Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

Surprised nobody saw gentrification and rising CoL coming when they invited crypto asset holders and workers who earn several times more than the locals while contributing much less in taxes.

Seems like a move that only benefited the Portuguese landlords and real estate owners at the expense of the rest of the population.

If I was a Portuguese citizen I'd be pissed at such a decision that prioritizes wealthy foreign crypto and tech bros over its own citizens and make sure to vote those politicians out.

Portugal is not Dubai. It can't afford to be a tax heaven with government revenue funded by oil instead of taxes. A country like Portugal should seek to attract businesses and investors who create jobs and pay taxes there, not attract wealth hoarders who dodge taxes and who's only contribution to the local economy is making landlords richer and buying cocktails on the beach.

>The center-right Moedas, for his part, said that while clarity on crypto and taxes is welcome, “when you start taxing innovation too soon, you can kill innovation. And so I'm not aligned with the government on this.”

Oh please, taxing crypto assets is not taxing innovation. WTF are you talking about? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I read stuff like this.

I live in a former socialist country that somehow managed to build A LOT of housing in the 70s and 80s, with shitty equipment, but somehow cannot build anything in the last few decades. And not just the government building stuff... normal people could buy a plot of land, get their friends to help, dig a hole and start building... a small loan for bricks and cement, and the basement + a concrete slab was built... then a month or two went buy, and what was left from the paychecks went for a pallet of bricks plus a few bags of cement, and half a floor was made. Repeat for a few years and a house was there... no insulation or a facade, but people could live inside and deal with that later. Papers and permits? As long as you built within some basic rules (far away from the property line and not a too unusual shape), you could basically ignore them, and deal with the "legalization" later. Now you're not allowed to build basically anywhere, papers cost more than the whole material+work did back then, and you're not allowed to do anything by yourself and your friends are not allowed to help anymore. So yeah... good luck.

Just ask the neighbours, who normally don't care about long-term renters and complain a lot about ever-changing tourists and all the issues that brings (from safety to loud parties).

You cannot have a factory in the middle of a residential zone, why can you have (what is effectively a single room) hotel?

"Just build more houses" is not something that scales infinitely. Long commute distances and geography tends to get in the way with stuff like hills, mountains, rivers, lakes, oceans, etc. while demand from foreigners and tourists will stay virtually infinite.

At which point do you stop building and say your city can't house more people without ruining the character that makes it a desirable city in the first place?

Should we level Lisbon's 2-4 story housing and turn it into a dystopian city with hundred story megablock towers like in Judge Dredd, just so that everyone in the world who wants to move to Lisbon has a place to live there? But then people won't want to live there anymore if Lisbon is just megablocks.