5 ms·

LATAM will get a lot of remote work if the wages stay lower than the US since they're in better-for-US-company-timezones than India or others overseas. That's w

LATAM will get a lot of remote work if the wages stay lower than the US since they're in better-for-US-company-timezones than India or others overseas. That's what my company is outsourcing to.

TZubiri 2y ago
Yeah, looks like the go to strategy, but I may have to pass on the gold mine and go for the higher payoff of a decent living but a more spiritually fulfilling trade diplomacy In international trade there's complementary/productive trade, you have gold, we have silver, let's trade. And you also have redundant/substitutive trade, you have soy, we have cheaper soy, buy our soy. I don't believe from the bottom of my heart in substitutive trade for similar reasons I don't believe in (most) inmigration. We've conquered the americas, now we have to populate it, god won't reward desertors who revert their ancestor's decision by running back to the old continent, and the excuse of "I was born in the wrong hemisphere" is also quite petty, we rolled the dice and this is what we got. Substitutive trade isn't far from immigration, the poor want to go to the rich countries, and the rich buy the cheap labour. Where is the pride in that? In both sides. Leave your country for another with a different religion, leave your mother your brethren, and serve. Leave a war instead of fighting? Take a 1 hour bus to a fancy neighbourhood to serve coffee and wash dishes. Conversely, you can wash your own dishes, you can use a bottle of water and fill that up before you leave, we don't need a migrant washing our dishes, and we don't need to migrate to wash dishes. So I'm trying to focus on trade that is not replaceable with local labour, hopefully countries start nailing down remote work and we start locking those behind visas. And unfortunately india and philipinnes get that productive trade, they can cover night shifts. We'll find stuff to export. There's not much, as Trump said "they need us more than we need them". Local entertainment, sports and games will always be there, it's like cybertourism. there might be an argument for redundant trade as a counterweight to an unbalanced productive export. But I don't think that works long term. There's also localization services, in language and legal, but those are just costs of exporting really. Lithium is probably the lesser evil, super extractive, but we gotta pay somehow. Sorry about the super rant. Lately I've been more using forums as a way to write things that I already had drafted in my mind.
dumbledoren 2y ago
Doubtful. Digital nomads, short-term rental tourism, real estate investors (prompted by the former two) are increasing housing costs and CoL in all the popular destinations. Costs in some regions like Barcelona almost got equalized with costs in major US tech hubs. The same is happening in places like Buenos Aires. So its unlikely that the trend in LATAM will continue as it is. Also, this is very bad for not only the locals as they get gentrified from living in their own city/urban centers (and in some cases even rural zones), but also the local companies: The US and other rich Western companies dump their healthcare and housing costs onto the locals through arbitration while making it harder for local companies to keep up with the CoL increase through wages, therefore increasing their expenses and reducing their competitiveness. And the reduced taxes that the nomads etc pay doesn't help it. (that is, the ones who actually pay).
- lurk2 2y ago
  > The US and other rich Western companies dump their healthcare and housing costs onto the locals [...] And the reduced taxes that the nomads etc pay doesn't help it. (that is, the ones who actually pay). Most nomads are going to be getting private health insurance. It's true that a lot of them are not paying their taxes, but if you're talking about Latin America that's true for a large portion of the domestic population as well. I looked into relocating to a country in South America a few years ago and had a lawyer tell me to not even worry about filling out the relevant visas because he had clients from China who had been living there for decades with no papers (I opted not to retain his services). The key here is that even if they aren't paying taxes, they are bringing money into the economy and are generally not competing with local laborers. This attitude has started to shift in places like Mexico City because a lot of the expats are not digital nomads but instead run-of-the-mill immigrants competing with the working population for jobs.
  - dumbledoren 2y ago
    > Most nomads are going to be getting private health insurance Those private health insurances are subsidized by the public healthcare because they piggyback off of the public healthcare system. That's why they are affordable, unlike the US. And as a result, those nomads end up congestion the public healthcare system because the private health insurers also send their own patients to public hospitals for anything serious. Im telling this from a place that is experiencing precisely this. > It's true that a lot of them are not paying their taxes, but if you're talking about Latin America that's true for a large portion of the domestic population as well The amount of taxes avoided by the poor majority in such countries don't compare to the taxes avoided by the rich white collars. Nomads earn 2 to 5 times more than the local white collars as well. Even in some European countries. > The key here is that even if they aren't paying taxes, they are bringing money into the economy They don't. People think that but neither tourists nor nomads nor short term-renters (whatever the kind) bring money into the economy: The nomad doesn't buy 10 shoes every month, 2 cars every year, eat out 20 times every day or buy 50 loaves of bread every day. He consumes just like any other human being (obviously), and his consumption does not move the needle of the local economy much. What nomad's consumption boosts is a few local/luxury shops that cater to the rich or nomads, and maybe one or two local shops or services that they also use. Those few businesses make bank even as other businesses in the same neighborhood rot. And those few businesses that benefit don't buy dozens of employees to make up for the added workload - they hire one or two and everyone works harder and that's it. So what nomads end up doing is enriching a few local, already-well-to-do shop and business owners. On the other side, they cause a 20 to 30% increase in rents (even in Europe), housing prices and significant increases in CoL. > This attitude has started to shift in places like Mexico City because a lot of the expats are not digital nomads but instead run-of-the-mill immigrants competing with the working population for jobs. It started changing in Europe too. In places like Barcelona, Madrid, Southern Spain, Portugal, some central European 'bohemian' destinations etc. Mostly because of the sharp gentrification the nomads are causing even for the white collars. But especially the English-speaking foreigner population concentration in some places became way too visible and they started outnumbering the locals. In Barcelona there seems to be a lot of cafes in the city center where the waiters don't know Spanish or Catalan, people having difficulty hearing either language being spoken in the city center etc. In any case a strong reaction came to being against nomadism and its not looking good.

LATAM will get a lot of remote work if the wages stay lower than the US since they're in better-for-US-company-timezones than India or others overseas. That's what my company is outsourcing to.

TZubiri 2y ago

Yeah, looks like the go to strategy, but I may have to pass on the gold mine and go for the higher payoff of a decent living but a more spiritually fulfilling trade diplomacy In international trade there's complementary/productive trade, you have gold, we have silver, let's trade. And you also have redundant/substitutive trade, you have soy, we have cheaper soy, buy our soy. I don't believe from the bottom of my heart in substitutive trade for similar reasons I don't believe in (most) inmigration. We've conquered the americas, now we have to populate it, god won't reward desertors who revert their ancestor's decision by running back to the old continent, and the excuse of "I was born in the wrong hemisphere" is also quite petty, we rolled the dice and this is what we got. Substitutive trade isn't far from immigration, the poor want to go to the rich countries, and the rich buy the cheap labour. Where is the pride in that? In both sides. Leave your country for another with a different religion, leave your mother your brethren, and serve. Leave a war instead of fighting? Take a 1 hour bus to a fancy neighbourhood to serve coffee and wash dishes. Conversely, you can wash your own dishes, you can use a bottle of water and fill that up before you leave, we don't need a migrant washing our dishes, and we don't need to migrate to wash dishes. So I'm trying to focus on trade that is not replaceable with local labour, hopefully countries start nailing down remote work and we start locking those behind visas. And unfortunately india and philipinnes get that productive trade, they can cover night shifts. We'll find stuff to export. There's not much, as Trump said "they need us more than we need them". Local entertainment, sports and games will always be there, it's like cybertourism. there might be an argument for redundant trade as a counterweight to an unbalanced productive export. But I don't think that works long term. There's also localization services, in language and legal, but those are just costs of exporting really. Lithium is probably the lesser evil, super extractive, but we gotta pay somehow. Sorry about the super rant. Lately I've been more using forums as a way to write things that I already had drafted in my mind.

dumbledoren 2y ago

Doubtful. Digital nomads, short-term rental tourism, real estate investors (prompted by the former two) are increasing housing costs and CoL in all the popular destinations. Costs in some regions like Barcelona almost got equalized with costs in major US tech hubs. The same is happening in places like Buenos Aires. So its unlikely that the trend in LATAM will continue as it is. Also, this is very bad for not only the locals as they get gentrified from living in their own city/urban centers (and in some cases even rural zones), but also the local companies: The US and other rich Western companies dump their healthcare and housing costs onto the locals through arbitration while making it harder for local companies to keep up with the CoL increase through wages, therefore increasing their expenses and reducing their competitiveness. And the reduced taxes that the nomads etc pay doesn't help it. (that is, the ones who actually pay).

lurk2 2y ago
> The US and other rich Western companies dump their healthcare and housing costs onto the locals [...] And the reduced taxes that the nomads etc pay doesn't help it. (that is, the ones who actually pay). Most nomads are going to be getting private health insurance. It's true that a lot of them are not paying their taxes, but if you're talking about Latin America that's true for a large portion of the domestic population as well. I looked into relocating to a country in South America a few years ago and had a lawyer tell me to not even worry about filling out the relevant visas because he had clients from China who had been living there for decades with no papers (I opted not to retain his services). The key here is that even if they aren't paying taxes, they are bringing money into the economy and are generally not competing with local laborers. This attitude has started to shift in places like Mexico City because a lot of the expats are not digital nomads but instead run-of-the-mill immigrants competing with the working population for jobs.
- dumbledoren 2y ago
  > Most nomads are going to be getting private health insurance Those private health insurances are subsidized by the public healthcare because they piggyback off of the public healthcare system. That's why they are affordable, unlike the US. And as a result, those nomads end up congestion the public healthcare system because the private health insurers also send their own patients to public hospitals for anything serious. Im telling this from a place that is experiencing precisely this. > It's true that a lot of them are not paying their taxes, but if you're talking about Latin America that's true for a large portion of the domestic population as well The amount of taxes avoided by the poor majority in such countries don't compare to the taxes avoided by the rich white collars. Nomads earn 2 to 5 times more than the local white collars as well. Even in some European countries. > The key here is that even if they aren't paying taxes, they are bringing money into the economy They don't. People think that but neither tourists nor nomads nor short term-renters (whatever the kind) bring money into the economy: The nomad doesn't buy 10 shoes every month, 2 cars every year, eat out 20 times every day or buy 50 loaves of bread every day. He consumes just like any other human being (obviously), and his consumption does not move the needle of the local economy much. What nomad's consumption boosts is a few local/luxury shops that cater to the rich or nomads, and maybe one or two local shops or services that they also use. Those few businesses make bank even as other businesses in the same neighborhood rot. And those few businesses that benefit don't buy dozens of employees to make up for the added workload - they hire one or two and everyone works harder and that's it. So what nomads end up doing is enriching a few local, already-well-to-do shop and business owners. On the other side, they cause a 20 to 30% increase in rents (even in Europe), housing prices and significant increases in CoL. > This attitude has started to shift in places like Mexico City because a lot of the expats are not digital nomads but instead run-of-the-mill immigrants competing with the working population for jobs. It started changing in Europe too. In places like Barcelona, Madrid, Southern Spain, Portugal, some central European 'bohemian' destinations etc. Mostly because of the sharp gentrification the nomads are causing even for the white collars. But especially the English-speaking foreigner population concentration in some places became way too visible and they started outnumbering the locals. In Barcelona there seems to be a lot of cafes in the city center where the waiters don't know Spanish or Catalan, people having difficulty hearing either language being spoken in the city center etc. In any case a strong reaction came to being against nomadism and its not looking good.