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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

#791

Post by bobthepanda »

zizee wrote: post #790
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…

Yes, I think I was missing your point. I think that your thrust was that smaller average household sizes means more dwellings are required. This is a good point. Shrinking average household sizes could be explained by the shrinking size of the average family, or it could be explained by shifting expectations, by people wanting more. If you take a population where all single people are willing to live in share houses,…

People definitely want to live by themselves even if they cannot afford to, and other things also factor into it.

(Disclaimer, I'm American, so can't speak directly about the Portuguese experience.) But as an example, at this point I don't remember the last time I saw a bunk bed in a non-dorm room setting. This used to be extremely common in low-income housing in particular [1] but as an example I have never, ever seen anyone share a bunk bed with a stranger.

One other effect is location, location, location. In Lisbon in particular, like most European cities there is generally a height limit imposed on most of the city (higher than most places in the US, but not so high that tall buildings are allowed). There is only ten buildings above 80 meters in all of Portugal. If your building is so short, there is only going to be so many ways to subdivide it before you can't split it more to accommodate people.

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[1] - a historical photo of an NYC tenement: https://media.gettyimages.com/id/640482741/photo/bunkrooms-i...

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

#792

Post by ReptileMan »

wombat-man wrote: post #520
SyzygistSix wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard left politics would build housing or pass legislation/policies that encouraged it rather than preserve the wealth of already wealthy property owners through discouraging new building. There is more to left politics or even sane politics than being socially very liberal.

Yeah this isn't rocket science. Saving every old home in the city is not a winning long term solution. We need more homes in these places people want to live.

Or residence permit. That is also a solution no one asks about.

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

#794

Post by lovich »

speakfreely wrote: post #750
lovich wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Undocumented immigrants have access to the court system and police that will arrest them the moment they are found to be undocumented? Even if they ostensibly could use it they would avoid taking the risk

This point is about 20 years out of date and is no longer true in most of the country. Most local police, aside from border states, will not inquire about immigration status when dealing with the general population and many larger cities actually refuse to cooperate with ICE immigration detainers on inmates in their local jails for non-violent offenders.

And yet ICE hangs around those locations and even goes as far as to deport people they had a court order to not deport. That chilling effect would make undocumented immigrants avoid authorities unless you believe they are irrational.

I hate to be that guy but do you have a source on undocumented immigrants availing themselves of the legal system en masse in the US?

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

#795

Post by Tiktaalik »

mistermann wrote: post #780
Tiktaalik wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (overbi…

When you buy a property your citizenship is now recorded. Previously it wasn't. We're now seeing the amount of people without Canadian citizenship has plunged. Before the tax was introduced in some areas of Metro Vancouver the amount of foreign buyers was relatively low, but in some areas the amount of foreigners was in the high teens, approaching 20%.

As the amount of foreign buyers is now explicitly recorded in all real estate purchases, presumably Mr. Ogmundson looked up that data. He wouldn't have had to do anything creative or difficult to come up with this data.

> Is there some reason one should believe that this data, or the government that administers it, is trustworthy?

If you're at the point where you're not trusting data the government collects I dunno man. Keep your tin foil hat on tight bud.

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

#796

Post by qu4z-2 »

ephbit wrote: post #622
TulliusCicero wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of housing is to house people. Historical buildings are nice, but for apartment blocks at least, yes, the priority has to be actually housing people. You can always require historical-looking facades if looks are a concern.

> You can always require historical-looking facades if looks are a concern. I assume you have actually seen the inside of old buildings with your own eyes. In no way is the look & feel of the inside of an old building comparable to a modern one. Yes, old buildings sure have downsides. But pretending nobody looses anything when you only keep historical (or even just historical looking) facades is eyewash. I bet there…

The grandparent does rather seem to want to replace Lisbon with Disneyland.

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

#797

Post by jhugo »

glcheetham wrote: post #670
jhugo wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone else (apart from EU citizens) must buy it. That's a ~440-million-person "apart from".

Yes, but the article is about people who buy property in and emigrate to Portugal through the golden visa program or D7 visa / digital nomads

I read the full article when it was posted, then skimmed it again just now. I don't agree that the article is "about" those people. It describes general issues and mentions the golden visa and D7 visa in passing as possible factors. The issues described can be caused by any inward migration of people with higher spending power. A large part of the EU has higher spending power than Portuguese locals.

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

#798

Post by electriclove »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #608
electriclove wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why's that? The way I look at it, if the purpose is to protect people from needing to move because they can't afford property taxes, restrictions should be narrowly tailored to only apply in that case.

You lost me when you bring up burdensome and household income. Who gets to decide what burdensome is? An owner occupied home should be protected - regardless of how long they have been there or how much money they earn. I do not believe in penalizing this group.

The other groups are all doing business and making money off others and I find that to be more justified for being taxed at market.

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

#799

Post by DrNosferatu »

WalterBright wrote: post #773
DrNosferatu wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Already answered that: corporations are surfing the public perception/impact of supply chain constraints and gas/fuel shortage - and taking advantage of that to raise prices and their respective profit margin. Nope: structural inflation implies clear degradation of profits due to increased operating costs - yet, profits recently increased to record highs.

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

#800

Post by DrNosferatu »

jollybean wrote: post #233
DrNosferatu wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. "banning foreign ownership" would result in Portugalexit at best, perhaps a Zairization of Portugal, or even worse - no thanks. What's wrong with large industrial projects? It's exactly what we need at this moment - in fact, both Portugal and EU-scale. This would cost a small fraction of the Quantitative Easing program from the European Central Bank. (and these Massive Real Estate buildouts must include the lesson…

Large industrial projects are gigantic efforts that involve billions of dollars and years/decades to take effect, massive capital requirements. And risk. "State sector raises salaries, private sector is forced to follow." ... my god man, no, that's not how it works. More like: "Already inefficient state bureaucracies raise salaries, attracting workers from private sector who cannot afford to pay higher wages, requiri…

Large industrial projects brought most of the civilization advances we enjoy today: What were then Concorde, the US Interstate Highway System, LHC, Hoover Dam and the Apollo Program?

But yes, Europe needs a genuine Hamiltonian Moment (share the debt burden) and also a genuine New Deal, instead of the current beggar-thy-neighbor EU order where Germany & friends benefit all.

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