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Comment by kvgr | Hacker News Reader

The city suffers from its countrys failure. Didn’t build proper economy, people earn low wages. Som now if tourists wave with money, people are happy to take their cash. Its not a success but a failure of south european economies that don’t understand how money is made except from tourism.

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I wouldn't conflate a biased touristy essay with what is actually going on in the economy. I live in Lisbon and visit Porto semi-regularly (less these days, but I travel to other parts of the country 2-3 times a year) and I don't see anything like what was narrated about Chiado and Baixa in the article.

FYI, I work in tech. And I consult in tech as well, and there are successive waves of tech startups in the country. Some amazing unicorn flops (and some of them fed off the WebSummit until they burst), but enough to believe that the country can move away from wineries, shoe manufacturing and hospitality if it puts its mind to it.

Right now, tech wages are high enough that many companies look elsewhere for cheap labor (typically towards the former eastern block), but only yesterday I had a chat with a CEO looking to put their R&D centre here because there is some very highly skilled labor here--and he wasn't talking about expats.

That is great, and I hope it will work out. But IT only will not save country. We will see disparity between tech and rest and people will be angry again for tech in stead of tourists.

I dont get the down vote. Portugal and Spain are going to be taken over by gdp/person by Czech republic and Poland. Very poor countries in 90s. Spain has amazing weather, could be europe tech capital if they only could get their taxes and labor laws in order. Spanish developers earn less money than Czech ones… and it will onlyget worse for them.

>Portugal and Spain are going to be taken over by gdp/person by Czech republic and Poland. Very poor countries in 90s.

The Eastern block countries had their little economic miracle by having their monopoly board reset thanks to the fall of the USSR and all the communist regimes in Europe which caused insane levels of poverty in the 90s, especially amongst the old age workers, before things could get better.

Spain and Portugal and any other EU country can't and don't want to have such a hard reset with a decade of poverty and bankruptcies, since every country is now about building wealth, not destroying it, all about maintaining the status quo and the generational wealth. You'll see, it will be the same in Czechia in ~30 years when the current gen of well-off young workers retires and the economic miracle growth slows down and start shafting the younger generations who will face high property prices and little job prospects like Spain and Portugal today, and you'll probably also vote to keep your wealth instead of going through another reset like in the 90s'.

> Spain has amazing weather, could be europe tech capital if they only could get their taxes and labor laws in order.

That amazing weather is their own "Dutch disease" meaning the economy is far too dependent on tourism and getting wealthy people from abroad to buy properties there, not invest in creating new jobs.

Also, personally I don't find Spanish weather too amazing. Summers are far too hot outside the beachfront areas to be pleasant to live there. Not everyone loves scorching hot sunt and 35+ Celsius outside for months needing to seek shelter at indoor AC.

Or perhaps that won't happen in those countries because they will continue to grow and develop their industry instead of languishing.

It is already kind of happening, properties are through the roof in Czech republic. Mainly big cities, wages relatively low. Europe overtaxes low and middle income people. Wants them to foot the bill for the retirees. No realistic retirement reforms in sight. It will only get worse until the countries collapse like Greece and need to reinvent themselves. It will be slow and then sudden. And people will lok everywhere else, than their own voting actions to find the culprit. No one will tell them, that they voted wrong for 40 years and now they need to deal with it.

I can take 2 months of hot weather, if that means I don't have to deal with 6 months of cold, clouds and darkness at 4pm in winter.

>if that means I don't have to deal with 6 months of cold, clouds and darkness at 4pm in winter

Where do you live that winter is 6 months?

There are a lot of places where November to April can see snow, though the darkness aspect is more like 3 months.

How is money made?

Products and services. Presumably they were alluding to things like software, electronics, manufacturing, consulting, banking, shipping, and other such things which drive the more advanced economies. An economy built almost exclusively on restaurants and hospitality is doomed to the lower tiers of success.

I don't understand the downvotes here either. This is a solid take, we like to talk about it as culture loss but the truth is that cities and regions are constantly changing. With only tourism of course prices and experiences are going to be crafted for tourists.

World is changing too fast, Memberberries are strong. I get it that tuk tuks in Lisbon are horrible thinkg. There is lot of bad things happening with tourism. Built if you don't give people other opportunities to make money, they will choose easy ones, that are not the best. And I don't think rich people are going to lisbon, its the tastless mass that will chose the kitsch touristy stuff. When I go to spain or portugal, I try to find the most authentic restaurants.

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