Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

771–780 of 817 posts

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

#771

Post by ttymck »

Panzer04 wrote: post #470
ttymck wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it doesn't mean housing was laughably affordable and now isn't. I appreciate your approach, and I hadn't considered this perspective, but it still rings hollow to me: Can I purchase 1/2.6 of a house? Just because the unit cost of housing has gotten cheaper doesn't mean _owning a home_ is more affordable. Sure, I'll accept larger homes are being built at cheaper unit-cost. But those homes are still being snatched up…

You can - it's called buying a smaller house? The problem is land has gotten expensive, not so much construction. Also, regulations and the like generally raise the bar for what is considered an acceptable house, which also contributes to rising prices (eg. things like mandatory minimum parking, housing amenities, etc. Some places want to ban apartments smaller than a particular size because they are "expensive dog-b…

Not to be glib, but did you read the rest of my reply?

Your third paragraph starts to align with what I said. But "buy a smaller house" is not a helpful response to "there are no small houses for sale".

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

#772

Post by WalterBright »

unmole wrote: post #552
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation isn’t terribly bad in countries that didn’t print wild amounts of money. Like in India, inflation is almost back in control, and we didn’t print much money. Same in China. I haven’t run the numbers but if you were to chart inflation vs the money printing done by an economy, you’d likely find a positive correlation.

If inflation is a purely monetary phenomenon caused by printing money , why do Telangana and Sikkim experience higher inflation than the national average? > I haven’t run the numbers but if you were to chart inflation vs the money printing done by an economy, you’d likely find a positive correlation. As a member of the Eurozone, Estonia can't print money . That didn't stop it from inflation hitting 23%. It's almost a…

There's something else going on in Estonia, or arbitrage would be happening (importing cheaper stuff from the eurozone).

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

#773

Post by WalterBright »

DrNosferatu wrote: post #709
WalterBright wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If gouging worked, why wouldn't corporations have been doing it all along?

Besides, if inflation is 10%, profits would have to rise 10% just to stay even.

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

#774

Post by WalterBright »

dalyons wrote: post #571
WalterBright wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US before 1914.

Ah yes let’s use data from 100+ years ago from a nearly pre-industrial economy as the basis for what we should do today

The US economy industrialized in the 19th century. 1700-1800 would be pre-industrial.

Besides, America did try fiat money with the colonial government, and again in the Civil War. Particularly in the Confederacy.

Each of those instances suffered from galloping inflation.

Interestingly, in each of the two gold rushes, the US had inflation due to the influx of gold.

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

#775

Post by WalterBright »

confidantlake wrote: post #723
WalterBright wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US before 1914.

That would be had. I was asking have.

No current country has been able to resist the lure of printing free money. They are also unified in denying that such printing causes inflation.

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

#776

Post by WalterBright »

andrekandre wrote: post #578
WalterBright wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creating trillions of dollars with the stroke of a pen and then showering that onto the economy. It's Supply&Demand at work. Create lots of money (add Supply) and the value of it goes down (Inflation). The same thing happens to the price of refrigerators if 10 million gets dumped on the market. The price for a refrigerator goes down.

from what i understand, when the fed does stimulus, they have to take out a loan/bond so as long as the "value" is canceled out by the loaned "debt" im not sure why its going to create inflation?

Because there is nothing backing it. Normal bank loans are not inflationary because collateral must be supplied to back it up. No collateral, no loan.

For example, if you take out a mortgage, your house is collateral.

The government just issues more debt to pay off the old debt.

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

#777

Post by dionidium »

pydry wrote: post #725
dionidium wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit of a shell game. What you describe is just another way to say that demand has increased. And your reframing doesn’t help us much, because there’s nothing in the short term you’re going to do to drastically change the global inequality landscape. So if we accept your explanation we’re actually worse off than where we started.

I reframed it in such a way to make it abundantly clear that the problem can be solved at any point with the judicious application of new taxes. That guy with $11 just needs to lose most of it or not be able to spend it and then there is no more apples shortage "due to high demand". Portugal cant tax an overly rich canadian living in canada but they can absolutely cut the bottom out of the portuguese-property-market-…

Land value tax solves this (as they say).

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

#778

Post by merry_flame »

pipodeclown wrote: post #665
screye wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airbnb and uber for all their benefits have taken away a lot of urban planning capabilities of local govts. At the same time, they expose the general unwillingness of local govts to accomodate the need of the population or those who bring in economic value (tourists, transplants). If you are becoming a tourist hub, then create an off-town tourist area and add a convenient transit line/people mover to the central part…

Sure, but why on earth would any tourist choose to stay at some off site tourist hub? The whole point of visiting a historic city like say Lisbon, is that you get the stay in an historic city, not some modern off site tourist hub where you get to take a crammed full tourist bus to the centre.. Or would you propose strict accompanying zoning laws with strict enforcement? I think that would meet stiff resistance from p…

I sympathize with your first point, but I believe only around 10% of tourists visiting Venice sleep there. Off-site tourist hubs are a real thing…

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

#780

Post by mistermann »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #540
mistermann wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

a) What is the precise meaning of "foreigners" in this context? How is it measured? When the identity is hidden behind a numbered company, does our expert source disclose that?

b) If someone who has gained citizenship then accepts a wire transfer of $10M+ (from someone who is not a citizen) and then proceeds to buy 10 houses (overbidding for each), is that "foreign" involvement?

c) By what methodology were these numbers compiled, from which data sources, and can people examine these processes with no restrictions?

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

"Was" (to be within reality) "exact" and "based on..." is an interesting claim from an epistemological perspective. Is Mr. Ogmundson, chief economist with the B.C. Real Estate Association, guaranteed to be a trustworthy source of information?

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

Is there some reason one should believe that this data, or the government that administers it, is trustworthy? (There is a fairly substantial amount of historic stories to believe that they are not.)

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

There is what is claimed has changed, and what has actually changed. Often, the difference is impossible to resolve - it is also often difficult to realize that a difference between the two is even possible.

Post reply on HN