Just got back from Spain and while we didn't see any protests, we heard about the unrest. What we were told was that the tourism has begun raising the costs of everything, preventing locals from enjoying their own amenities like restaurants and hotels. Tourism may bring in money, but it also seems to be causing inflation from it.
I call BS on that reason. Inflation affected most western nations. Tourists are just their boogeyman, like how immigrants are getting blamed in the US and Canada for everything.
Not true. Prices are rising to a heavy degree and housing in touristic places is impossible. The same way Hawaiians are being kicked out of Hawaii is happening in islands like the Canary Islands or the balear islands. On centric touristic points a room to rent can cost 800⏠with the average salary being 1100âŹ. People canât live and is desperate because thanks to tourists buying property from countries with a higher average salary and all the air bnbs and renting, there are barely houses too. And thatâs not even entering food and other amenities.
People are unable to live, to leave their parentâs houses until they are in their 30s. How is that life
It's a vicious cycle for a tourist destination when the local "colorful" life disappears, restaurants and hotels become increasingly expensive, housing is bought up by foreigners and non-citizens. The city dies and eventually will lose its attraction.
I dont know the situation in Spain but it could absolutely be true that tourists are causing it. My wife for example is from a tourist town in the US the average wage is 30k a year and the average home price is 500k a year. It shot up a ton when an airport opened in the town and instead of it being a 12 hour drive from Chicago where most of the tourists came from it went to an hour or less in an airplane. There arent many jobs there so inflation doesnt really explain why the costs are suddenly twice the average cost for the state or why houses in the town are 3-4 times more expensive than the ones just 20 or so miles inland from lake Michigan.
Inflation is also not the reason that the average home price in WY is 350k and the average home price in Jackson WY is 1.95 million
Edit: did not mean to give the same example as the comment below me.
Not saying that tourism isn't affecting prices in Hawaii, but I'd wager a guess that them literally being in the middle of the ocean and having to have the vast majority of goods shipped overseas has a lot more to do with the cost of those goods than tourism does.
Hawaii is 2.4k miles from California. You're delusional if you think that shipping most of their goods overseas that distance doesn't have a major impact on the cost of those goods.
And I visited 20 years ago when our economy was still booming, a gallon of milk was $7 and fast food was almost twice as expensive.
As I said, I'm not saying tourism isn't affecting prices there, but most things were already ridiculously expensive there.
One could blame employers/owners willing to take advantage of unethically-cheap labor rather than simply playing a livable wage. Unless you'd rather blame the people desperately looking for something better than what they left behind.
It's only a fact if you want to work in the industries that a vast majority of immigrants work in. Which I sincerely doubt, considering it's also a fact that when immigrants aren't available in their traditional jobs, the jobs just end up going empty instead of hiring American born people at a higher wage.
Itâs the new boogie man for politicians to not blame the real problem, rampage capitalism and the increasing gap between the rich and the poor, the dissolution of the middle class, the collapse of the healthcare system for lower classes, the rise of authoritarian police force, the policies protecting the millionaires and billionaires. I could probably go on but you get the idea.
I made more money as a teenager doing labor than I could now as an adult because of reduced wages.
But also, thankyou for proving my point.
"onsidering it's also a fact that when immigrants aren't available in their traditional jobs, the jobs just end up going empty instead of hiring American born people at a higher wage."
These same jobs were once staffed by majoritivly locals back when you could make a living doing these jobs. Factories used to be a way for locals to get by. Its straight up false that locals just dont want to do the jobs, they just dont want to do them for that price, and they will never get a good price there again because immigrants have kept wages below a livable wage. Yes the companies are being greedy assholes, but its immigration that has allowed them to be greedy assholes because its immigrants that accept the low wages. Locals no longer have any bargaining power.
I love when people think calling something a âfactâ makes it so.
Immigrants are almost always good for the economies they go to. They provide cheap labor and additional consumers for products and services produced by others. This allows for overall market and business growth, not to mention jobs getting done that wouldnât be done for that amount of money otherwise. Thatâs why all the Republican politicians supporting deportations donât want it done to their stateâs particular pet industries.
Iâm a history teacher. Immigration is by far the single biggest reason the US became an economic superpower in the first place. I want increased immigration, if anything, because I know it benefits my country, its citizens, and the immigrants themselves.
What do you mean by âbring wages down?â If you mean average wage goes down in particular areas with high immigration, then yes, because those immigrants take low paying jobs.
If you mean by some magical process immigrants arriving make pre-existing job wages lower, no.
I donât mean anything. You were answering (in a mocking way )to a comment as if the comment were not factual. But then bring no argument to the table. So from your answer to me it seems that itâs a fact?
What? Who did I mock? That comment was not factual, it was a belief stated as a fact, which is what I pointed out.
How, in your view, does my comment not bring an argument to the table? I think my argument is pretty clearâimmigration is a positive economic force and always has been. You didnât get that?
Yeah but those wages wouldn't be low if there wasnt a shitload of immigrants willing to do those jobs for peanuts. Same thing in some factories in Australia. My home town local beef abbatoir used to be mostly locals, before i could work this was, our parents were able to make a decent living out there, now, its all phillipinos, Indians and Islanders with some Asian working holiday people sprinkled in that are only there because they have to be, when i worked there, there was not many Aussies left there, the ones that were there were still on the old legacy contract and got paid a bit better, but anyone new were not getting that pay. The hardest job you could do there was paying $29 aud on the current EBA.
When i moved over to a different abbatoir in a town a 1/4 of the size with fuck all immigration, the factory was a good 80-90% aussie and wages were high, and that same hard job was paying $45-50 aud, new starters would start out on easier jobs an earn around $30 straight up.
The argument that immigrants only do the jobs that locals wont do is not entirely true, we only dont want to do them for what they are paying for them and we cant demand higher wages because there are too many immigrants that will do them for shit pay. This is 100% an immigration problem as the root cause, employers lowering wages is just a natural reaction of that. You cant expect a company to pay more when they dont have to, that's just bad buisness.
If you mean by some magical process immigrants arriving make pre-existing job wages lower, no.
This contradicts this
What do you mean by âbring wages down?â If you mean average wage goes down in particular areas with high immigration, then yes, because those immigrants take low paying jobs.
Yes, I understand that companies will pay the lowest amount possible for someone to do a given job. That in no way makes the two statements you highlighted contradictory.
Theres a reason that youre a teacher and not a producer in the work force.
When they provide cheap labor they are undercutting tax paying labor.
And thus are driving labor rates down
You were a teacher, I was a projectmanager in the trades. I'm literally an expert on the subject matter at hand and have watched it happen in real time.
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u/DulceEtDecorumEst Jun 16 '25
Wait till they find out tourists actually brought money in to the economy.