidly scale the personnel on the border which can't be done overnight (unless the National Guard is used, which would be completely rejected by the liberal base).

If you're interested in unfiltered perspectives, I would encourage you to focus on articles that specifically quote active Border Patrol agents who are working on the border. It's quite different than anything you hear from Washington DC.

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

#753

Post by [deleted] »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #483
jollybean wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has not been done in earnest in Vancouver. There's a 15 point 'one time' fee but it likely should be more, and/or an ongoing assessment i.e. higher annual taxes. Moreover, Canada gives away citizenship like candy and families have their kids live there. AirBnB is still running strong as well, which should be much more heavily taxed.

The government still keeps track of the amount of foreign buyers. It has plunged. It's likely that if it was a still a problem people would be doing something more but it's marginal at this point. The biggest impacts have already happened. We had developers building hyper luxury condos explicitly marketed to an asian audience and overnight with the foreign buyer tax everyone stopped making those and the same develope…

[deleted]

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

#754

Post by colinmhayes »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #306
JoeJonathan wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is building more housing simple? If it were that straightforward, California (which has much more space and money) would have done it, and Californians wouldn't be moving to Portugal.

The lack of housing in gigantic states like California is baffling to me as someone who comes from an incredibly densely populated country.

Californian's have at every chance voted to make themselves landed gentry. That means low property taxes, restrictive zoning, and often just total bans on building. At a hyperlocal scale it makes sense, allowing things to be built can be bad for the homeowner next door, it just leads to the insane home prices we see now.

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

#755

Post by bobthepanda »

II2II wrote: post #721
bcrosby95 wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point. For example, when my siblings were kids we all lived in 1 house. I have 3 siblings so there were 6 of us including my parents. In 1 house. As we graduated from college we moved out. Now there were 6 of us in 5 houses. Beyond the raw house count, you're going to need more space. Multi-bedroom homes have shared common space. The house we grew up in had 1 dining room, 1 kitchen, 1 livin…

Most younger people share accommodations (e.g. have a roommate). Most older people share accommodations (e.g. have a family). There is also some, for the lack of a more sensitive word, attrition as time goes on. Yes, your family has grown and the amount of space your family needs in order to maintain their quality of life has increased. Yet it has only increased by a relatively small amount. I am also going to echo w…

Housing supply doesn’t grow by all that much though, so a “relatively small amount” is enough to tighten a market.

In any case, censuses define a household as people living together in a unit, which would account for roommates. Portugal has gone from 3.7 in 1960 to 2.6 in 2011. Housing 10.3M people at 3.7 requires 2.8m units; 2.6 requires 4m units. And that may be just what Portuguese people have to put up with, but not their desired end state; if they were at the EU average of 2.2, then it would require 4.6m units.

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

#756

Post by colinmhayes »

citilife wrote: post #275
jonathanstrange wrote: post #97

Yes, the situation is dire. I live in Lisbon as a foreigner for more than 12 years now. We pay a rent for a small flat that used to be very expensive and now is on the cheap side in our quarter of the city. Luckily, we have an older contract that cannot be changed as easily as newer ones. I'm not thrilled by the possibility that our landlord might cancel it some day, however, e.g. for relatives to move in. Rents in t…

Many dislike the idea, but this is why people turn to "nationalism". If you want to decrease unemployment, you add tariffs for imports enabling more businesses to open domestically (i.e. tariffs effectively increase import costs). Similarly, you can loosen building codes to increase production of homes, limit visa duration, require citizenship for home ownership, etc. Those are some obvious fixes, why is the governme…

Tarrifs don't create jobs, they just destroy the specialized industries that used to export but now can't because you're in a trade war.

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

#757

Post by marcodiego »

mikestew wrote: post #304
marcodiego wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people asking about the salary: yes it is per month. Also compare it to Brazilian reality: median programmer salary here is, according to a quick google search: "The estimated salary for a computer programmer is $62,420 per year in Brazil, IN.", which comes to around 10-12K euros a year. My experience when I was a developer is really around that value. Getting 1.6K euros a month is a VERY good initial salary in B…

"The estimated salary for a computer programmer is $62,420 per year in Brazil, IN." As sibling has stated, Brazil (properly pronounced "BRAY-zil") is a small town in the U. S. state of Indiana. What amazes me though, as one that grew up probably 20 miles from the town, is that anyone in Brazil, IN is paying $62K/year. But it's been 30 years since I lived anywhere near there, looks like it's grown a little.

Ooops... Thanks for the heads up. Fortunately, numbers are coincident.

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

#758

Post by notch656a »

speakfreely wrote: post #752
lovich wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A record number of arrests can mean there is a record number of immigrants but does not guarantee that is the cause. Increased enforcement of the border would also lead to higher arrests and subsequently reduce the inflow of immigration

The current administration has gone back and forth on this. Initially the policy was to be as "Un-Trumpy" as possible on border policy, but that had the predictable effect of encouraging more illegal immigration simply by changing the narrative in the source countries. Now they've quietly restarted a fair amount of border wall construction but their options for solving it logistically are very limited, as the only wa…

I have spoken extensively with Border Patrol agents. While they were faking dog alerts, detaining me for 16+ hours, strip searching me, writing obscenely vulgur and false statements about the intimate parts of my body, and sharing it with judges and even the united states assistant attorney, cuffing and shackling me and driving me to multiple hospitals across my state for "internal examination" while doctors refused to respect my declining of consent, even though (for the first 12 hours) they had no warrant or legal mechanism to perform "medical care." While they were tossing me in jail cells, full of people I can't speak to, without being charged with any crime. While they made me perform my bodily functions in front of them, and they searched through the effects found thereafter. While they were fingerprinting / booking me without even being accused of a crime, nor arrested (which is normally only reserved for non-citizens).

They degraded me in almost every way possible, except penetrating me, and one other lady who they dragged to the same hospital as me wasn't even that lucky. Fuck em. Oh yes, I'm a US citizen (who looks white, middle class, speaks fluent hick english, normal), with an unquestionably valid passport who has never broken any border related law, and they never found anything. I would rather 100 illegals get through than any other single person be treated the way I have by border patrol. Border Patrol is a criminal organization, depriving rights under color of law and should be prosecuted under the RICO act.

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

#759

Post by colinmhayes »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #296
jonathanstrange wrote: post #97

Yes, the situation is dire. I live in Lisbon as a foreigner for more than 12 years now. We pay a rent for a small flat that used to be very expensive and now is on the cheap side in our quarter of the city. Luckily, we have an older contract that cannot be changed as easily as newer ones. I'm not thrilled by the possibility that our landlord might cancel it some day, however, e.g. for relatives to move in. Rents in t…

This seems to be a problem everywhere around the world in big cities. What’s propping all of these property prices up? Supply and demand rules don’t seem to apply at all. You might have thousands of empty apartments in a city yet the price only keeps going up. Everything is broken, but housing is particularly broken.

NYC has a vacancy rate of 4.5%. It's not empty apartments that are causing insane rent, it's too many people competing for too few apartments.

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

#760

Post by stjohnswarts »

speakfreely wrote: post #751
stjohnswarts wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not a MAGA so I can't speak for them, but the "root causes" angle is really just a dead end talking point to deflect and allow inaction on this issue. As long as salaries in the US are double, triple, or more than people can make in their home countries, there will always be more economic migrants than the US system can accommodate. It's a very simple case of supply and demand. No "root causes" strategy is going to c…

Your logic doesn't hold any water. The pay gap has existed for decades. The reason they're coming now is because their countries are falling apart and they have no stability at all in their lives. That is what has been getting worse for them. Money is great but food, shelter, and safety are far more important, even to the most extreme capitalists.
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