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by Rinzler89 705 days ago
>How does the quote go, fifty percent of something is better than 100% of nothing? I don't see the harm in this, these people easily bring more in than they cost

That's incredibly simplistic and reductionist way of thinking. That would mean that the most touristic places in Europe should see the most benefits because tourists leave a lot of money and 50% of that is better than 100% of nothing according to you, but the result is the opposite: those places have the crappiest jobs and wages and the most overpriced housing, resulting in the biggest wealth gaps nation wide.

If average workers gets nothing from that 50% of that something, as it all goes in the pockets of landlords, then they're better off with 100% of nothing as at least that will not cause their rent prices to spike. Because doing what you're advocating for, all you'll have is a large pool of wealthy foreigners spending their money raising property prices and the only jobs they create are low income ones like bartenders, maids and pool cleaners, not something you can improve an economy on. Welcome to places like Greece.

Like I said, you want to attract investors who create jobs for the locals, not more tourists who just raise living costs and only enrich a few asset owners while the locals stay even poorer as they don't benefit from that 50% of that something.

Politically and socially, you're better off doing something that increases the upwards mobility and quality of life of the bottom 20%, than boosting the wealth of the top 20% hoping for some trickle down from that to eventually reach the bottom 20% as well because that mostly never happens.

1 comments

Money is more like mercury and less like gold: dynamic and quick rather than solid and permanent.

It doesn’t “land” anywhere. Landlords spend it and invest it. When they invest it it goes to some business who then spends it.

If the landlords are rich enough, they may consider wildly risky invesments like tech startups.

If there’s enough rich people investing in businesses - not just tech startups - you end up with a thick ecosystem of companies and thus US-level wages.

That's nice theory from someone working in the tech sector, but that rubber never hits the road in practice in the real world, where the higher rents we're paying here don't magically translate into more tech investments.

You need some high quality hopium to actually believe that would happen. Making my landlords wealthier hasn't resulted in any benefits to any society I know.

You don't seem open to being persuaded by facts contrary to your current framework so I'll stop here.

But if you study the economic history of the richest places on your own time, you'll see that private capital formation always played a critical role.

Maybe if you provided some of those "facts" people would be more persuaded.
> you'll see that private capital formation always played a critical role

Portugal's previous economic successes have always been state-adjacent, as every single other place on Earth: CUF had state monopolies, EDP, PT (state monopolies), TAP (state owned). Just like Silicon Valley, there's nothing private about takin money or privileges from the state and selling it as "hard work".