[thiagoperes]

What I see in comment sections of articles like this is a perfect example of why EU is set to lose in the coming decades: mindset.

I’d say most Americans understand the value of highly skilled migration. It’s how America stays #1, it’s how they have the best companies, and bring the most value to their nation.

Meanwhile in EU, any move to attract talent is seen as net-negative, unfair and detrimental to the culture and livability. Their negativity is a self fulfilling prophecy, but it will be a very costly and hard pill to swallow, just like the UK is seeing after Brexit.

[FrenchDevRemote]

It's a complex issue. When so many "skilled workers" move to your neighborhood that your rent doubles and that you can't afford to do grocery shopping in your neighborhood, it makes sense to be angry.

The US top 1% are number 1, the US bottom 10% have it worse than most or even almost all people from western Europe.

[asukumar]

You are correct that most of Western Europe is ahead at the first decile, but you are incorrect to imply that it’s at the top 1% that the advantage goes away. In fact, the US meets the richest EU countries at the 50th percentile (meaning the median person is equally better off) and at the 90th percentile, you are much much better off in the US - it’s not comparable. The fact is, for everyone middle class (not by a local definition of middle class - literally middle) or above, the US will have you significantly better off. https://www.ft.com/content/ef265420-45e8-497b-b308-c951baa68...

[FredPret]

Your linked article looks at PPP income.

Here are two that compare wealth, showing the US 50th percentilers doing significantly better than European ones. US median wealth according to this is $162k: https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/economic_b....

And it's hard to get this data for Europe but looking at the "Median" column for this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_distribution_in_Europe it looks like the US middle class would slot into fourth place, just below Denmark which is at 165k, and far ahead of say, Germany, which is at 65k.

[dathinab]

Through the argument here is more about living standards then how "well of" someone is from a materialistic POV.

Like one thing I realized is that it seems that you need to earn way more in the US to have a similar level of living quality/standard compared to the EU. As far as I can tell I probably would need to earn ~50% more to have the same quality of live level in the US compared to where I live now. Through it probably depends a lot on where you are in the US/EU.

[ryandrake]

Isn't the USA middle class shrinking though? We're quickly bifurcating into a "really better off" group and a "really worse off" group, with little in the middle.

[satvikpendem]

Supply. The answer is and has always been to build more housing. NIMBYs around the world are the primary force stopping that from happening, that is why there are housing crises everywhere in the world. Contrast that with somewhere like Singapore where government housing is pretty good and plentiful in supply, they do not have such issues.

[dathinab]

> Supply. The answer is and has always been to build more housing.

IMHO not really

The supply of affordable housing in the place where it's needed often can not be increased due to physical limitations and building luxury flats being more profitable. And the "demand" is often not driven by people living there, but investment stuff.

I.e. if we purely look at "supply of housing" (ignoring price) and "demand of housing" (to live in) there isn't a problem at all in most cases.

Through I agree with NIMBY making it worse, especially given that it's often not even their backyard. But the neighborhood of properties/land bought as investments and them blocking things for investment reasons.

Through the main reason is IMHO still housing being used roughly "like stocks".

[rangestransform]

Luxury flats absorb demand that would otherwise outcompete locals for the existing housing

Unless you make all existing housing so shitty that local professionals would turn their nose up at it, in which case you have bigger problems

Not building luxury housing at all would only be a solution with domestic mobility restrictions like China

[dathinab]

> locals for the existing housing

no it doesn't

that would only happen if the demand is based on people who want to move there

but if it is based on interest/dynamics more similar to stock markets like we currently have then there isn't a physical limit on (artificial) demand as such local housing gets bought up first (to potentially be upgraded to luxury flats) and then they still build more luxury flats

[satvikpendem]

It's been statistically shown that any type of housing reduces market pressures simply because it is more supply in the market and over time that makes a difference.

[AmVess]

NIMBY's and clueless, greedy politicians.

Here, the county owns some land that it is going to put 100 houses on. They are going to put houses that cost 3x more than the locals can afford. Why? More money from property tax, and to hell with the average person.

The knock on effect is that regular houses will become more expensive, and in 10 years, only the top 10% of earners will be able to live here.

[thiagoperes]

The downstream issues are not related to immigration, otherwise house prices would have fallen in Lisbon.

Look at examples such as Singapore, Dubai and many others that adopted an entrepreneurial attitude and figured out the infrastructure to support that growth.

When will they blame when the immigrants don’t come but the problems remain?

[JetSpiegel]

Yes, Dubai figured their infrastructure so well, their airport was closed for days when it rained.

Singapure is a dictatorship fuled by Chinese money, should a NATO country be supported by them? Will the US invade if we sold them the abandoned American base in the Azores?

[dathinab]

more relevant is if your country can capitalize on the workers

like if a lot of skilled workers move over but

- they (mostly/majorly) don't settle, just stay for a few years

- they don't create companies in your country

- they don't work for companies in your country

- the companies they work with might directly compete with your local companies and now with having local representatives can do so better

Then if the tax breaks are worth it is solely a question of taxes they pay + money they spent vs. implicit cost of disruption they cause. Which might not be always worth it.

On the other hand the US doesn't focus on attracting digital nomads, they focus on their biggest/best companies attracting intelligence for themself. Which has a high chance of profiting the US especially given that they also tend to attract young talent which then build their business network in the US making it quite likely that they if they found a company they do so in the US.

[JumpCrisscross]

> the US bottom 10% have it worse than most or even almost all people from western Europe

America’s bottom 10% are absolutely comparable to Europe’s bottom 10% when one considers actual access to services and material standards of living. (I’m assuming you mean EU’s, not Europe’s, because as terrible as being homeless in America may be, it sure beats being bombed.)

[FrenchDevRemote]

I said western Europe, not Europe, +/- all of western Europe is EU expect the UK and Switzerland.

It's not comparable, the benefits you get in western Europe are 10x better than what you get anywhere in the USA.

[JumpCrisscross]

> said western Europe, not Europe

My bad.

> benefits you get in western Europe are 10x better than what you get anywhere in the USA

Benefits you’re entitled to. France, for instance, has put a lot of services behind an internet portal. Add to that the stigma of utilising them in many villages and you get low utilisation rates.

I would imagine the poor in Europe are a bit better off. (If we limit ourselves to the coastal states, the answer may be surprising.)

[moltar]

I highly doubt it’s foreigners to be honest.

I live in a plain Portuguese neighborhood of Porto. There are virtually no foreigners. At least I never see any when walking around or going to a grocery store. I maybe see one a day out of 100s of Portuguese people.

Yet my local Portuguese landlord keeps jacking my rent every year by a huge margin way exceeding the government norms.

Who forces them to do that?

They don’t even live in the city. They live outside in the Douro valley.

It’s just pure greed.

It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. They see average values went up and they adjust accordingly.

And why did the values all of a sudden go up on my neighbourhood with no foreigners?

[kranke155]

The average rental in Porto has been exploding upwards due to the influx of airbnbnization and foreign income flooding the real estate market.

What you are describing is a second order effect.

[endisneigh]

Why would you compare bottom US to only Western Europe? Also, do you have a source on your claim? I’m skeptical that the US bottom 10% have it worse than “most or even almost all people from Western Europe”

[piker]

Do you have a metric to support that theory? It’s good for the European story for that to be true, but hard to quantify.

[FrenchDevRemote]

I don't have the exact metrics, but free healthcare, free education, and enough benefits to not be homeless and hungry seems like more than what poor Americans get.

[lotsoweiners]

Poor Americans have essentially free healthcare. It is called Medicaid.

https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/eligibility/index.html

Over 82,000,000 people are enrolled in Medicaid.

https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/program-information/medica...

America has lots of programs that assist poor and/or disabled people: SNAP, Unemployment, VA, SSI, SSDI, TANF, Section 8, Childcare Assistance etc. Some people don’t want to bother to apply/jump through hoops to get them but they exist.

[diggan]

> It’s how America stays #1, it’s how they have the best companies, and bring the most value to their nation.

As always, it's relative. Granted, I'm one of these loser EU residents who has a different mindset, that chasing #1 position in terms of GDP generated per resident isn't the be all end all. Instead, people's happiness is on the top of my mind, and taking care of as many people as possible.

And with that mindset, the US is very far from the top, and there are so many countries that are better for "living", but maybe not the best if your entire life revolves around finding the best place for "working".

We all have different focuses in life, and that's OK. But to say that some places are "better" on a absolute scale feels like a mindtrap if anything.

[alephnerd]

> I'm one of these loser EU residents who has a different mindset, that chasing #1 position in terms of GDP generated per resident isn't the be all end all. Instead, people's happiness is on the top of my mind, and taking care of as many people as possible.

It's not an all or nothing dichotomy.

Social services get dramatically more expensive if you don't have as robust a local economy. All governments borrow money and need to service debts in order to pay for their social safety net, and that's much more expensive now due to higher interest rates and economic convergence.

And it's not like Eastern European EU member states are poor chumps anymore - they're fairly business friendly and some like Czechia have already caught up to Western European (Italy/France) level living standards.

This means you can't play wage arbitrage anymore by getting an underpaid janitor or nurse from Croatia or Poland to work at your local hospital like you could 10 years ago.

[rr808]

No I think most countries value high skilled migrants. In most countries its the only way you can migrate. The difference is whether they should get tax breaks.

In fact the USA is probably the hardest country in the world to work as a digital nomad - you can only work legally here if an employer sponsors you. And you definitely wont get a tax break.

[satvikpendem]

It's not just that but also the mindset of entrepreneurship and growth versus stagnation and la dolce vita, which, while nice in the short term, is untenable in the long term.

Pieter Levels of NomadList fame talks about this often [0][1][2], he is Dutch, not American, so it's not like he's biased for America but he notes that it is disheartening for him to see Europe slip into mediocrity over time.

[0] https://x.com/search?lang=en&q=Europe%20(from%3Alevelsio)&sr...

[1] https://x.com/levelsio/status/1784943280171467260

[2] https://x.com/BolognaFishMD/status/1771695080862085211

[tchalla]

And yet he continues to live in Europe despite having other choices.

[satvikpendem]

He doesn't live in Europe.

[tchalla]

He literally said he lives in Europe on Twitter.

https://x.com/levelsio/status/1809779394719654257?s=12

[satvikpendem]

Ah I didn't see his latest reply, he normally lives in Asia, I thought he was still there. Regardless, he can live there and still want to improve his continent, as he mentions. Your comments remind me of this meme.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...

[pieterhg]

Yep, wanna improve my continent

[eastbound]

> slip into mediocrity over time

Europe has been mediocre for the entire modern times. France’s Haussmann marks the end of it with the Exposition Universelle of 1889 (Eiffer Tower) which really attracted people. Since then, we had to be rescued by Americans every time we went into war (even in Vietnam) and the art capital of the world is NYC. Maybe De Gaulle revived France a little (and he leveraged the UK/US help for that), but nowhere near what Shanghai or San Francisco did.

Europe is fine as a former success. Happiness has been high, life expectancy too.

Except it is now being ruled over by people who will neither bring it to the sky again, nor will keep the existing inhabitants.

[igor_akhmetov]

You got it backwards. US makes it impossible for skilled migrants to come and settle down. EU countries make it much easier.

[pyb]

This. Americans value high skilled migration less than Europeans do. The proof is in the pudding (ie immigration policies)

[stratocumulus0]

Maybe this approach would have made sense if the area were an established hub in whatever craft those immigrants are specializing in, but in case of Portugal what I can see is a country with (formerly?) cheap CoL trying to attract immigrants who keep working remotely, paying taxes elsewhere and contributing whatever little consumption tax they pay into the local economy. There's no established competitive IT industry or academia. This isn't how you build high-tech economy, it's how you become a suburban wasteland for rich people.

[switch007]

Politicians love changing the definition of skilled migration (eg UK recently with cooks being on the list. So obvious what they're doing)

So we have to be careful when discussing "skilled migration"

[dathinab]

Portugal fully understands that.

That is why they did make that law in the first place.

The problem is what they expected was something like "highly skilled migration contributing directly or indirectly to Portugal".

But that isn't exactly how it played out, which is why they removed tax brakes. I mean think about it. Just attracting talented people to be in your country and paying some tax isn't enough. You also need to be able to capitalize on them. E.g. by them working for your companies, them creating companies in your country, them settling in your country, etc. But AFIK that didn't really happen in case of Portugal.

> any move to attract talent is seen as net-negative,

not really

moves to attract talent are very common, through often focused with different dynamic then the US

through you might confuse the sentiment with the negative sentiment wrt. people coming as refuges instead of immigrants which are often perceived as not being skilled and just taking advantage of social systems etc., the same way it's commonly the case in the US (e.g. wrt. people from Mexico). Just to be clear I say perceived, because enough refuges are quite skilled/qualified just their qualifications are often not recognized due to bureaucratic reasons

---

As a side not IMHO/AFIK the huge raise on apartment rent/buy cost in Lisbon is likely _not_ majorly related to the previous tax break programs. Mainly such raises can be observed in most relevant western (and beyond) Capitals around the world, driven by the most wealthy of mainly the western world (but also beyond, e.g. Saudi Arabia) using them as money banks and very term investments. The moment many do it will (did) also drive speculative investment. Which can lead to somewhat of a looping effect. Or in other words it's a side effect of the past ~10 years of (especially western) world economics.

[GoToRO]

When the americans will be displaced by the skilled migrants, it will be an even harder pill to swallow. And it will be too late too. This movie it's not done yet.

Any kind of forced population relocation, it's bad. Before, it was done with guns, now it's done with money. The results are the same.

Current day skilled migration is popular today, because companies get fully educated people, without having to pay taxes for education, day care, health. You get only the best, whithout having to paying anything. Not even parental leave for their parents.

The question is, should the people let companies, aka the rich, decide how the country will look like in 50, 100 years?

Also skilled migration is very bad for origin countries too. They loose all the best while having to suport all the liabilities. Like the pensions of the parents of the skilled labor that left and now it's not contributing anything.

[eastbound]

Population displacement is a crime against humanity.

[127]

You are comparing two things that are not actually the same. America is the top destination by far for actually skilled migrants who can pump up the economic engine and build highly profitable businesses. America has fine-tuned its entire system to integrate and take advantage of skilled migrants, its tech/research industry being built on this, and its reputation, physical and logistical infrastructure helps to take the cream from the crop.

It's easy to talk about highly skilled immigration when you are the one taking all the best part of it. Those highly skilled productive individuals who can move to America will.

Mass import of unskilled migrants, especially young military aged men, is indeed net-negative, unfair and detrimental to the culture and livability.

[bryanlarsen]

> Mass import of unskilled migrants, especially young military aged men, is indeed net-negative, unfair and detrimental to the culture and livability.

Yet studies show the opposite of what you so confidently assert.

[127]

Evidence defeats conjecture. There are plenty of examples of immigration gone wrong in Europe if you just open your eyes.

[bryanlarsen]

What examples? The boom times in Europe pre-pandemic were a time of high immigration. Today's crappy times have much lower immigration in comparison.

[AnimalMuppet]

Both you and 127 "so confidently assert". Neither of you provide citations or other evidence.

[bryanlarsen]

It's an easily falsifiable statement, it's easy to prove me wrong if I am wrong.

[Rinzler89]

>Mass import of unskilled migrants, especially young military aged men, is indeed net-negative

And yet this is what EU keeps doing to its own detriment.

[kranke155]

Ridiculous. This is not a "friendly to migration" policy but a welcome mat to wealthy nomads to move to Portugal and pay less tax than the locals. That's not even being welcoming, it's throwing your own population under the bus.

Most EU countries have no issue with skilled migration when needed. Denmark has a solid migration policy and thus relative consensus on keeping it as it is. Other EU countries have passed policies that ruined their own local population in favor of low skill migration or in this case, high skill migrants hoping to avoid high taxes. This not attracting "the best", it's attracted a lot of amoral individuals who just want to move to Lisbon to party and enjoy the weather.

[braiamp]

> any move to attract talent is seen as net-negative, unfair and detrimental to the culture and livability

The biggest barrier to attract talent in the EU is language. It's not culture, it's not incentives, it's not tax breaks... it's language. The US only needs to learn a single language, english. For Europe you would need at least 3 languages to be marketable since EU citizens are learning multiple languages since born in most cases.

[Leherenn]

There's a difference though between importing talent to work for the local economy and having people who work for foreign companies. Maybe some digital nomads transition from the latter to the former, but given local wages it must be rare.

Then it's a tradeoff between whether the extra tax revenue/spending is worth the potential social issues those rich foreigners can bring.

[anovikov]

Almost sounds as if someone can actually come to the US as a digital nomad, work and live there, and get tax breaks.

[FredPret]

I agree with you but I will also add that the “new world” is much more geared towards turning those immigrants into actual Americans, Canadians, and Australians than the EU is turning the nomads into Europeans.

But that’s just one more contributing factor to what you described.

[anonzzzies]

I agree with you on that one; I am still in favour of the EU and one of the last countries I would want to live is the US (it's a nice country (parts of it) to vacation in though), but yes, the EU has issues (in my opinion) that would be good and positive for 'the people' IF there would be an abundance of money coming from somewhere (there isn't); a) language (let's ffs speak english everywhere; I'm dutch, i speak dutch, german, french, portuguese and spanish, but it's just easier to have english as the first language, as as the common high value business language in the world) b) regulatory; small companies should be exempt from regulations and that should change per milestone the company reaches c) make it easy, cheap and attractive to start a company; as point b), start getting annoying when it grows beyond certain milestones, but not too annoying so it will leave d) make taxation so that it's attractive to invest in here e) boost our electronics, military and space faring research/development/manufacturing across the board; that brings jobs, money, investment and innovation.

But it's hard to balance with culture and liveability; I would never live in the US for fear of dropping from the few top % by some accident getting into extreme poverty. Here i'm not really scared of that (and i've been there in the distant past).

[JojoFatsani]

There’s a long way to drop between the 90% and the 10% in America. If you’re starting from a position of privilege with a personal savings safety net, you’d have to really F things up for yourself (drugs, gambling, over leveraging) to find yourself in extreme poverty.

[BobbyTables2]

What I find odd, is that moving between states in the US is relatively easy. Find a job and go.

But if a skilled English speaker wants to move to the Netherlands (whose population is smaller than Florida) or virtually any other European country, they’d have to be fluent in the local language. That’s a really high bar.

Seems like even for multi-lingual Europeans in the EU, this would still be challenging, especially for families. (Asking kids to suddenly attend school in a different language???)

Seems like Europe is the modern day Tower of Babel story.

[com]

I am a fluent English speaker who spoke not a word of Dutch for my first few years in the Netherlands. Got contract work, friends, and in the end language and citizenship.

One example is anecdote, not data, but I know an awful lot of EU and non-EU people both in the big cities and more regional places who landed without any local language and made successful lives and integrated effectively here.

There are harder places to do this but it’s getting easier by the year, especially in the countries that need people who speak other languages for global trade.

[anonzzzies]

Netherlands is a bit of an outlier I feel though, but I am from there; maybe it happens elsewhere too.

[anonzzzies]

It is a massive problem and all under the guise of ‘our culture’. I get it somewhat but equality won’t happen if you keep it this non equal on the basic level. I get that you learn a language when you move (I did a bunch of times), but it will never get better than my english or of course dutch (my native tongue, although I am starting to forget words after having been abroad over 20 years); all my colleagues do speak english but refuse because of culture they say. I feel this is a pretty basic issue and a massive problem.

[39896880]

The EU does not have the cultural means to adapt to immigration the way the US does. The US removed the native population, so all cultural in the US is adaptation; adding more into the mix isn't such a problem.

[belter]

There are many things were America is not number one. Provide living wages and Universal Health care and you will be at the baseline at least 80% of European countries achieved 50 years ago...

[snowpid]

You mean the country where 48 % voted for Trump.

Did you know that more Americans move to Germany than Germans move to America despite lower wages.

Maybe life quality attracts talents more.

(To be honest my comment is very cheeky but so this is the comment above . EU is big . Germany is big and even cities have considerable differences. )

[Ekaros]

So are you saying what USA and states should do is to give very large tax breaks for H-1B visa holders to make them more competitive against native and allow them higher living standards?

[duegreg]

What? All of EU software engineers want to work in the US but we cannot.

[ghaff]

I highly doubt all or even most.