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Comment by Thin_icE | Hacker News Reader

It's fine if you guys come to visit, but staying here with your income is making Portugal unlivable for the natives. Unaffordable rents are a huge issue, for example. Just beware that Portuguese folk might not be friendly to foreign folks someday, given that we're being crushed because of you.

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I’m not saying this is a good situation. But your attitude is the attitude nearly everywhere. “Don’t move to Seattle; it’s pricing the locals out!” I even see it outside of classic HCOL areas. People in Missoula, MT, a small city in a mostly rural setting, even share the sentiment of not wanting people from, say, Seattle moving there.

As a young person, if everyone approaches the topic with this attitude, where am I meant to live?

The reality is that there is a huge shortage of places to live that are truly great. This isn’t my fault, as I’ve not been alive for long. It’s not my fault for hoping to live somewhere with a good quality of life. Is an isolationist attitude really going to solve the problem?

> I’m not saying this is a good situation. But your attitude is the attitude nearly everywhere.

You appear to be calling on him to lobby his government to do something.

Couldn't someone say the same of you? Why are you not calling on your government to do something about your local problems? Running away from them won't help your own area.

I fail to see the hypocrisy.

The xenophobic attitude exists everywhere, but the solution is never to blame outside people who are following the incentives.

The solution is to have a government that is properly structuring the incentives of society to get the best outcomes for everyone.

If I were (hypothetically) the authoritarian dictator of of Portugal I probably wouldn’t turn away willing immigrants with money to spend, I would just build more housing and ensure that immigrants were assimilating, living there, and paying taxes.

I think nearly everyone is lobbying their local gov to help, except those that already own a disproportionate amount of real estate

I imagine to myself how absurd it would be to make this same statement about places like New York City or Dublin at this point.

Immigrants with money and/or skills want to live in your country and you want to say no?

It’s almost unfathomable to me. 1/3 of NYC wasn’t even born in this country.

If the system isn’t being run well with the right incentives, sure, that’s a good criticism. The incentive and taxation system could be fixed to ensure ex-pats assimilate and live as locals.

But I think that blanket statement of “don’t come here, we might not be so friendly” is more of a xenophobic response.

$130k per year in just dividends from investments is ridiculous. Normal people are doomed

130k might correspond to just 3.25 million a year with a 4% withdrawal rate. While this is a nice nest egg, it's hardly ridiculous levels of wealth.

4% is often considered a 'safe' rate of withdrawal in retirement.

I am 100% positive that to anyone making $13,920/yr (before taxes!), 3.5 million sitting and paying out 130k (10x the minimum wage per year!) is the definition of obscene.

It never ceases to amaze that someone always has to deflect saying 'it's not so much, look others make even more!'

This comment shows the wealth gap has truly become a gulf where the upper echelons truly cannot wven fathom how those below live.

$3.25m being 'a nice nest egg' and how nonchalantly you describe that might even just emphasize how much normal ppl might be screwed. Maybe more people are better off then I expect though.

I think I have like $10k. If I get very lucky with stable income at my current salary for a long time, I'll be able to save up a bit, but that's relatively high potential.

Have a look at Canada for your future.

TLDR: Canada is about TWICE as expensive as PT.

Mean house prices 2022may (CAD) . Vancouver 1.374 MM . Toronto 1.354 MM

Median HOUSEHOLD income 2022apr: . Vancouver 71.5k CAD . Toronto 70.6k CAD

price/income (HOUSEHOLD!!!) . Van 19.22 . Tor 19.17

For reference PT (couldn't find per city): . Average salary: 12 * 1,517 EUR = 18.2k (2020) . Average home price in PT: 368,441 EUR (2021)

PT price/income (HOUSEHOLD!!!): 368,441/(2.018.2k) = 10.12 * assume 2.0 persons in a household, in the US it's 2.53 but not all of those ppl work: https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-h...

Sources: https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/what-s-the-average-price-of-... https://www.canadafornewbies.com/cost-of-living-in-canada-co... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_... https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/2021-10-23/76-increase-...

the history of humanity is defined by migrations due to resource constraints.

Also wouldn't more rich people coming to the country lead to more spending on goods, services, and real estate, which would benefit indepedent businesses and land owners?

  > Also wouldn't more rich people coming to the country lead to more spending on goods, services, and real estate, which would benefit indepedent businesses and land owners?

i think the better question to ask is, would it be better for the vast majority of people living there?

It can also be looked at from a different perspective: more rich people moving in == more customers for products and services == more jobs and money for locals too.

I think that the birth rate in Portugal is about 1.3 per woman so long term rents and property prices will crash unless you find people to fill all those houses.

True or not, 10,000-foot talk about long-term trends does not do sh*t to help lower-income natives who are being priced out of the market now, and getting desperate for workable places to live.

Maybe the new folks could live rough until that eventual demographic collapse frees up housing for 'em?

Didn't think so.

I've just looked it up: Portugal's population has been decreasing since 2009 and is at about the same level as it was during the mid-80s [1] (facts, same as my previous comment, not emotional perception). Furthermore, current UN projections to the end of the century are rather dire (30% population decline).

So, whatever housing issues people might face they do not seem to be caused by population pressure on housing. Now, in some areas there might be a level of pressure due to second homes (i.e. empty houses with no permanent residents) but that's a bit of a different issue.

[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/PRT/portugal/populatio...

Okay - how about the new folks avoid the trendier and more-urban areas (where local population is increasing, and housing costs skyrocketing), and flock to the smaller & remoter villages in the countryside, where the local population trends are far more negative?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Portugal#Maps

If you expect trendy, hot locations to be affordable for everyone I am afraid you will be disappointed anywhere you go on this planet...

I have an idea. Tie housing construction goals to incoming migration numbers. If 10,000 people move to a city in a year, the city must permit 10,000 new housing starts. No room to meet your city’s goal? Rezone that empty lot that’s zoned for hotel. (I know you have one, every city does).

Permit is a funny word because it means both the piece of paper that allows a developer to build and also “to grant permission” the city has the power to grant or withhold permission to build. And to be perfectly frank the default position is withhold. But we have the power to change that. We can simply demand it of our elected officials.

We should welcome people who want to move in (because economic success depends on it but also because it’s friendly and healthy) but we can also make a plan so they don’t squeeze out the locals. I know Silicon Valley utterly failed to do that. Maybe other places could learn from their abject failure.

It's quite simple. The Portuguese should have more children. The way these demographic trends are discussed as inevitable or intractable is quite funny to me.

Sure, one couple can't do it alone. But a general cultural shift towards pro-natalism, with the support of generous government benefits for parents, just might do the trick.

This is pretty much the story when it comes to foreign home buyers in Toronto and Vancouver, Canada. The argument is that it is pricing everyone out. The average 1 bedroom apartment here in Toronto is now more than $1900, and more than $2000 downtown, so it certainly appears that way.

This plays out with talk of taxing people who own houses they do not live in, if they also do not live in Canada, and therefore not adding to the economy in any way. Nobody but the foreign investors have a problem with that.

In one of our house of commons committee meetings about a bill tabled by a conservative, a Bloc member opposed it on the basis that the U.S might retaliate and piss off boomer snowbirds in their riding. Meanwhile, every Liberal MP voted it down, before a month later implementing their own very similar initiative. So it's not just foreign investors, it's also local profiteering locals who fear change and anticipate having their easy lifestyles cut off. Arguably much more of the latter in some form if you dig into the numbers and urban planning factors.

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