House price inflation (and along with it rents) has been stoked quite purposefully with measure after measure to increase demand and reduce supply, from Golden Visa in exchange for €500k in “realestate investment” and massive tax incentives for european retirees and digital nomads to move to Portugal (at some point Sweden had to intervene as its own citizens were fleing paying any and all tax via that scheme), to a refusal to seriously limit AirBnB (which in Lisbon took 10% of places out of the housing market and turned them into tourist accomodation) and pretty much no more public housing construction (Portugal has one of the lowest rates of public housing in Europe)
Even when price to income ratios balooned to many times the historical average governments activelly continued to act to increase prices.
Unsurprisingly, most members of parliament in Portugal from the 2 main parties have “realestate investments”.
Meanwhile yearly emigration out of Portugal is massive and now more than 50% of those leaving are young adults with university degrees (aka braindrain), the average age at which people leave their parent’s house is in the mid 30s and birthrates are well below replacement rates (if I remember it correctly the country has the 4th most aged population in the World) because the cost of living is too high for the salaries paid and most of that is housing costs which afects mostly those who don’t own their own place bought at 20-years-ago-prices, i.e. the just graduated and young adults right when they’re having children.
It’s a complete total fuckup which has already stored a decade or two of problems (thanks to braindrain and people being unable to afford having kids) all to make more money for a few politicians and politically connected assholes.
Add the forecasts for Portugal with Global Warming (it will basically become a desert anywhere but on the coast) and I think the country will be steadily collapsing in economic and quality of life terms for the coming decades.
All of this has been pretty visible for at least a decade, but portuguese management culture is complete total crap (as I can tell you from personal experience, here and by comparisson with Northern Europe) and politcians are the most incompetent of an incompetent bunch, so there is zero strategy, zero analysis and everything is an “unforseen problem” when things predictably blow up.
It’s also worth adding that in addition to the portuguese exodus we are also “importing” lots of digital nomads who earn much higher wages and contribute to the housing crisis, along with lots of low skilled workers from other countries to work the jobs the portuguese left when they were unable to afford rents. These workers live in horrible conditions sometimes splitting a single room between several people. When their support networks fail they are forced to turn to crime which has increased greatly in Portugal.
I was always very pro-immigration but that is changing. I’m seeing everyone I grew up with leave. Their place being taken either by rich foreigners who treat you like you’re a servant or desperate very poor ones who would run you over for half a job.
Meanwhile, you barely hear our language in our own capital. And it’s visibly spreading to the other cities. It’s scary. This is colonization with extra steps.
First, please don’t mix “digital nomads” with the rest: they’re a tiny number (in total, ever, adding up to maybe less that 6 months of degree-holder emigration from Portugal) and, worst, produce all the wealth from their work abroad and pay 1/4 the tax of the locals, so each of them isn’t economically worth a single local highschool dropout, much less the economic value of the kind of degree holders leaving the country.
The “rest” are even more interesting: basically Portugal is importing people way less qualified that the average portuguese of working age (worse so versus those leaving) and it’s being very overtly done to put pressure on salaries in areas like Tourism (which is basically the chosen “silver bullet” to go around all the problems in the Portuguese Economy: I refer you back to my point about just ridiculously bad portuguese management and political culture is) as well as to supposedly make up for the “population aging” (the very thing that was caused and is being made way worse by both low salaries and the policies to inflate house prices).
Pushing out well trained people capable of working in high-value industries and bringing in people with mainly primary school education or less isn’t a strategy for improving the country (or in fact “strategical” in any sense of the word, unless there’s some kind of strategy to empoverish the country).
Open door immigration is 100% to help politically well-connected Tourism Industry fatcats find workers for their companies whilst paying shit salaries (it’s funny how they go on TV saying that they “can’t find people to work and need more immigration” whilst refusing to, you know, pay better to attract the workers they need) and exploitative Agro operations growing produce for export who want to pay de facto per-hour even less that the ridiculously low portuguese minimum wage, to try to plug the very problem of “too many old people not enough workers to pay their pensions” that’s being caused by continuous political choices to pump up house price inflation for personal profit of those very same politicians and their mates and to increase sheer human numbers for those politically connected companies which are in an economic position to take a cut of the entire GDP of the country (almost invariably holding monopoly or cartel positions due to political decisions) and who couldn’t care less if GDP falls per-capita as long as the total number goes up.
The problem is not immigration per-se, it’s how it’s being done and why (especially if we follow the chain back to the “why of the why of the why” as it ultimatelly boils down to making certain politicians and their mates very rich by sacrificing the future of the country and everybody born in it).
Shit, the only good big thing in present day Portugal which is not being destroyed (even the investment in people in the form of Education, maybe the only intelligent growth strategy in this country, ever, is being corroded and destroyed) is the right to an EU Passport of everybody born here.
The problem is not politicians and politically connected assholes. You had a liberalization of the renting market done by the previous right-wing government, coupled with the appearance of Airbnb and low interest rates for a decade. This led to a situation where it was cheap (low interest rates) to invest in real estate, place your new apartment on AirBnb and easily recover the investment. Old landlords caught up to this and many preferred to evict tenants or increase the value asked to close to what they would get if they rented the apartment via Airbnb. And there was still the many years of golden visas for foreign investors, also implemented by the previous right-wing government. The left-wing government never did anything to change this, because all this real estate investment brought GDP growth to Portugal and when they proposed some semi-serious changes you had everyone benefiting from this status quo screeching that Portugal was becoming Venezuela.
But it’s now got to a point where the prices are unsustainable to almost everyone and as you said a lot of people are excluded from being able to buy a house. And the situation won’t improve in the next couple of years because interest rates probably will take a while to go down. As for the brain drain, that’s an old historical problem. Heck, I had to emigrate last year and I am almost 40. The lack of stable work contracts, the non-existent salary growth from both the public and private sector already made thinking about settling down and having kids hard. These housing prices are just the final blow to the situation.
First, I disagree that a government which constantly harps about doing what’s good for business, unconditionally I might add (not “good for business which are good for people”, just good for any businesses), cuts down on Education and Healthcare citing lack of money whilst refusing to, for example, enforce the legislation on the taxing some asset (dams) sales by the private energy company of the country (which, by the way, was public, sold for a song and is riddled with politicians from the 2 main parties) and which has just saved a private airline with €3 billion of taxpayer’s money with the full intention of privatising it next year, is left of center.
Whatever leftwingery they had back in the 80s has long left the stage and policywise they’re now doing and defending what the mainstream rightwing party used to: less taxing of companies, less public spending and privatisations, only they added elements like the whole saving of private companies with public money to sell them back to the private (almost certainly for less than the public money put in them) ASAP or the selective closing of eyes to tax evasion (not avoidance, evasion: the illegal kind) as long as it was done by well connected companies, which in the old days not even the mainstream Right did.
Both parties of the power duopoly in Portugal do the same because as individuals their members and leadership are the same kind of people, as plenty of court cases have demonstrated and in fact, the supposed “leftwing” one seems to be the worst one, at least at government levels (though for the other one, all you have to remember is how in Germany a German Company was convicted for corrupting the Portuguese Government for a submarine sale, whilst in Portugal … *crickets*).
We are in the shithole we are because the people in the 2 parties which have had a near duopoly of power in the country since 74 have massivelly gained from the actions that put us in this, all the while blaming the “other side” as if de facto their policies differed when it came to manage the country for their own personal upside maximization and screw the rest.
They play politics like a one-two play in football, passing the ball back and forth whilst advancing to score against everybody else, members of the same team, and only those who look at nothing else but the ball go around blaming one side, then the other, then the first side, then the other and so on.
To address your points. 1 - They did not cut down on Education and Healthcare. The budgets for healthcare have consistently increased during their legislatures. 2 - They did not save a private airline. TAP had 50% ownership from the State before being rescued. It had private management, but the state had as much ownership as private stockholders and workers together. Also, TAP was nationalized so now it is 100% from the state. Should they privatize it or not? That’s a discussion for other pints. 3 - As for the dams sales, the Secretary of State ordered the Tributary Authority to collect the money from those sales.
Are they as left wing as they should be? No they’re not. But they are not the worst one by far. If you don’t remember or were old enough the last PSD/CDS government or Cavaco’s governments I can assure they were a lot worse. And there are stark differences between how the governments of each party have acted with different leaders. Costa’s PS is starkly different (and less corrupt) than Sócrates’s PS. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t scandals (there are), but the scale of corruption is much smaller. Compared with the last PSD/CDS government which privatized the CTT, the freight train portion of CP (CP carga), gave a monopoly to Vinci in the management of airports in Portugal, wanted to privatize the public transport of Lisbon, and TAP among many other issues the difference is stark. You should probably try to distinguish the shades of gray instead of seeing dark everywhere.
You seem to have forgotten to discount Inflation from that budget “increase” - a common oversight for people not from Finance or Economics leveraged by neoliberal politicians, again and again to swindle them. I lived in the UK for a decade and there was no trick more beloved by the hard-right Tory politicians there than to claim “budget” increases which were actually falls in real terms and when I came back to Portugal I found out the only thing the portuguese politicians had copied from there while I was out was the marketing-speak filled with half-truths and hypocrisy.
A company controlled by the private is private. Don’t get me started on the massive conflict of interest and incredible financial stupidity of the State having a shareholding in a private company which it does not control - you buy minority shares for investment purposes and you sell them if the company is going down the drain, not this shit of being the one holding 100% of the losses. Mind you, you could in all fairness blame the last ones for it. However the already assertivelly voiced (with a timeframe and everything) want to privatise of the company - which you dismissed as a “different discussion” - is exactly the pure neoliberal rightwing action incompatible with being leftwing for a governing party which, not a year ago, was harping all about the company being of “national interest” to justify putting half-an-Education-budget worth of money into it - either TAP is to serve the nation’s “interests” (i.e. it serves a broader strategy for the good of Portugal), in which case it stays in 100% national ownership and operates routes which are strategically important but might loose money (i.e. it’s not managed for profit but for national objectives, same as the NHS and Education) or it’s fully private in which case it’s subject to the full “constructive destruction” element of the Free Market, no State shares to be used as excuse for yet-another-bailout in a few years’ time and if it goes bankrupt, well, if the market need is there some other company will take its place.
Continuing to willfully privatise large state companies, ASAP even, even if it’s fewer companies they’re privatising that the pure Rightwing party did, is not being Leftwing, it’s being Rightwing, possibly not even less than the others because these ones have fewer companies they can privatise than the last guys, so privatising less when there is less to privatise doesn’t mean less political will to do it (i.e. less of that ideology), it means less opportunity to do so.
I am absolutelly more than old enough to remember not just Cavaco’s Government (his second absolute majority was when the wave of corruption in politics in Portugal really started post-Revolution) and even that one did not create the kind of problems that have been created since Socrates, through the last guys (same shit) and which this ones kept on stoking with gusto: we never, ever, EVER had both medical doctors and teachers striking, a housing crisis like this (and in the closest we had to this, houses were way cheaper and public housing building was way more than now), highly educated young people leaving in droves and a massivelly aged population with no prospects of improving, all while interest rates just went up about 3x and people have never been this indebted (having been in Finance - Lehman Brothers, no less - through the 2008 crash, I expect an almighty “kaboom” soon enough as consumers run out of financial margin to scrap up the extra money to service debt which is now way more expensive to service than some months ago: expects lots of distressed realestate sales soon enough).
If crisis really shows the true managerial mettle of somebody, then these guys wouldn’t be capable of successfully selling water in the desert. Mind you, I don’t think there is a single political party in Portugal lead by people with any managerial competence at all, probably the result of how the whole place operates on cronyism (hence one of the lowest levels of productivity in Europe) and has a really bad management culture overall.
You need to have the kind of selective blindless only those who are “fans” of a team in politics in the same spirit they’re fans of a football team are capable of, to think it’s just the one buttcheek (the one you’re not a fan of) of the same shitty arse which is the cronyism and corruption-riddled duopolly of power in Portugal to blame for were we are now.
I mean, to try and compare Cavaco’s curruption against Socrate’s (and the current guys: after all, in Portugal it always takes at least a decade for the full extent of the rot in government to come out, so the stuff already out just this year is a pretty good indication of the gigantic extent of the whole thing, which will eventually come to light as time goes by) is like measuring turds to see which one is longest: surely you must realise they’re both pure shit?!
Portuguese here. The rental market in Portugal is completely separated from the reality of portuguese wages. As an example, minimum wage is 750€/month per 14 months. Meaning 875€/month if you count 12 months.
Rents in Lisbon for a bedroom usually start around 500€. And the situation in the other cities with somewhat decent jobs is getting as bad as in Lisbon.
That is not too far off what it is like in most cities in the U.S, believe it or not.
Where I am, minimum wage is $12. At 40 hrs a week this is $24,000 before tax. Roughly $16,000 after tax.
That’s ~$1333.33 per month in earnings.
2023 fair market rent in my state for a 1br is $947, but in reality, the units that are available are closer to double that price. I’d say most 1br units are $1300 - $1700 in my area.
Our prices for a one bedroom apartment, depending on location, can also go that high, but I think you might be conflating what “a bedroom” means here. It’s 500€ for a bedroom in an apartment, not the whole one bedroom apartment.
When I moved back to Portugal about 4 years ago, I actually pondered on going to Germany instead, and actually went and lived in Berlin for a while and investigated and compared costs of living.
Back then rents were already higher in Lisbon than Berlin (whilst salaries in the former are less than 1/3 those in the latter!!!) and the only thing that made living in Lisbon cheaper was that Portugal has a National Health Service (free to use) whilst residence in Germany means mandatory Health Insurance which for me - who have my own company - meant an extra €300+ a month in costs.
In the last 4 years housing costs in Lisbon went up by almost 50% and in Berlin it was 10% or so (if I remember correctly), so now it’s actually significantly cheaper to live in Berlin, which is a way better place than present day Lisbon to live in pretty much every way but Weather.
I’m actually living in a small city about 200km from Lisbon were I pay less than €400 a month for a one bedroom in rent, so it’s not bad for me, but that’s because I’m not having to live on the average portuguese income and don’t have to raise a family.
Living in Lisbon would be crazy and I would be better of moving to a more cosmopolitan place like Berlin (especially because, having lived in Amsterdam, London and Berlin, for me Lisbon just feels like a pretty provincial city, hilariously filled with people who don’t know best and by comparing themselves with the countryside think they’re sophisticated and forward thinking).
You should see Vancouver bc housing prices. 1 bedroom apartments start at like $1.5 million, average income is like $50k.
Thanks for letting me know that things can always get worse. lol
I think it’s becoming like that pretty much everywhere in the western world
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minimum wage is 750€/month per 14 months. Meaning 875€/month if you count 12 months.
Say what?
In Portugal, we receive 14 months of salary. The normal 12 months and 1 month salary as vacation subsidy, and another as Christmas subsidy.
$947 is about what a room in an apartment costs.
In a place where people make 1100 or so.
Back when I played Quake, this strategy “to attract foreign money” was called “Free For All”. My favourite gun was the rocket launcher, because I’d fire rockets and just watch them run and then fly into them.
It’s the fundament of capitalism: Have the wealthy oppress the poor and keep them on their knees, forever.
Don’t like being a wage slave? Well at least you can go to Portugal and have cheap rent! Those suckers have it real bad…
With capitalism, it’s always possible to find someone to shit on.
Back when I palyed Quake, this strategy “to attract foreign money” had nothing to do with “Free for All” mode, it’s more akin to “Capture the Flag” and using the grappling hook to camp from a hidden spot and just rocketing the flag carrier every time they picked it up.
Blaming a particular system of economics for power abuse is almost just lazy propaganda to push a narrative, any and every system in place will be abused by people who are unscrupulous, greedy, and/or corrupt sociopaths.
Capitalism is equally as corruptible as all the rest.
Corruption and ethics are the underlying concerns, not top ended ideals of politics that really only provide obfuscation of actual ‘people’ level problems beyond rhetoric.
Private ownership is the cause of the corruption.
If the people running the business are also the workers, they’re not going to be anywhere near as likely to steal from themselves as a whole.
So yes, the system matters very fucking much and capitalism is inherently biased towards rewarding selfish behaviour.
Power, be it elected political or imagined religious or violent oppression or capital wealth or community leadership, is the cause of corruption.
Even the workers in highly regulated/managed scenarios not beholden to the modern corruption affecting capitalism still results in power silos that are abused. Ignoring a simple truth like that results in a narrative of political rhetoric rather than an objective discussion that will yield effective ideas that envision long term results.
“Public” ownership does not fix corruption, it just migrates the corruption away from private owners into the now directly empowered gatekeepers in various levels of the business and in the government that controls the organization.
I’m arguing beyond the pigeon hole of just pointing to capitalism as the cause of corruption, there’s always corruption.
Looking for a balanced equation built around preserving freedom, enforcing a universal standard of ethics, and negating an opportunity need for corruption that allows the rewarding of selfish behavior is far more useful than just yelling into the sky about capitalism.
What are some implementable solutions to combat corruption while preserving individuals’ freedoms?
There are definitely some systems that encourage more greed than others.
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