As I understand it, these attempts to use digital nomad money to revive impoverished areas tend to become controversial when the impoverished locals realise what it means to compete with (from their perspective) extremely wealthy blow-ins. Maybe in particular circumstances it can work, like if the locals actually get most or all of the money spent by the newcomers (rather than going into the pockets of absentee landlords or large corporations).
The article opens by noting fears about Spain's "vibrant culture" dying out. Needless to say, this won't help with that problem and may well accelerate it, unless Spanish culture is coding workshops and padel (per the article).
> (from their perspective) extremely wealthy blow-ins
I’ve had some friends do the digital nomad lifestyle. One thing that stood out to me was how many of them were not really doing that well financially. The stereotype is someone with a $100K per year job living like a king in a place where the median wages are 1/10th of that
Most of the people in their digital nomad groups were actually not full-time employed. They were trying to do contract work and then stretching out their earnings between jobs so they could travel. Living in these cheap locations was almost required to allow them to work the way they wanted.
There were people who were lucky enough to have the six figure remote jobs at companies that were okay with them not being available during normal business hours. Those jobs were at high risk of getting cut at the next economic down cycle.
It reminded me of how much the indie hacker scene all fantasizes about being like the levels.io guy making crazy money selling simple services to his giant follower list, but most of them can barely get a couple dozen sales for their SaaS if they’re lucky. Everyone thinks of levels.io, but few people think of the long tail of people making less than they’d get at any full time job.
I did contract work so I could stay traveling and lived on money I made in previous full time jobs. It was a very nice way to live compared to the 9 to 5 even though I made less money.
Having enough money to live the way you want is all you need. Hostels are fun.
But in the free time I had, I did end up making a SaaS that set me up very comfortably for the rest of my life.
Up to a point. Hostels are very irritating now in that there is always someone on their phone at all hours lighting up the entire room. Also some noise issues.
I find quieter hostels much better. When I was over in Ireland, the ones in Belfast and Dublin were awful, and in county Galway. I found wonderful ones in Co. Donegal, Armagh and Limerick.
Meh, although I'm conscious of the possibility I might be seen as a creepy old guy in his mid-thirties, I still find that hostels can be fun. I don't necessarily want to go out partying with 20 year olds, but an occasional few drinks with strangers and the ability to re-allocate funds to something more interesting than a hotel is very valuable. Travelling is already expensive as hell, I'm going to do it the way I want, and there's usually outgoing people within the same approx age range that want to do similarly.
That said, much like hotels, some hostels do suck; bedbugs are not chill, location is important, cost is important, vibe is important. I found that hostels that were more suited to families trying to save money were the least appealing as someone with just a spouse and a type B personality.
I hate paying for hotels so much that I visit my hometown less than I would otherwise if the city had a decent hostel.
Yes. Salary is compensation for sacrifice. Many (most, hopefully, but interestingly not all) would rather have less sacrifice than more compensation. Not spending your life doing what someone else wants leaves more life to do what you want with.
> But in the free time I had, I did end up making a SaaS that set me up very comfortably for the rest of my life.
There were examples like this of people in the groups hitting on something and making enough money to retire (if they managed their money right)
It was the rare case. The end result for most of them was moving back home and taking a normal job when hopping between hostels and digital nomad group homes stopped being fun and none of their business ideas got traction.
Its funny cuz what he describes is basically my story as well. I lived to travel and took on substandard contracts to get by for awhile. eventually met my cofounders and now I'm living comfortably on a descent salary with a saas that I built. Hopefully I can keep this going indefinitly.
I'm 30, I am trying to achieve what the other person described. I'm not there yet, but I feel like I might be in 8-36 months timeframe. Ask me then, you'll get at least one more data point that's not just survivorship bias.
At 30 you have nothing to lose or even if you do you have decades ahead to turn things around. Despite what I said I wish you and other young people luck, enjoy your life doing what you love before you get old and grumpy.
>I’ve had some friends do the digital nomad lifestyle. One thing that stood out to me was how many of them were not really doing that well financially. The stereotype is someone with a $100K per year job living like a king in a place where the median wages are 1/10th of that
It's about the travelling and lifestyle, not the earnings over some regular stationary job.
But even $50K/year is still bad from the perspective the parent notes, if the locals making $10K or $30K/year have to compete for rent and services with those nomads in their own area.
This is the bit that I don't get though, if it is all about the "travel and lifestyle", then why would I want to end up in a rural village in Spain. My travel is more limited, and I'm hardly following the "digital nomad lifestyle".
Not saying it can't be fun, but you can live in a country town almost anywhere, if I just want a permanent base hours from any airport, and they all tend to be a lot cheaper than living in the "big smoke".
>This is the bit that I don't get though, if it is all about the "travel and lifestyle", then why would I want to end up in a rural village in Spain.
Because going abroad at a different place than your regular country, and staying at a place for months or even a year or so, is also travelling. Travelling as in "I'm abroad, experiencing a different place and culture", not as in "I actively move from country to country every second week". And a "rural village in Spain" is quite compelling, both as a work base and as a lifestyle to many.
In which case, why would it matter if it's "hours from any airport" or not? Who said you'll be just using it as a jump base for airport travel? It can just be a place to work from and soak the local environment and surrounding areas. Not to mention in Spain you can't be a few hours from the nearest airport anywhere anyway. It's not some vast wasteland.
True, I never got why so many real estate ads mention distance from an airport. How often do you need to travel for that to be a deciding factor where to live?
That's definitely very apparent, even places like Indonesia - which is practically as different from the "western world" as it can be, is now turned into someone's fantasy/caricature of an exotic place.
That's true. Though living for a while in some small village is probably the best way to do experience the different place and culture, over regular touristy travelling or being a nomad in some Thai beach town.
> Not saying it can't be fun, but you can live in a country town almost anywhere, if I just want a permanent base hours from any airport, and they all tend to be a lot cheaper than living in the "big smoke".
I think folks from the US tend to underestimate the difference in proximity and services available in rural Spain vs rural US.
I emigrated to a tiny rural village in a far-flung corner of Spain, and I have an excellent highway 10 minutes away, the airport is 45 minutes (basically the same amount of time it took me from downtown Seattle to the airport), a decent city is also 45 minutes away. There are less than 1,000 folks in the entire district, but we have gigabit fibre to every house, a healthcare centre covered by national healthcare, dental clinic, two supermarkets, 6 cafes...
> There were people who were lucky enough to have the six figure remote jobs at companies that were okay with them not being available during normal business hours. Those jobs were at high risk of getting cut at the next economic down cycle.
When I did this, working outside of business hours was seen as an advantage in case we had issues overnight.
Realistically I’ll take 4 to 8 weeks off while looking for work back in the US.
I had a revelation a few years back.
Taking real vacations is absolutely necessary.
If I can work 12 months at 70 to 80$ an hour I generally can afford 8 to 12 weeks off as long as I as I’m not in the US or Europe.
When I think out of the box, I do imagine working on my own ideas during my travels. Met a brilliant 23 year old last year who speaks 3 languages, and programs in Python and Java
I could probably hire him at 10$ an hour.
Vs some 23 year old American who will demand 45$ an hour and tell me Python sucks.
But then I wake up, back to looking for my next contract.
You could get more bang for your buck. I'm currently freelancing at ~$50/hr and for every sixtyish hours I can live for two months, so I could afford to work half the year at a leisurely pace and not work the rest of the year, or work one month full tilt and then take five months off. This is while living comfortably, not having to be frugal or anything.
> One thing that stood out to me was how many of them were not really doing that well financially. The stereotype is someone with a $100K per year job living like a king in a place where the median wages are 1/10th of that
The thing is, having a Western passport and earning $10k-20k a year (untaxed) in countries where the median household incomes (ie. 2 working adults) are at best comparable to that is living like a king comparatively speaking.
There's a reason western expats are looked down on derisively by locals across ASEAN and the only ASEAN state with a semi-functional democracy (Malaysia) is also one of the least budget tourist friendly - the middle class and above look at tay ba lo with disgust as losers, and the lower class only look up to them for the opportunity to get a more powerful visa. The high rate of "passport bros" also doesn't help.
It's like that scene from Futurama when they all accidently age backwards: "Oh, so this is the famous Fry. What is he, like, the biggest loser on the surface, so he has to hang out in the sewer?
Fry: They're on to me!"
The reality is, most kinds of tourism only lead to the development of extractive economic institutions at the expense of human capital development and higher value economic sectors that would benefit from that.
And in the case of this specific village and town in Andalusia, this will only exacerbate anti-tourism politics which has helped both Vox and Podemos because rural Andalusia is absolutely not equipped to support a sudden influx of transitory high income outsiders.
>>The reality is, most kinds of tourism only lead to the development of extractive economic institutions at the expense of human capital development and higher value economic sectors that would benefit from that.
Those are dying towns. Tourism/digital nomads are their lifeline. There is no "human capital development" to speak of. Young people there do everything they can do migrate to bigger cities. Have you ever been to the region? Many of those towns look like ghost towns.
The main industry they have is greenhouse farming which actually drains the scarce resource the population need (water) while causing a lot of plastic pollution and mainly employing migrants paying them peanuts.
> when the impoverished locals realise what it means to compete with (from their perspective) extremely wealthy blow-ins
It's also more socially acceptable to complain about this stuff when the newcomers are seen as wealthy. We saw this in Canada when Chinese nationals started buying up houses in Canada. To the point the government started limiting foreign ownership of residential real estate.
In Canada , it wasn’t limited to areas with economic struggles/lack of investment.
Most of the investment was in major metropolitan cities, leading to a statistically significant percentage of residential housing stock being bought up with foreign(imported) capital. Many of these units were subsequently used as store of investment (left empty)
Since policies did not support building at the pace that met increased demand(mainly immigration), and many foreign buyers were comfortable bidding up housing: this was a significant contributor to housing prices inflating to mutiples that were much higher than previous trends (i.e. upto 20 times median salary vs 5/7 times previously)
And the foreign buyer ban did lead to a measureable decline in prices
The primary thing cornering Canadian real-estate was investor corporations, rather than Chinese nationals. But it was easier politics to highlight Chinese nationals, esp. coming up to the Canadian election.
> As I understand it, these attempts to use digital nomad money to revive impoverished areas tend to become controversial when the impoverished locals realise what it means to compete with (from their perspective) extremely wealthy blow-ins.
I don’t see it like this, it may as well be that digital nomads are bringing much needed cashflow to the local community; of course this phenomenon should be monitored but digital nomads are so few that they can’t have a meaningful impact in sectors like housing or good prices.
You haven’t lived in Medellin, Colombia if you don’t think digital nomads can have an effect on housing prices.
My experience is from 2015-2024. I did the digital nomad thing for 9 years and lived in Medellin 4 separate times over that period for 6 months to a year each time.
I saw rents for normal folks, not furnished and not Airbnbs, do a 4x in that time period. Laureles was a middle class suburb for locals in 2015 and was just overrun by nomads by 2024. Poblado, Laureles, even as far as La Estrella saw a really noticeable impact.
Clearly I contributed to the issue and nomads did inject money into the economy but it also had a really visible effect on housing. I don’t have any ideas on how to do it right but it is something that should be approached carefully or locals get priced out.
EDIT: I believe they started more tightly regulating things in 2024 with required registration for <1 year rentals. Not sure how that has played out. Also added the specific neighborhoods that I saw things shoot up.
My social circle was largely nomads when I lived there so I was very aware of CoLiving, CoWork, and other business almost exclusively catering to nomads. Those exploded in number during this time period.
Poblado was already one of the richest neighborhoods in the whole country in 2015. One of my neighbors was an Emmy winning pianist. So, gentrification isn’t going to be a thing in neighborhood like that.
It is a single data point of my lived experience in that part of the world. I am not presenting it as a peer reviewed study. But, there are also examples like Portugal which has had more recent studies done on this.
And the nomad visa is not so cheap, by yourself it requires €2850/month which I believe is a LOT more than rural workers are earning, this is exactly how people get squeezed out of housing.
Holy crap that’s a lot of money. That’s just for the privilege of living and working there? Or do you get citizenship benefits like healthcare etc? And what about taxes?
It worked in my village, at least for the local who want to work with the incoming nomads; they all need things done and for them up to 10x the local cost is still cheap, so here the locals are thriving. And now everything looks/works better.
yes this works for a while till it grows and locals start to compete with the nomads and get priced out and have to move to the outskirts of their town. I’ve seen it happen in Spain, Costa Rica, Mexico, Bali etc.
I guess this place is just too small; this is more the type of place the article talks about ; this was dead a little while ago, but there are no outskirts and the locals own most nice builds and do airbnbs in them. It's too small to get this type of 'push out the locals' to be happening unless the locals just sell everything, but they are here with their kids etc as well. I can see that it would and does happen in bigger towns. You cannot build here either; nature reserve... You can only restore.
> attempts to use digital nomad money to revive impoverished areas tend to become controversial
That depends on the circumstances, doesn't it? In crowded areas, it automatically leads to competition, but these villages are empty. Having a few remote workers there is only going to help essential services. But if you think that not everybody will see it that way, you may be right.
> this won't help with [Spain's "vibrant culture"]
That is true. Even the idea that small villages form Spain's vibrant culture is a bit of an overstatement.
> The whole point of being "nomad" is to leave quickly as well.
There are certainly a crowd of (mostly young, or early-retired) digital nomads for whom the mobility is a big priority, but as time goes by a hell of a lot of them turn out to be looking for somewhere to set down roots. Here in Spain we see a pretty steady pipeline of digital nomad -> rural homeowner
From the native point of view of one of such countries, Portugal, the problem is a problem of scale.
When it is a couple of folks, bring life again to the village, small town, all good.
Now when then it gets daily YT shorts, and TikTok videos, of how great the life is, and how "cheap" everything happens to be, while the locals pay through the nose for basic stuff.
No the taxi ride, the restaurant bill, the supermart car filled all the way to the top isn't cheap when one is barely touching over 1000 euros after taxes, on average.
So when it gets too much, the locals no longer find it as advantageous as they originally thought, and then votes into right wing parties rise, even from elderly folk that should have known better from dictatorships that ended in the 1970's.
Naturally not everyone is like that, and many do integrate into local culture, and even do have videos calling out such behaviours from fellow nomads.
But I don't get it. When push comes to shove, wealth is debt. Concentration of wealth is directly related, indirectly caused, by debt. Debt is what investors are willing to put in. The bigger the economic union they live in, the more debt investors will be willing to put up with. This leads to wealth concentrating over time, and the more concentrated wealth will be, the poorer these rural villages will be, and everybody runs.
They chose policies to go deeper into debt, to join a bigger union to go deeper into debt.
Because without the union, you would still take at least 6 hours drive from Porto to Evora, using national roads, preferably during the night unless you wanted to cook between 30 and 40 degrees celsius as I did so many times during may childhood in late 70's, early 80's, instead of the cosy 4h something from taking the motorway.
That debt is what allowed many of the infrastructure that is now in place.
However it is also the consequence of that debt, that only the middle to low level classes get to experience, that now puts all right wing parties on leading votes, even thought most Boomers and Gen Xers across Europe, should know better how living under dictatorships feels like.
> Because without the union, you would still take at least 6 hours drive from Porto to Evora, using national roads, preferably during the night unless you wanted to cook between 30 and 40 degrees celsius as I did so many times during may childhood in late 70's, early 80's, instead of the cosy 4h something from taking the motorway.
Is this supposed to be an argument? Yes it's fun to buy nice things. I'm aware of that. Especially with other people's money and work.
> That debt is what allowed many of the infrastructure that is now in place.
And Gen X is the major part of the people paying for it about now.
> even thought most Boomers and Gen Xers across Europe, should know better how living under dictatorships feels like.
Obviously they think it feels better than having the government spend less, which is of course the deal you handed them with: you got to have the government spend more on you and your generation, by promising it would spend less on them and their generation, while taxing them more. Your generation promised that, on their behalf.
They weren't born yet, or at least not politically active, to complain about it.
So why should they, why would they, accept less than you got? Your generation promised their work, and then spent all the money.
Can they do the same to your generation perhaps? Take a similar amount of money back, which would roughly equate to cutting elderly pensions to zero for 30 years or so, well, until the debt is paid off. That would make it be more like if your generation spent it's own money.
In Cuenca, EC you have a lot of retirees and a few digital nomads. Most people don’t make a big move to spend more money than they would in their home country. So they frequent all of the same small local businesses and markets as the locals. No one learns Spanish so some money funnels into interpreters and facilitators. I ended up spending a lot of money on restaurants started by immigrants because I don’t like Ecuadorian cuisine that much. All of this to say that the money is distributed more than one might think.
Yeah, Build The Wall rhetoric is pretty popular worldwide. While most associated with Trump, it’s a general view that people demand their neighbours be blood-and-soil compatriots. Immigration is generally seen as a threat to the local populace.
> Yeah, Build The Wall rhetoric is pretty popular worldwide. While most associated with Trump, it’s a general view that people demand their neighbours be blood-and-soil compatriots. Immigration is generally seen as a threat to the local populace
The point GP was making is that digital nomads are generally in a particular place only temporarily not permanently. So, feelings towards nomads is not the same as feelings towards immigrants. The latter are building community. The former simply feeds off of it.
Most actual immigrants are nomads, at least where I live (Western Europe), they are "passing through". They do not intend to settle permanently. Which most governments love, by the way, yes to income taxes, no to pensions later.
The only reason they stay is if they have no choice for some reason (e.g. Ukrainians or Russians fearing that if they go back will be sent to the front. Lots of those in the past 2 years). Issue is that a lot of them never intended to stay (and so didn't even bother to keep their visas up to date, so now the government must either)
Is it sustainable? No. Not for the governments receiving these people. Because there's still less people to take over everything from political jobs to apartments in a system that is critically dependent on constant growth.
Is it sustainable for the immigrants? No, for them it doesn't work either. The cost is no pensions later, and the issue with that is that to have a decent income to survive on, they'll need to save about a million euros per head (4% on that matches a local's "good" pension).
And yes, everybody makes financial projections as if this is not the case. Why? Doing it like that means more money to spend right now ... and for now creditors (ie. the central bank) accepts the reasoning. And the truth is, we're nowhere near the point where this system must crash. 10 or so more years, and double that in the big cities.
> Most actual immigrants are nomads, at least where I live (Western Europe), they are "passing through". They do not intend to settle permanently. Which most governments love, by the way, yes to income taxes, no to pensions later.
It doesn't work like that for Europeans, your work years accumulate across European countries, we are free to collect the related portion to the paid taxes, when leaving the country, or leave everything to retirement age, at which point the social security of the official residency country will take care of collecting from across Europe, provided the necessary paperwork.
All EU countries are changing their pension systems at the same time, and not for the better. Do you really believe they won't at some point drop this?
Well, I suppose the relevant question is if you're willing to be your future they won't do this, because that's what you're doing.
The most famous actual wall in Europe is the Berlin Wall, which wasn’t about ethnicity or built to keep anyone out. And even Trump’s wall isn’t about blood or soil - CBP and ICE would collapse without the Spanish speaking Hispanic population of Texas and the southwest filling their ranks.
Whether digital nomads contribute economically to local villages is a fine question.
But - what is happening to Spain? It has among the lowest fertility in Europe and has only avoided collapse in population through migration form LATAM and North Africa. Why is spain suffering from this?
What's happening in the villages is a symptom of something larger.
It’s happening not just in Spain but across most of Europe, the USA, and East Asia. But lots of Europe and the USA have immigration to offset the population decline. China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, are in dramatic population declines. Even India has stared to level off and expected to decline.
I believe (perhaps incorrectly) that the GP was asking should population just keep increasing .. many people have been looking to slow population growth for some time and would see it finally starting to slow and perhaps peak and then fall in 2050 as a good outcome.
To degrees, but Spain's fertility rate is appalling even by modern western standards. ~1.1 vs ~1.6 in the US. It's a huge difference and closer to the East Asia collapses than to the US.
One thing to look for in the EU is free movement of people. Young people can and do migrate to regions that pay them more. It would be interesting to look at Spanish youth migration to see if the younger workers (i.e. those more likely to have children) have moved elsewhere. That would create a further dent on the stats.
Isn't Spain one of the desired places for young people in Europe? I always saw people going to Spain, Germany or Switzerland for bigger salaries (e.g., people emigranting from Portugal)
I consider this a typical case of statisticians massaging the data. In fact, I believe the Gini coefficient itself is flawed modeling. Even statisticians don't really use it much these days, right? The Gini index on Wikipedia actually reflects consumption inequality.
Also, high-fertility countries fundamentally have low contraception usage, low women's rights, and short periods of education. This is because labor is crucial in typical agrarian to light-industry economies.
Conversely, low-fertility countries are characterized by extended education and delayed job stability. The reason is simple: work that generates high added value requires a significant amount of time spent on education. Generally, the OECD doesn't view the decline in fertility rates in developed countries as being driven by just a single variable either.
Rather, there is a clear established relationship: higher housing costs correspond to a lower TFR (Total Fertility Rate) [1]. Classes exempt from these housing expenses—namely, individuals whose parents hold substantial real estate and assets—clearly have more children.
Actually, this kind of research has been conducted extensively in East Asian countries like Korea and Japan, yielding very similar conclusions.
> Rather, there is a clear established relationship: higher housing costs correspond to a lower TFR (Total Fertility Rate) [1]. Classes exempt from these housing expenses—namely, individuals whose parents hold substantial real estate and assets—clearly have more children.
This report is 122 pages. A cursory search did not turn up anything to support either of your claims. What page of the report are you drawing this conclusion from?
>
Fertility
The total fertility rate (TFR) indicates the average number of children born per woman over a lifetime given current age‑specific fertility rates, assuming no female mortality during reproductive years. The population is replaced at a total fertility rate of about 2.1 children per woman.
Let's consider programming, which represents an entry into a high value-added industry.
To monetize programming, you fundamentally need to offer something more valuable than existing open-source software, or target a niche that open-source fails to address. However, this industry has now matured, and countless talented young individuals in the US have already contributed heavily to the open-source ecosystem.
As a result, it is exceedingly difficult for developers in non-English speaking countries to sell programs that are inferior to free open-source alternatives. This is exacerbated by the very nature of software, which can be instantly and perfectly replicated.
(Physical capital, on the other hand, is much easier for the establishment to control through protectionism. For instance, to foster the growth of Hyundai Motors, my country, South Korea, restricted American car imports, effectively forcing citizens to drive lower-quality domestic cars. That kind of national sacrifice was required.)
Consequently, citizens of non-English speaking countries face a double burden: the time required to master English, added to the time needed to learn programming and accumulate foundational experience. By the time they build this experience and reach a stable level of professional competency, they are typically in their early 30s. This inherently forces a delay in marriage and family formation.
I generally don't think highly of people who make this argument. It relies on the simplistic framing of the "end of absolute poverty." In fact, this is the exact same rhetoric used by CCP apologists. While it is true that the modern poor enjoy better consumption, this argument completely ignores the economic concepts of positional goods and relative deprivation.
Consider the biological imperative of finding a mate. The competitive factors for securing a partner are now broadcast and scaled across the entire society. The core of what kings of old enjoyed wasn't "air conditioning" or "refrigerators." Kings owned territory (real estate), wielded power, and monopolized the infrastructural capital that allowed them to pass down an overwhelming survival advantage to their lineage. Does a modern immigrant live like a king just because they use an iPhone? The modern poor merely consume cheap manufactured goods; they have been completely stripped of the physical foundation required to form a family (housing) and the control over their generational reproduction.
The idea that Elon Musk amassing wealth has nothing to do with the working class is laughable. When wealth concentrates at the very top, that capital inevitably flows into supply-constrained, zero-sum assets—namely, real estate in prime locations and elite educational opportunities. Why do you think the cost of living in Silicon Valley is so absurdly high? The capital accumulated by billionaires like Musk and other asset holders astronomically pumps up (inflates) the prices of these "positional goods."
Human family formation is not determined by comparing oneself to a 16th-century serf. It is strictly determined by one's "relative status" within their contemporary community. No matter how much absolute caloric intake increases, if you cannot secure the asset advantage required to raise a child to a "middle-class standard" within your current community, a rational human being will simply give up on reproduction.
I would think the argument is more that the average worker living under a king would not even own their property, but would be renting a hovel, living in abject squalor, and having lots of children in order to bring in enough to pay the rent and taxes.
I know for sure in which timeline I'd prefer to be the average worker.
EDIT: For clarity, in no way am I simping for the billionaire class. I think it'll have to change. But people who think serfs in the middle ages had it better are crazy.
I find that unlikely, as it happens in countries with somewhat balanced wealth as well (and countries with the highest fertility rates have the highest wealth imbalance).
??The statistics speak for themselves. In Spain, the top 1% holds 21% of the total wealth, 30% of the low-income demographic are the working poor, and 45% are irregular workers.
Isn't the US in a similar situation? Regardless of other arguments, when you consider the OECD statistics demonstrating the impact of housing costs on fertility rates, I firmly believe that wealth inequality is indeed the root cause.
it has happened what it's happening in almost all the world, at different speeds. It's a combination of factors, economic, cultural, gender roles and general societal expectations (secularization, individualism, self-realization over family, etc.)
Particular factors in Spain compared to other European countries are: chronically high unemployment rates, especially among the younger ones, low salaries and exploitation at the start of the career and general work culture with little respect of workforce (you are always replaceable, be thankful to your bosses). This makes children very unaffordable, people wait until they are "stable enough", which never happens.
The issue with these small towns in Southern Europe is that they don't offer services, because they are abandoned. No schools, no shops, no hospitals... you end up being isolated, struggle for a lot of basic needs, and you leave. Not enough people -> less and less services, and the cycle goes on. There may be a few exceptions of course.
A lot of good answers to which I'd like to contribute a personal understanding as someone from the euro south:
These countries were decimated by free trade. A significant amount of the populace is not interested in having a "career" and follow a race to the bottom by competing 24/7. I would say culturally they are incompatible the the free marketeering that has been going on in the past decades.
We need to get protectionism back up and running. Work is a necessary evil that needs to take as little of our life as possible.
> We need to get protectionism back up and running.
We have known since Bastiat that this makes both sides poorer, because it also clobbers your export industry due to retaliation. And, unless you're willing to forgo iPhones and petrol, you're dependent on imports anyway.
> And, unless you're willing to forgo iPhones and petrol, you're dependent on imports anyway.
I think many people who argue for "protectionism" and the like would find that an acceptable price to pay. See the other comment about "relative status". I think many would like to have less in an absolute sense if that meant they were relatively less poor than "the rich".
Now I, personally, think that's just rose-tinted glasses. For example, nowadays, farmers in France have it rough. But I doubt that some peasant from 2-300 years ago actually had a better life and had less wealth difference compared to the upper-class of their time.
>We need to get protectionism back up and running. Work is a necessary evil that needs to take as little of our life as possible.
That attitude isn't compatible with paying decent pensions to an ever-growing retired fraction of the population. Someone has to work hard to fund them.
The same reason Italy, Portugal, and Greece are - they never fully recovered from the Eurozone collapse, and as a result were unable to completely climb up the value chain on time.
> has only avoided collapse in population through migration form LATAM and North Africa
Spain's TFR is still in the 1.0 to 1.2 range and it's median age is still amongst the oldest in Europe (44.5).
> LATAM
It's still not attractive for much of LatAm. Much of the current LatAm wave in Spain and Italy is from Venezuela or Colombia, and most Venezolanos who could use immigration by descent have largely immigrated already.
Spain doesn't have the same pull factor for LatAm that Canada or even the US still does thanks to higher incomes and pre-existing diaspora networks - especially given that Spain is still dealing with an ongoing braindrain to Western and Northern Europe.
And any immigration from LatAm (excluding Venezuela) irrespective of Europe or NAM is fleeting as much of LatAm has developmentally caught up with Eastern and parts of Southern Europe.
> they never fully recovered from the Eurozone collapse
Fertility seems independent from anything economy related: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/esp/spa... , it happened well before 2008, and today it is only oscillating around the same 1.2 number. The same as many other rich countries.
> It's still not attractive for much of LatAm. Much of the current LatAm wave in Spain and Italy is from Venezuela or Colombia
Spain has Latam inmigration for each an every spanish speaking country in America: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inmigraci%C3%B3n_en_Espa%C3%B1... . There is no clear skew towards Venezuela or Colombia, other than being the biggest countries. Once normalized per population (i.e. a small country like Uruguay with 3 million people won't send 1 million to Spain), you find that Cuba, Paraguay, Ecuador or Uruguay are above Venezuela in inmigration rate to Spain, and Honduras and Dominican Republic are above Colombia. Only Mexico (they probably migrate to the US) and Peru (I don't know why) have very low inmigration to Spain.
> Spain doesn't have the same pull factor for LatAm that Canada
10% of current Spain population come from Latam. In Canada, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_immigration_statistics, the first Latam source of inmigration country is Mexico (0.25% of Canada population), Colombia 0.22%, El Salvador 0.14%, Chile 0.08%, Venezuela 0.08%... Overall, probably less than 2% Canada population comes from Latam. I find it very difficult to believe that Canada has more pull than Spain.
You seem to forget also that entering Spain means entering Schengen area: anyone coming from Latam that manages to come to Spain can "jump" to almost any other country in Europe except the UK without having to use a passport (including Norway, Iceland or Switzerland, that are not UE).
> You seem to forget also that entering Spain means entering Schengen area: anyone coming from Latam that manages to come to Spain can "jump" to almost any other country in Europe except the UK without having to use a passport (including Norway, Iceland or Switzerland, that are not UE).
Eh, not quite: once you become a Spanish national, yes, but just because there aren't internal border controls doesn't actually entitle you to turn entry or residence in Spain into entry or residence in another Schengen country.
I think if the right to work from home was encoded in law for any job which was practically possible to do remotely, you'd have a better shot at keeping rural villages alive without relying on foreigners. That would keep the local culture living instead of replacing it.
But this is better than nothing I suppose, at least it prevents ghost towns
Which is an hours drive through twisty mountain roads to anywhere. No public transport.
Why would a digital nomad live there, when for just a little bit more you can have a walkable town with public transport? Isn’t that where all the Americans are flooding Europe for?
It's always interesting watching counties try to lift the birthrate, and doing things that don't actually help improve the conditions that lead to the issue in the first place.
Look here's an idea. If you're under a certain age, and you want to own a home and move to a small village etc.. you are granted 100% protection from the government from your employer and you can work 100% remote. Enshrined into law. Nothing the employer can do about it.
Make it a whole nationalism thing to get the right wing on board.
I know a whole bunch of people who would move to a country town in a heartbeat if they could, heck lots of people did it during the pandemic, the minute that remote work became a possibility.
It's great they're chasing these digital nomads, but I'm not sure that's the solution that's going to work long or even medium term.
Like... whom? Zuck or Larry? They're 10 years late to the party, digital nomads are no more. They can count on German and British pensioners, although personally I'd prefer to be poor than to cater to this demographics.
The British and German governments pay for the healthcare of their pensioners living in Spain via intergovernmental reimbursement agreements so the healthcare expense to Spain is in fact zero. They also provide a significant economic net benefit to Spain by injecting billions in "imported wealth" through real estate taxes, year-round consumption, and foreign-funded pensions.
They left their multiple real estate back home so your kids can emigrate there and rent it, but your kids will have to work hard actually and unfortunately. On the bright side once your kids come back from emigration, they can in turn start catering to them.
With digital nomads is like with standard, recreational tourism. It is always promised by local decision-makers it will bring multiple benefits to locals, including economic boost, but it always a pact with a Devil where few reap rewards while rest are left impoverished, delegated to toilet cleaning and food serving, and local customs and culture are eroded.
And with likes AirBnB lead to increasing property values thus increasing rents thus taking even larger share of the income of those workers. Or entirely forcing them to be displaced. For little gain to them.
I have spent quite a bit of time in Andalusia and other poor Spanish regions.
A lot of those towns are empty and have mainly older people left. Young ones do anything they can do go to a bigger city looking for opportunities. Some of them serve as retiree/vacation spot for mainly Spanish people from wealthier regions. They are ghost towns during the winter (when digital nomads want to come).
In more touristy but still poor regions (like Tenerife) the official argument for anti-tourist policies is that most of the surplus economic value is captured by property owners while causing strain on infrastructure and making life more expensive for the locals.
To me the obvious solution is to raise property/land value taxes and use the money to develop infrastructure and lower taxes for local working population. This way the incentives are aligned for everyone.
The problem is politics is captured by property owners so it's easier to make villain out tourists/nomads to redirect anger of the locals while continuing like normal for as long as possible.
Nomads are a group that doesn't drain welfare resources, pay for themselves and don't cause crime. They don't even take "your jobs" - they may even create some if enough of them come. If your policy is against them you truly lost it in my view.
Throughout the developed world, small towns and the countryside are developed. It seems clear that cities are preferred (probably because it's easy to control people in concentrated areas.) People like Bill Gates would prefer the countryside was full of automated farms and the Tetrapak heir would rather clear the countryside of peasants and turn them into some kind of safari.
Historically this is a spot on. From Highland Clearances to modern accumulation of land and real estate ownership. Those who have plenty, they want it all. The rest should live in a city on 30 sqmt, ideally rent, fully surveilled at all times.
It will always boil down to real estate ownership, squeezing and extracting the last available cash with rents. The taxation has to proactively prevent it. Once you allow non-residents to purchase, even if they have local passport, the prices go instantly to the moon.
It wouldn't be a problem if the tax burden was on property owners.
If someone purchasing 500k EUR apartment had to pay even 2% of real value of it every year to local community they would be welcome with open arms.
Unfortunately right now it's not the locals nor the local infrastructure that capture the benefits.
If Spain (and most of the EU) had saner regulations then who knows, maybe they would even allow for building more in places people want to spend time in.
The issue with this approach is that long-time locals will see the market price of their homes rise with the newcomers'. So if you base the tax on that market value, the locals have it very rough.
You can lower taxes on labor or structure land/property value tax in a way that it offsets your income tax. This way people who live and work in the area pay once. Someone who pays their other taxes somewhere else but buys property pays twice.
You just need to align incentives and make it so people who benefits the most pay the most taxes. Preferably proportionally to how much they benefit from the whole arrangement.
As I understand it, these attempts to use digital nomad money to revive impoverished areas tend to become controversial when the impoverished locals realise what it means to compete with (from their perspective) extremely wealthy blow-ins. Maybe in particular circumstances it can work, like if the locals actually get most or all of the money spent by the newcomers (rather than going into the pockets of absentee landlords or large corporations).
The article opens by noting fears about Spain's "vibrant culture" dying out. Needless to say, this won't help with that problem and may well accelerate it, unless Spanish culture is coding workshops and padel (per the article).
> (from their perspective) extremely wealthy blow-ins
I’ve had some friends do the digital nomad lifestyle. One thing that stood out to me was how many of them were not really doing that well financially. The stereotype is someone with a $100K per year job living like a king in a place where the median wages are 1/10th of that
Most of the people in their digital nomad groups were actually not full-time employed. They were trying to do contract work and then stretching out their earnings between jobs so they could travel. Living in these cheap locations was almost required to allow them to work the way they wanted.
There were people who were lucky enough to have the six figure remote jobs at companies that were okay with them not being available during normal business hours. Those jobs were at high risk of getting cut at the next economic down cycle.
It reminded me of how much the indie hacker scene all fantasizes about being like the levels.io guy making crazy money selling simple services to his giant follower list, but most of them can barely get a couple dozen sales for their SaaS if they’re lucky. Everyone thinks of levels.io, but few people think of the long tail of people making less than they’d get at any full time job.
I was just the sort you’re talking about.
I did contract work so I could stay traveling and lived on money I made in previous full time jobs. It was a very nice way to live compared to the 9 to 5 even though I made less money.
Having enough money to live the way you want is all you need. Hostels are fun.
But in the free time I had, I did end up making a SaaS that set me up very comfortably for the rest of my life.
Cynicism will keep you in your 9 to 5.
> Having enough money to live the way you want is all you need. Hostels are fun.
Hostels are not fun, unless you are in your early 20s.
Hostels are fun if you have that disposition.
If you don't, even 5 star hotels can be miserable.
Up to a point. Hostels are very irritating now in that there is always someone on their phone at all hours lighting up the entire room. Also some noise issues.
I find quieter hostels much better. When I was over in Ireland, the ones in Belfast and Dublin were awful, and in county Galway. I found wonderful ones in Co. Donegal, Armagh and Limerick.
Meh, although I'm conscious of the possibility I might be seen as a creepy old guy in his mid-thirties, I still find that hostels can be fun. I don't necessarily want to go out partying with 20 year olds, but an occasional few drinks with strangers and the ability to re-allocate funds to something more interesting than a hotel is very valuable. Travelling is already expensive as hell, I'm going to do it the way I want, and there's usually outgoing people within the same approx age range that want to do similarly.
That said, much like hotels, some hostels do suck; bedbugs are not chill, location is important, cost is important, vibe is important. I found that hostels that were more suited to families trying to save money were the least appealing as someone with just a spouse and a type B personality.
I hate paying for hotels so much that I visit my hometown less than I would otherwise if the city had a decent hostel.
In my late 30s now, I don’t even do hotels with a shared toilet anymore. I need my own private room and my own private en-suite bathroom at minimum.
My rule is maximum 2 people per first toilet, or else it isn’t a vacation.
Can you link to the SaaS that set you up very comfortable for the rest of your life?
Yes. Salary is compensation for sacrifice. Many (most, hopefully, but interestingly not all) would rather have less sacrifice than more compensation. Not spending your life doing what someone else wants leaves more life to do what you want with.
> But in the free time I had, I did end up making a SaaS that set me up very comfortably for the rest of my life.
There were examples like this of people in the groups hitting on something and making enough money to retire (if they managed their money right)
It was the rare case. The end result for most of them was moving back home and taking a normal job when hopping between hostels and digital nomad group homes stopped being fun and none of their business ideas got traction.
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> This must be a troll.
Its funny cuz what he describes is basically my story as well. I lived to travel and took on substandard contracts to get by for awhile. eventually met my cofounders and now I'm living comfortably on a descent salary with a saas that I built. Hopefully I can keep this going indefinitly.
I guess my implied advice is to live the way you want even if it means making less money than you could?
Yeah. I’ll own that.
Believe it or not, you're on a website where a lot of the readers build stuff. And quite a few find success.
> And quite a few find success.
I guess the question is what percentage do. And what percentage tries and go completely broke before going back to a 9 to 5 job.
I'm 30, I am trying to achieve what the other person described. I'm not there yet, but I feel like I might be in 8-36 months timeframe. Ask me then, you'll get at least one more data point that's not just survivorship bias.
At 30 you have nothing to lose or even if you do you have decades ahead to turn things around. Despite what I said I wish you and other young people luck, enjoy your life doing what you love before you get old and grumpy.
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It’s not a throwaway
>I’ve had some friends do the digital nomad lifestyle. One thing that stood out to me was how many of them were not really doing that well financially. The stereotype is someone with a $100K per year job living like a king in a place where the median wages are 1/10th of that
It's about the travelling and lifestyle, not the earnings over some regular stationary job.
But even $50K/year is still bad from the perspective the parent notes, if the locals making $10K or $30K/year have to compete for rent and services with those nomads in their own area.
This is the bit that I don't get though, if it is all about the "travel and lifestyle", then why would I want to end up in a rural village in Spain. My travel is more limited, and I'm hardly following the "digital nomad lifestyle".
Not saying it can't be fun, but you can live in a country town almost anywhere, if I just want a permanent base hours from any airport, and they all tend to be a lot cheaper than living in the "big smoke".
>This is the bit that I don't get though, if it is all about the "travel and lifestyle", then why would I want to end up in a rural village in Spain.
Because going abroad at a different place than your regular country, and staying at a place for months or even a year or so, is also travelling. Travelling as in "I'm abroad, experiencing a different place and culture", not as in "I actively move from country to country every second week". And a "rural village in Spain" is quite compelling, both as a work base and as a lifestyle to many.
In which case, why would it matter if it's "hours from any airport" or not? Who said you'll be just using it as a jump base for airport travel? It can just be a place to work from and soak the local environment and surrounding areas. Not to mention in Spain you can't be a few hours from the nearest airport anywhere anyway. It's not some vast wasteland.
True, I never got why so many real estate ads mention distance from an airport. How often do you need to travel for that to be a deciding factor where to live?
The more I travel the less I experience different places and cultures. We're being turned into the same place and same culture, and it is sad.
That's definitely very apparent, even places like Indonesia - which is practically as different from the "western world" as it can be, is now turned into someone's fantasy/caricature of an exotic place.
That's true. Though living for a while in some small village is probably the best way to do experience the different place and culture, over regular touristy travelling or being a nomad in some Thai beach town.
> Not saying it can't be fun, but you can live in a country town almost anywhere, if I just want a permanent base hours from any airport, and they all tend to be a lot cheaper than living in the "big smoke".
I think folks from the US tend to underestimate the difference in proximity and services available in rural Spain vs rural US.
I emigrated to a tiny rural village in a far-flung corner of Spain, and I have an excellent highway 10 minutes away, the airport is 45 minutes (basically the same amount of time it took me from downtown Seattle to the airport), a decent city is also 45 minutes away. There are less than 1,000 folks in the entire district, but we have gigabit fibre to every house, a healthcare centre covered by national healthcare, dental clinic, two supermarkets, 6 cafes...
> There were people who were lucky enough to have the six figure remote jobs at companies that were okay with them not being available during normal business hours. Those jobs were at high risk of getting cut at the next economic down cycle.
When I did this, working outside of business hours was seen as an advantage in case we had issues overnight.
I’m on an extended vacation right now.
Realistically I’ll take 4 to 8 weeks off while looking for work back in the US.
I had a revelation a few years back.
Taking real vacations is absolutely necessary.
If I can work 12 months at 70 to 80$ an hour I generally can afford 8 to 12 weeks off as long as I as I’m not in the US or Europe.
When I think out of the box, I do imagine working on my own ideas during my travels. Met a brilliant 23 year old last year who speaks 3 languages, and programs in Python and Java
I could probably hire him at 10$ an hour.
Vs some 23 year old American who will demand 45$ an hour and tell me Python sucks.
But then I wake up, back to looking for my next contract.
You could get more bang for your buck. I'm currently freelancing at ~$50/hr and for every sixtyish hours I can live for two months, so I could afford to work half the year at a leisurely pace and not work the rest of the year, or work one month full tilt and then take five months off. This is while living comfortably, not having to be frugal or anything.
He must be really poor or not well-versed in the IT market if you can pay him 10$/h
Lower cost of living country, he has an IT job that pays half that.
Honestly I’d rather train up a smart but humble rookie over someone who’s going to lecture me on how Rust is the best language over and over again.
There are Costa Ricans who barely speak English making those wages reading off scripts in a call center.
Sounds like a version of OnlyFans for men.
Is OnlyFans for women? What?
Women are the ones making money on it. At least some are. Then there's a long tail that don't.
> One thing that stood out to me was how many of them were not really doing that well financially. The stereotype is someone with a $100K per year job living like a king in a place where the median wages are 1/10th of that
The thing is, having a Western passport and earning $10k-20k a year (untaxed) in countries where the median household incomes (ie. 2 working adults) are at best comparable to that is living like a king comparatively speaking.
There's a reason western expats are looked down on derisively by locals across ASEAN and the only ASEAN state with a semi-functional democracy (Malaysia) is also one of the least budget tourist friendly - the middle class and above look at tay ba lo with disgust as losers, and the lower class only look up to them for the opportunity to get a more powerful visa. The high rate of "passport bros" also doesn't help.
It's like that scene from Futurama when they all accidently age backwards: "Oh, so this is the famous Fry. What is he, like, the biggest loser on the surface, so he has to hang out in the sewer?
Fry: They're on to me!"
The reality is, most kinds of tourism only lead to the development of extractive economic institutions at the expense of human capital development and higher value economic sectors that would benefit from that.
And in the case of this specific village and town in Andalusia, this will only exacerbate anti-tourism politics which has helped both Vox and Podemos because rural Andalusia is absolutely not equipped to support a sudden influx of transitory high income outsiders.
Sounds like you have a low estimation of European people friend
>>The reality is, most kinds of tourism only lead to the development of extractive economic institutions at the expense of human capital development and higher value economic sectors that would benefit from that.
Those are dying towns. Tourism/digital nomads are their lifeline. There is no "human capital development" to speak of. Young people there do everything they can do migrate to bigger cities. Have you ever been to the region? Many of those towns look like ghost towns.
The main industry they have is greenhouse farming which actually drains the scarce resource the population need (water) while causing a lot of plastic pollution and mainly employing migrants paying them peanuts.
> when the impoverished locals realise what it means to compete with (from their perspective) extremely wealthy blow-ins
It's also more socially acceptable to complain about this stuff when the newcomers are seen as wealthy. We saw this in Canada when Chinese nationals started buying up houses in Canada. To the point the government started limiting foreign ownership of residential real estate.
https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/professionals/housing-markets-da...
In Canada , it wasn’t limited to areas with economic struggles/lack of investment.
Most of the investment was in major metropolitan cities, leading to a statistically significant percentage of residential housing stock being bought up with foreign(imported) capital. Many of these units were subsequently used as store of investment (left empty)
Since policies did not support building at the pace that met increased demand(mainly immigration), and many foreign buyers were comfortable bidding up housing: this was a significant contributor to housing prices inflating to mutiples that were much higher than previous trends (i.e. upto 20 times median salary vs 5/7 times previously)
And the foreign buyer ban did lead to a measureable decline in prices
Anyway,
See also money laundering through Canada:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_washing
Complain about what stuff? Isnt he saying the complaints are specifically that they are wealthy?
The primary thing cornering Canadian real-estate was investor corporations, rather than Chinese nationals. But it was easier politics to highlight Chinese nationals, esp. coming up to the Canadian election.
> As I understand it, these attempts to use digital nomad money to revive impoverished areas tend to become controversial when the impoverished locals realise what it means to compete with (from their perspective) extremely wealthy blow-ins.
I don’t see it like this, it may as well be that digital nomads are bringing much needed cashflow to the local community; of course this phenomenon should be monitored but digital nomads are so few that they can’t have a meaningful impact in sectors like housing or good prices.
You haven’t lived in Medellin, Colombia if you don’t think digital nomads can have an effect on housing prices.
My experience is from 2015-2024. I did the digital nomad thing for 9 years and lived in Medellin 4 separate times over that period for 6 months to a year each time.
I saw rents for normal folks, not furnished and not Airbnbs, do a 4x in that time period. Laureles was a middle class suburb for locals in 2015 and was just overrun by nomads by 2024. Poblado, Laureles, even as far as La Estrella saw a really noticeable impact.
Clearly I contributed to the issue and nomads did inject money into the economy but it also had a really visible effect on housing. I don’t have any ideas on how to do it right but it is something that should be approached carefully or locals get priced out.
EDIT: I believe they started more tightly regulating things in 2024 with required registration for <1 year rentals. Not sure how that has played out. Also added the specific neighborhoods that I saw things shoot up.
How do you assign changes to: “nomads”, expats, retirees, and even local gentrification?
My social circle was largely nomads when I lived there so I was very aware of CoLiving, CoWork, and other business almost exclusively catering to nomads. Those exploded in number during this time period.
Poblado was already one of the richest neighborhoods in the whole country in 2015. One of my neighbors was an Emmy winning pianist. So, gentrification isn’t going to be a thing in neighborhood like that.
It is a single data point of my lived experience in that part of the world. I am not presenting it as a peer reviewed study. But, there are also examples like Portugal which has had more recent studies done on this.
s/expats/migrants/
What effect did the tech layoffs have at the end of your stay?
It matters more than you think when it's a rural area with limited housing supply...
And the nomad visa is not so cheap, by yourself it requires €2850/month which I believe is a LOT more than rural workers are earning, this is exactly how people get squeezed out of housing.
> it requires €2850/month
Holy crap that’s a lot of money. That’s just for the privilege of living and working there? Or do you get citizenship benefits like healthcare etc? And what about taxes?
I believe that's an income requirement, not a fee.
Healthcare in Spain is tied to citizenship or employment. If you are employed within Spain you will get healthcare included.
It worked in my village, at least for the local who want to work with the incoming nomads; they all need things done and for them up to 10x the local cost is still cheap, so here the locals are thriving. And now everything looks/works better.
yes this works for a while till it grows and locals start to compete with the nomads and get priced out and have to move to the outskirts of their town. I’ve seen it happen in Spain, Costa Rica, Mexico, Bali etc.
I guess this place is just too small; this is more the type of place the article talks about ; this was dead a little while ago, but there are no outskirts and the locals own most nice builds and do airbnbs in them. It's too small to get this type of 'push out the locals' to be happening unless the locals just sell everything, but they are here with their kids etc as well. I can see that it would and does happen in bigger towns. You cannot build here either; nature reserve... You can only restore.
> attempts to use digital nomad money to revive impoverished areas tend to become controversial
That depends on the circumstances, doesn't it? In crowded areas, it automatically leads to competition, but these villages are empty. Having a few remote workers there is only going to help essential services. But if you think that not everybody will see it that way, you may be right.
> this won't help with [Spain's "vibrant culture"]
That is true. Even the idea that small villages form Spain's vibrant culture is a bit of an overstatement.
> Having a few remote workers there is only going to help essential services ...
It will delay the inevitable, if that's what you mean. Not by much. The whole point of being "nomad" is to leave quickly as well.
> The whole point of being "nomad" is to leave quickly as well.
There are certainly a crowd of (mostly young, or early-retired) digital nomads for whom the mobility is a big priority, but as time goes by a hell of a lot of them turn out to be looking for somewhere to set down roots. Here in Spain we see a pretty steady pipeline of digital nomad -> rural homeowner
From the native point of view of one of such countries, Portugal, the problem is a problem of scale.
When it is a couple of folks, bring life again to the village, small town, all good.
Now when then it gets daily YT shorts, and TikTok videos, of how great the life is, and how "cheap" everything happens to be, while the locals pay through the nose for basic stuff.
No the taxi ride, the restaurant bill, the supermart car filled all the way to the top isn't cheap when one is barely touching over 1000 euros after taxes, on average.
So when it gets too much, the locals no longer find it as advantageous as they originally thought, and then votes into right wing parties rise, even from elderly folk that should have known better from dictatorships that ended in the 1970's.
Naturally not everyone is like that, and many do integrate into local culture, and even do have videos calling out such behaviours from fellow nomads.
That's completely right. If your village appears on CNN Travel, it's basically game over.
But I don't get it. When push comes to shove, wealth is debt. Concentration of wealth is directly related, indirectly caused, by debt. Debt is what investors are willing to put in. The bigger the economic union they live in, the more debt investors will be willing to put up with. This leads to wealth concentrating over time, and the more concentrated wealth will be, the poorer these rural villages will be, and everybody runs.
They chose policies to go deeper into debt, to join a bigger union to go deeper into debt.
I mean, how is this not what they wanted?
Because without the union, you would still take at least 6 hours drive from Porto to Evora, using national roads, preferably during the night unless you wanted to cook between 30 and 40 degrees celsius as I did so many times during may childhood in late 70's, early 80's, instead of the cosy 4h something from taking the motorway.
That debt is what allowed many of the infrastructure that is now in place.
However it is also the consequence of that debt, that only the middle to low level classes get to experience, that now puts all right wing parties on leading votes, even thought most Boomers and Gen Xers across Europe, should know better how living under dictatorships feels like.
> Because without the union, you would still take at least 6 hours drive from Porto to Evora, using national roads, preferably during the night unless you wanted to cook between 30 and 40 degrees celsius as I did so many times during may childhood in late 70's, early 80's, instead of the cosy 4h something from taking the motorway.
Is this supposed to be an argument? Yes it's fun to buy nice things. I'm aware of that. Especially with other people's money and work.
> That debt is what allowed many of the infrastructure that is now in place.
And Gen X is the major part of the people paying for it about now.
> even thought most Boomers and Gen Xers across Europe, should know better how living under dictatorships feels like.
Obviously they think it feels better than having the government spend less, which is of course the deal you handed them with: you got to have the government spend more on you and your generation, by promising it would spend less on them and their generation, while taxing them more. Your generation promised that, on their behalf.
They weren't born yet, or at least not politically active, to complain about it.
So why should they, why would they, accept less than you got? Your generation promised their work, and then spent all the money.
Can they do the same to your generation perhaps? Take a similar amount of money back, which would roughly equate to cutting elderly pensions to zero for 30 years or so, well, until the debt is paid off. That would make it be more like if your generation spent it's own money.
Are we now turning this into one of those generation discussions that plague social media?
Many of them won't care about Spanish culture or care about the locals. I agree with your assessment.
In Cuenca, EC you have a lot of retirees and a few digital nomads. Most people don’t make a big move to spend more money than they would in their home country. So they frequent all of the same small local businesses and markets as the locals. No one learns Spanish so some money funnels into interpreters and facilitators. I ended up spending a lot of money on restaurants started by immigrants because I don’t like Ecuadorian cuisine that much. All of this to say that the money is distributed more than one might think.
Yeah, Build The Wall rhetoric is pretty popular worldwide. While most associated with Trump, it’s a general view that people demand their neighbours be blood-and-soil compatriots. Immigration is generally seen as a threat to the local populace.
> Yeah, Build The Wall rhetoric is pretty popular worldwide. While most associated with Trump, it’s a general view that people demand their neighbours be blood-and-soil compatriots. Immigration is generally seen as a threat to the local populace
The point GP was making is that digital nomads are generally in a particular place only temporarily not permanently. So, feelings towards nomads is not the same as feelings towards immigrants. The latter are building community. The former simply feeds off of it.
Most actual immigrants are nomads, at least where I live (Western Europe), they are "passing through". They do not intend to settle permanently. Which most governments love, by the way, yes to income taxes, no to pensions later.
The only reason they stay is if they have no choice for some reason (e.g. Ukrainians or Russians fearing that if they go back will be sent to the front. Lots of those in the past 2 years). Issue is that a lot of them never intended to stay (and so didn't even bother to keep their visas up to date, so now the government must either)
Is it sustainable? No. Not for the governments receiving these people. Because there's still less people to take over everything from political jobs to apartments in a system that is critically dependent on constant growth.
Is it sustainable for the immigrants? No, for them it doesn't work either. The cost is no pensions later, and the issue with that is that to have a decent income to survive on, they'll need to save about a million euros per head (4% on that matches a local's "good" pension).
And yes, everybody makes financial projections as if this is not the case. Why? Doing it like that means more money to spend right now ... and for now creditors (ie. the central bank) accepts the reasoning. And the truth is, we're nowhere near the point where this system must crash. 10 or so more years, and double that in the big cities.
> Most actual immigrants are nomads, at least where I live (Western Europe), they are "passing through". They do not intend to settle permanently. Which most governments love, by the way, yes to income taxes, no to pensions later.
It doesn't work like that for Europeans, your work years accumulate across European countries, we are free to collect the related portion to the paid taxes, when leaving the country, or leave everything to retirement age, at which point the social security of the official residency country will take care of collecting from across Europe, provided the necessary paperwork.
All EU countries are changing their pension systems at the same time, and not for the better. Do you really believe they won't at some point drop this?
Well, I suppose the relevant question is if you're willing to be your future they won't do this, because that's what you're doing.
The most famous actual wall in Europe is the Berlin Wall, which wasn’t about ethnicity or built to keep anyone out. And even Trump’s wall isn’t about blood or soil - CBP and ICE would collapse without the Spanish speaking Hispanic population of Texas and the southwest filling their ranks.
> CBP and ICE would collapse without the Spanish speaking Hispanic population of Texas and the southwest filling their ranks.
I thought It's a conflict between English speaking America and Spanish speaking America.
Whether digital nomads contribute economically to local villages is a fine question.
But - what is happening to Spain? It has among the lowest fertility in Europe and has only avoided collapse in population through migration form LATAM and North Africa. Why is spain suffering from this?
What's happening in the villages is a symptom of something larger.
It’s happening not just in Spain but across most of Europe, the USA, and East Asia. But lots of Europe and the USA have immigration to offset the population decline. China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, are in dramatic population declines. Even India has stared to level off and expected to decline.
Is the idea that population growth will continue indefinitely? Eventually you run into limits
It’s not an idea. Just an observation of what’s happening with populations around the world, there’s lots of data on it.
I believe (perhaps incorrectly) that the GP was asking should population just keep increasing .. many people have been looking to slow population growth for some time and would see it finally starting to slow and perhaps peak and then fall in 2050 as a good outcome.
To degrees, but Spain's fertility rate is appalling even by modern western standards. ~1.1 vs ~1.6 in the US. It's a huge difference and closer to the East Asia collapses than to the US.
One thing to look for in the EU is free movement of people. Young people can and do migrate to regions that pay them more. It would be interesting to look at Spanish youth migration to see if the younger workers (i.e. those more likely to have children) have moved elsewhere. That would create a further dent on the stats.
Isn't Spain one of the desired places for young people in Europe? I always saw people going to Spain, Germany or Switzerland for bigger salaries (e.g., people emigranting from Portugal)
Overall life quality is better in Spain, but not the salary at all.
Nuh-uh. Sadly tens of thousands (official figures around 70-80k) of young people emigrate from Spain each year.
Do you think the causes are the same across the regions?
Yes.
I think it's the same issue—wealth inequality. I believe this single issue can explain all of modern society's problems
> wealth inequality. I believe this single issue can explain all of modern society's problems
If anything the trend is the other way; countries that are significantly more economically egalitarian tend to have lower fertility rates.
Here is a map of wealth inequality based on the Gini coefficient:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient
Here is another showing total fertility rate:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fer...
I consider this a typical case of statisticians massaging the data. In fact, I believe the Gini coefficient itself is flawed modeling. Even statisticians don't really use it much these days, right? The Gini index on Wikipedia actually reflects consumption inequality.
Also, high-fertility countries fundamentally have low contraception usage, low women's rights, and short periods of education. This is because labor is crucial in typical agrarian to light-industry economies.
Conversely, low-fertility countries are characterized by extended education and delayed job stability. The reason is simple: work that generates high added value requires a significant amount of time spent on education. Generally, the OECD doesn't view the decline in fertility rates in developed countries as being driven by just a single variable either.
Rather, there is a clear established relationship: higher housing costs correspond to a lower TFR (Total Fertility Rate) [1]. Classes exempt from these housing expenses—namely, individuals whose parents hold substantial real estate and assets—clearly have more children.
Actually, this kind of research has been conducted extensively in East Asian countries like Korea and Japan, yielding very similar conclusions.
[1] https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/society-at-a-glance-202...
> Rather, there is a clear established relationship: higher housing costs correspond to a lower TFR (Total Fertility Rate) [1]. Classes exempt from these housing expenses—namely, individuals whose parents hold substantial real estate and assets—clearly have more children.
This report is 122 pages. A cursory search did not turn up anything to support either of your claims. What page of the report are you drawing this conclusion from?
> Fertility The total fertility rate (TFR) indicates the average number of children born per woman over a lifetime given current age‑specific fertility rates, assuming no female mortality during reproductive years. The population is replaced at a total fertility rate of about 2.1 children per woman.
>Increasing housing costs affect fertility 33pages
It’s clearly something that’s also in the table of contents.
Let's consider programming, which represents an entry into a high value-added industry.
To monetize programming, you fundamentally need to offer something more valuable than existing open-source software, or target a niche that open-source fails to address. However, this industry has now matured, and countless talented young individuals in the US have already contributed heavily to the open-source ecosystem.
As a result, it is exceedingly difficult for developers in non-English speaking countries to sell programs that are inferior to free open-source alternatives. This is exacerbated by the very nature of software, which can be instantly and perfectly replicated.
(Physical capital, on the other hand, is much easier for the establishment to control through protectionism. For instance, to foster the growth of Hyundai Motors, my country, South Korea, restricted American car imports, effectively forcing citizens to drive lower-quality domestic cars. That kind of national sacrifice was required.)
Consequently, citizens of non-English speaking countries face a double burden: the time required to master English, added to the time needed to learn programming and accumulate foundational experience. By the time they build this experience and reach a stable level of professional competency, they are typically in their early 30s. This inherently forces a delay in marriage and family formation.
The poorest immigrant lives like a king of old —let alone the childless jobless Spaniard he works for.
Elon earning five billion credits every second has nothing to do with it.
I generally don't think highly of people who make this argument. It relies on the simplistic framing of the "end of absolute poverty." In fact, this is the exact same rhetoric used by CCP apologists. While it is true that the modern poor enjoy better consumption, this argument completely ignores the economic concepts of positional goods and relative deprivation.
Consider the biological imperative of finding a mate. The competitive factors for securing a partner are now broadcast and scaled across the entire society. The core of what kings of old enjoyed wasn't "air conditioning" or "refrigerators." Kings owned territory (real estate), wielded power, and monopolized the infrastructural capital that allowed them to pass down an overwhelming survival advantage to their lineage. Does a modern immigrant live like a king just because they use an iPhone? The modern poor merely consume cheap manufactured goods; they have been completely stripped of the physical foundation required to form a family (housing) and the control over their generational reproduction.
The idea that Elon Musk amassing wealth has nothing to do with the working class is laughable. When wealth concentrates at the very top, that capital inevitably flows into supply-constrained, zero-sum assets—namely, real estate in prime locations and elite educational opportunities. Why do you think the cost of living in Silicon Valley is so absurdly high? The capital accumulated by billionaires like Musk and other asset holders astronomically pumps up (inflates) the prices of these "positional goods."
Human family formation is not determined by comparing oneself to a 16th-century serf. It is strictly determined by one's "relative status" within their contemporary community. No matter how much absolute caloric intake increases, if you cannot secure the asset advantage required to raise a child to a "middle-class standard" within your current community, a rational human being will simply give up on reproduction.
You indirectly call my argument Socialist and you are not entirely wrong since I read many texts from marxists.org as a teenager.
It is still an odd accusation given that it is you defending the innocent victims of systemic oppression here.
I would think the argument is more that the average worker living under a king would not even own their property, but would be renting a hovel, living in abject squalor, and having lots of children in order to bring in enough to pay the rent and taxes.
I know for sure in which timeline I'd prefer to be the average worker.
EDIT: For clarity, in no way am I simping for the billionaire class. I think it'll have to change. But people who think serfs in the middle ages had it better are crazy.
I find that unlikely, as it happens in countries with somewhat balanced wealth as well (and countries with the highest fertility rates have the highest wealth imbalance).
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Why do you think this? Spain has a lower fertility rate than the US and most of western Europe. Does it have greater wealth inequality?
??The statistics speak for themselves. In Spain, the top 1% holds 21% of the total wealth, 30% of the low-income demographic are the working poor, and 45% are irregular workers.
Isn't the US in a similar situation? Regardless of other arguments, when you consider the OECD statistics demonstrating the impact of housing costs on fertility rates, I firmly believe that wealth inequality is indeed the root cause.
[1] https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/journals/jpsj...
it has happened what it's happening in almost all the world, at different speeds. It's a combination of factors, economic, cultural, gender roles and general societal expectations (secularization, individualism, self-realization over family, etc.)
Particular factors in Spain compared to other European countries are: chronically high unemployment rates, especially among the younger ones, low salaries and exploitation at the start of the career and general work culture with little respect of workforce (you are always replaceable, be thankful to your bosses). This makes children very unaffordable, people wait until they are "stable enough", which never happens.
The issue with these small towns in Southern Europe is that they don't offer services, because they are abandoned. No schools, no shops, no hospitals... you end up being isolated, struggle for a lot of basic needs, and you leave. Not enough people -> less and less services, and the cycle goes on. There may be a few exceptions of course.
> chronically high unemployment rates, especially among the younger ones
This is an economic signal that there are too many people relative to available jobs. Get demand for people up and the rest will follow.
This would necessarily mean wage inflation outpacing asset price inflation, which the asset-owning public will hate.
it's not that there are too many people, it's more that the type of jobs that are abundant are low-wage, temporary and low-skilled.
> Why is spain suffering from this?
A lot of good answers to which I'd like to contribute a personal understanding as someone from the euro south:
These countries were decimated by free trade. A significant amount of the populace is not interested in having a "career" and follow a race to the bottom by competing 24/7. I would say culturally they are incompatible the the free marketeering that has been going on in the past decades.
We need to get protectionism back up and running. Work is a necessary evil that needs to take as little of our life as possible.
> We need to get protectionism back up and running.
We have known since Bastiat that this makes both sides poorer, because it also clobbers your export industry due to retaliation. And, unless you're willing to forgo iPhones and petrol, you're dependent on imports anyway.
> And, unless you're willing to forgo iPhones and petrol, you're dependent on imports anyway.
I think many people who argue for "protectionism" and the like would find that an acceptable price to pay. See the other comment about "relative status". I think many would like to have less in an absolute sense if that meant they were relatively less poor than "the rich".
Now I, personally, think that's just rose-tinted glasses. For example, nowadays, farmers in France have it rough. But I doubt that some peasant from 2-300 years ago actually had a better life and had less wealth difference compared to the upper-class of their time.
>We need to get protectionism back up and running. Work is a necessary evil that needs to take as little of our life as possible.
That attitude isn't compatible with paying decent pensions to an ever-growing retired fraction of the population. Someone has to work hard to fund them.
> Why is spain suffering from this
The same reason Italy, Portugal, and Greece are - they never fully recovered from the Eurozone collapse, and as a result were unable to completely climb up the value chain on time.
> has only avoided collapse in population through migration form LATAM and North Africa
Spain's TFR is still in the 1.0 to 1.2 range and it's median age is still amongst the oldest in Europe (44.5).
> LATAM
It's still not attractive for much of LatAm. Much of the current LatAm wave in Spain and Italy is from Venezuela or Colombia, and most Venezolanos who could use immigration by descent have largely immigrated already.
Spain doesn't have the same pull factor for LatAm that Canada or even the US still does thanks to higher incomes and pre-existing diaspora networks - especially given that Spain is still dealing with an ongoing braindrain to Western and Northern Europe.
And any immigration from LatAm (excluding Venezuela) irrespective of Europe or NAM is fleeting as much of LatAm has developmentally caught up with Eastern and parts of Southern Europe.
> they never fully recovered from the Eurozone collapse
Fertility seems independent from anything economy related: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/esp/spa... , it happened well before 2008, and today it is only oscillating around the same 1.2 number. The same as many other rich countries.
> It's still not attractive for much of LatAm. Much of the current LatAm wave in Spain and Italy is from Venezuela or Colombia
Spain has Latam inmigration for each an every spanish speaking country in America: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inmigraci%C3%B3n_en_Espa%C3%B1... . There is no clear skew towards Venezuela or Colombia, other than being the biggest countries. Once normalized per population (i.e. a small country like Uruguay with 3 million people won't send 1 million to Spain), you find that Cuba, Paraguay, Ecuador or Uruguay are above Venezuela in inmigration rate to Spain, and Honduras and Dominican Republic are above Colombia. Only Mexico (they probably migrate to the US) and Peru (I don't know why) have very low inmigration to Spain.
> Spain doesn't have the same pull factor for LatAm that Canada
10% of current Spain population come from Latam. In Canada, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_immigration_statistics, the first Latam source of inmigration country is Mexico (0.25% of Canada population), Colombia 0.22%, El Salvador 0.14%, Chile 0.08%, Venezuela 0.08%... Overall, probably less than 2% Canada population comes from Latam. I find it very difficult to believe that Canada has more pull than Spain.
You seem to forget also that entering Spain means entering Schengen area: anyone coming from Latam that manages to come to Spain can "jump" to almost any other country in Europe except the UK without having to use a passport (including Norway, Iceland or Switzerland, that are not UE).
> You seem to forget also that entering Spain means entering Schengen area: anyone coming from Latam that manages to come to Spain can "jump" to almost any other country in Europe except the UK without having to use a passport (including Norway, Iceland or Switzerland, that are not UE).
Eh, not quite: once you become a Spanish national, yes, but just because there aren't internal border controls doesn't actually entitle you to turn entry or residence in Spain into entry or residence in another Schengen country.
Last part is not true. Schengen only removes border controls but doesn’t allow you to legally work in any country.
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https://archive.ph/dBLoY
I think if the right to work from home was encoded in law for any job which was practically possible to do remotely, you'd have a better shot at keeping rural villages alive without relying on foreigners. That would keep the local culture living instead of replacing it.
But this is better than nothing I suppose, at least it prevents ghost towns
The town: Benarrabá, Málaga province, Andalusia.
Which is an hours drive through twisty mountain roads to anywhere. No public transport.
Why would a digital nomad live there, when for just a little bit more you can have a walkable town with public transport? Isn’t that where all the Americans are flooding Europe for?
It's always interesting watching counties try to lift the birthrate, and doing things that don't actually help improve the conditions that lead to the issue in the first place.
Look here's an idea. If you're under a certain age, and you want to own a home and move to a small village etc.. you are granted 100% protection from the government from your employer and you can work 100% remote. Enshrined into law. Nothing the employer can do about it.
Make it a whole nationalism thing to get the right wing on board.
I know a whole bunch of people who would move to a country town in a heartbeat if they could, heck lots of people did it during the pandemic, the minute that remote work became a possibility.
It's great they're chasing these digital nomads, but I'm not sure that's the solution that's going to work long or even medium term.
Like... whom? Zuck or Larry? They're 10 years late to the party, digital nomads are no more. They can count on German and British pensioners, although personally I'd prefer to be poor than to cater to this demographics.
> I'd prefer to be poor than to cater to this demographics.
What's wrong with pensioners?
- poorer generally
- don't add economic value
- more health care expenses
The British and German governments pay for the healthcare of their pensioners living in Spain via intergovernmental reimbursement agreements so the healthcare expense to Spain is in fact zero. They also provide a significant economic net benefit to Spain by injecting billions in "imported wealth" through real estate taxes, year-round consumption, and foreign-funded pensions.
You mean EHIC card? It's only for medical emergencies, then UK freewillingly left the EU.
They left their multiple real estate back home so your kids can emigrate there and rent it, but your kids will have to work hard actually and unfortunately. On the bright side once your kids come back from emigration, they can in turn start catering to them.
Because the trend is over and people stopped living of sweepstakes calling that nomad lifestyle does not mean it's over?
With digital nomads is like with standard, recreational tourism. It is always promised by local decision-makers it will bring multiple benefits to locals, including economic boost, but it always a pact with a Devil where few reap rewards while rest are left impoverished, delegated to toilet cleaning and food serving, and local customs and culture are eroded.
And with likes AirBnB lead to increasing property values thus increasing rents thus taking even larger share of the income of those workers. Or entirely forcing them to be displaced. For little gain to them.
I have spent quite a bit of time in Andalusia and other poor Spanish regions. A lot of those towns are empty and have mainly older people left. Young ones do anything they can do go to a bigger city looking for opportunities. Some of them serve as retiree/vacation spot for mainly Spanish people from wealthier regions. They are ghost towns during the winter (when digital nomads want to come).
In more touristy but still poor regions (like Tenerife) the official argument for anti-tourist policies is that most of the surplus economic value is captured by property owners while causing strain on infrastructure and making life more expensive for the locals.
To me the obvious solution is to raise property/land value taxes and use the money to develop infrastructure and lower taxes for local working population. This way the incentives are aligned for everyone.
The problem is politics is captured by property owners so it's easier to make villain out tourists/nomads to redirect anger of the locals while continuing like normal for as long as possible.
Nomads are a group that doesn't drain welfare resources, pay for themselves and don't cause crime. They don't even take "your jobs" - they may even create some if enough of them come. If your policy is against them you truly lost it in my view.
Throughout the developed world, small towns and the countryside are developed. It seems clear that cities are preferred (probably because it's easy to control people in concentrated areas.) People like Bill Gates would prefer the countryside was full of automated farms and the Tetrapak heir would rather clear the countryside of peasants and turn them into some kind of safari.
However, I do not think this digital nomad stuff
Historically this is a spot on. From Highland Clearances to modern accumulation of land and real estate ownership. Those who have plenty, they want it all. The rest should live in a city on 30 sqmt, ideally rent, fully surveilled at all times.
It will always boil down to real estate ownership, squeezing and extracting the last available cash with rents. The taxation has to proactively prevent it. Once you allow non-residents to purchase, even if they have local passport, the prices go instantly to the moon.
It wouldn't be a problem if the tax burden was on property owners. If someone purchasing 500k EUR apartment had to pay even 2% of real value of it every year to local community they would be welcome with open arms. Unfortunately right now it's not the locals nor the local infrastructure that capture the benefits.
If Spain (and most of the EU) had saner regulations then who knows, maybe they would even allow for building more in places people want to spend time in.
The issue with this approach is that long-time locals will see the market price of their homes rise with the newcomers'. So if you base the tax on that market value, the locals have it very rough.
You can lower taxes on labor or structure land/property value tax in a way that it offsets your income tax. This way people who live and work in the area pay once. Someone who pays their other taxes somewhere else but buys property pays twice.
You just need to align incentives and make it so people who benefits the most pay the most taxes. Preferably proportionally to how much they benefit from the whole arrangement.
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