[alephnerd]

Of course you felt amazing living off US$1k/mo in Brazil - the average per capita household income in Brazil is less than US$450/mo and a salary of $700/mo puts you in the top 10% [0].

Basically, you enjoyed feeling rich in a country where the vast majority are getting screwed.

And this is what I as well as my SO's family (middle and working class Vietnamese in VN) hate about digital nomads - y'all don't realize that you end up perpetuating the same inequality you try to run away from, and feels deeply colonial in nature as the countries y'all end up in had histories of being colonized and stratified.

You get to travel everywhere because you have a strong passport. They don't because their passport is weak and their salaries are low.

You will always be promoted to the top of the social pecking order thanks to your passport. They will always be relegated to the bottom and attacked by politicans as "stealing jobs" or "changing demographics" thanks to their passport.

[0] - https://g1.globo.com/economia/noticia/2026/05/08/veja-quanto...

[Rover222]

oh please, get over it. I supported a local old lady who airbnb'd out her guest house. I shopped at the local grocery store. and I left.

you would drop that buzzword 'colonial', as though Brazil isn't a former European colony, just like the US. And they... gasp... used slaves for much longer.

I was in the southern cone of the country, first world lifestyles there. Brazilians are proud, they'd be insulted by your savior attitude.

[alephnerd]

> I was in the southern cone of the country

Even in São Paulo the average household income is around $550/mo [0]. That said, I assume you live in Florianopolis but even then the average household income is around $520/mo [1].

> you would drop that buzzword 'colonial', as though Brazil isn't a former European colony, just like the US. And they... gasp... used slaves for much longer

I know. And clearly you're a bit thick in the head if you don't realize the ongoing political and social fissures in Brazil as a result of this.

There's a reason Lula retains such a cult following.

> I supported a local old lady who airbnb'd out her guest house

To even own a house that is Airbnb-able in a digital nomad hub in the south cone means they were better off socially and economically during the dictatorship and the messy transition back to democracy.

Nothing wrong with that, but assuming you are living a normal life there and not recognizing that your lifestyle is much better off than most people is douchey.

---

Alternatively, don't complain [2] when it's people like us or our parents who left, succeeded in the West, and are blamed for making life expensive for your types in America or Germany ;)

Being anti-immigrant yet being on an immigrant visa yourself (yes, a digital nomad is an immigrant), and while Brazilians are barred from getting a visa to the US.

Talk about hypocrisy.

[0] - https://www.metropoles.com/negocios/sp-tem-2a-maior-renda-do...

[1] - https://estado.sc.gov.br/noticias/renda-das-familias-de-sant...

[2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45158497

[eudamoniac]

Uh, ok, guess I'll keep my dirty American dollars out of poor economies. That should really help them out.

[alephnerd]

> That should really help them out

Yeah, it does if you're a tourist.

It's been documented [0] for [1] decades [2] how tourism induces a form of Dutch Disease [3].

Tourism dollars are inherently extractive, as that is foreign capital that is not redeployed into capacity building and also leads to premature inflation which prices out less extractive industries. Additonally, most tourist led economies lead to additonal economic stratification, as most countries tourism industries are deeply regulated and tend to be captured by pre-existing economic players (eg. Thailand, Brazil) which only exacerbates social stratification and economic inequality.

A great example of this is Thailand versus Malaysia and Vietnam - overtourism in Thailand led to an inflation in low skill services jobs associated with the tourism industry at the expense of manufacturing, which left for fellow ASEAN members Malaysia and Vietnam, both of which limited tourism and strategically targeted foreign capital to manufacturing and high value services (BPO, Software) despite Thailand historically being a peer and significantly more developed than Malaysia and Vietnam respectively.

No developing country has made the leap to becoming developed due to a tourism-led industrial policy, and the developed states that did adopt such a policy (eg. Puerto Rico, Portugal, Greece, Italy) only did so after their industrial growth spurts in the 1970s-2000s ended.

[0] - https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/lup/publication/1334498

[1] - https://wiiw.ac.at/tourism-and-economic-development-the-beac...

[2] - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3648158

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease