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Comment by knorker | Hacker News Reader

Citizens working without paying into pension, healthcare, or following local employment laws (best example: France, that really cares what employees in their borders do).

You can't simply unilaterally declare that sales tax compensates for everything you do, and think laws don't apply.

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They also do not qualify to receive from most of those services. So are they really a burden?

They would still be using a lot of city/state/country local infrastructures (utilities, roads, parks, emergency medical/police/fire services, local libraries, to name a few), won't they? Costs for these might not be funded by Sales Taxes alone or at all. Not paying one's dues to the City/State/Country of residence in accordance with local laws is not only illegal, but also immoral; it breaks revenue calculations city/state/country makes based on multitude of things (at least in most sane places), and if a nomad is not doing not paying equal share, then the locals are footing the bill for them! Mere income tax on landlord's rental income is not something that will come close at covering all the income gaps city/state would face if one were authorized local worker. As someone else pointed out, these nomads are earning in foreign currency that literally translate to 10x-100x in local currencies, they will simply drive the prices up and soon drive them up enough out of reach of the locals simply because nomads can afford inflated prices.

Roads, parks, and libraries are pocket change compared to pensions and healthcare in any developed nation. In the UK you might be able to skate on the NHS, but someplace like France actually has a free-market healthcare system backstopped by insurance. That leaves pensions, and if you’re not a contributing citizen, you’re not getting paid out of it either.

> drive the prices up

and who is receiving these 10-100x'd prices? The locals who are providing value to the purchaser. Higher selling prices are profits in some locals' pocket/bank account. Why does this side of the equation never get talked about?

Yes I may make the price of a taco go up 20c, but that's 20c more profit for every taco sold at that price. The workers, the business, the real estate value, the whole supply chain can all now command a better price because of my "wasteful" spending relative to the context.

That is assuming the (much debunked) trickle down economics. A 20c increase in taco price is not going mean an increase in the worker's pay (if any at all). Minimum wages haven't increased (much) in the States for over a decade, in spite of record profits for a lot of these minimum wage employers. Sure, the price increase is going to help with wealth accumulation for some, but certainly not all, and the ones left out will feel the sting. Someone on a pension will see a sudden increase in prices, property taxes etc. something she didn't have enough buffer to accommodate. Of course, there are other forces that will do the same too, but it would be foolhardy to ignore the effects of digital nomads on local economy. Better to get ahead of it in terms of public policy before it becomes too big of an issue. Same way governments around the world are struggling to curb inflation, nomads can cause (unexpected) inflation on local economies.

The same can be said about illegal immigrants and temporary visa holders in the United States. An H1B worker pays taxes, pays into social security, etc, but isn't going to get a penny back out of it.

And yet, for some reason, a lot of people really dislike[1] H1Bs...

[1] Last election cycle, I've received a beautiful election pamphlet from a frothing-at-the-mouth state politician-want-to-be who spent most of his 250 words assuring me that H1Bs are robbing the country by mooching all of its services while not paying any taxes. He, uh, got 40% of the vote.

There's a glaring difference between a digital nomad working remotely and someone on an H1B or an illegal immigrant - the digital nomad isn't participating in the local labour market. Increasing the labour supply (which most assume would decrease the price) is the major complaint people who dislike H1Bs/illegal immigrants. A digital nomad isn't competing with the people he lives near for scarce jobs, so that complaint doesn't apply.

> the digital nomad isn't participating in the local labour market.

Yes he is. If the firm's willing to employ someone in Costa Rica, there's no reason it couldn't be employing a local.

This is the typical communist/labour style answer which ignores that todays mobile work force is not just a body in a geography. An employee past about 5 years experience is essentially unique when observed across the many variables (education, years of experience with each specific tool, industry/domain experience, soft skills etc). Just because a capable expat employee happens to presently be located in Costa Rica, doesnt mean a capable Costa Rican can be found. The most valuable people in the workforce are not cogs.

Adding to this, those employees are, themselves, probably working for an American company instead of a local one.

There's no reason it couldn't be employing a local, but there are an awful lot of reasons it wouldn't. No locals applying chief among them. If the company was explicitly not hiring anyone from Costa Rica, sure, that would be one thing. If the best candidate happened to not be Costa Rican, that's something else entirely.

This is again something you can't just unilaterally declare.

Even if you're right that they're not a burden, which I disagree with since they do actually do enjoy services like police, fire department, mass transit subsidies, national defence, roads, clean air enforcement, etc, this is still not something you can unilaterally decide.

The laws are there whether you think they should be or not.

The country's state budget and its rules are not up to the individual to opt in and out of.

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