Expats not happy, why stay?

gouchobob said:
However, the fact that there are few mortgages helps keep property prices more stable as people are not necessarily forced to sell when the economy is bad. My prediction for property values for the next ten years would be that they will remain fairly steady in nominal terms, but will decline(maybe significantly) in real terms as the dollar will no doubt decline in value as well.

I would say property today on a world-wide basis is significantly over-valued. There appears to be property bubbles in Canada, Australia, China, and other countries. This appears largely due to easy credit in recent years and the unfounded belief by many that property values only go up.

I believe you are half right. There is a world wide over valuation of property as the recent events in The UK and The States shows, but you cannot relate it to Buenos Aires, as a Capitol city it is amongst the worlds cheapest as far as property prices go, before buying here I looked at Madrid and Barcelona, I simply could not afford to buy there, and as for London the same appartment would have cost me ten times as much. That is not an exageration, just try to buy anything within the M25 corridor for less than half a million (sterling not dollars).
There will be no collapse here, mainly as you said because of limited credit, but also because property is cheap and still offers a significant bargain on a world wide scale, it can only go up.
 
brocolliandtea said:
Scroll down, a little more, more, lower, thats right, and find Argentina. What balderdash Alma! For those of you who dont speak Spanish, he blamed it on everyone else. A classic Arg. move.

I cant tell whether this society is amoral or just indocrinated from an early age to be out for number one. The govt. basically exists just to feed in the illicit dollars.

http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2009/cpi_2009_table

Living in a place you regard as a terminal dump must be difficult. Why not try finding a place that suits you better?
 
ElQueso said:
almagestos - what comes first, the chicken or the egg? You say the people/governments in undeveloped countries are corrupt because they are poor and don't earn a good wage.

I submit that the poor don't earn a good wage and never get ahead because their societies are corrupt.

The US not so long ago was every bit as poor as what I see in South America. My grandmother lived much as my wife's family lives now. My mother's family did not live much better. But they were extremely proud, and that pride was not based on machismo (as an example) but rather on the fact that they were "incorruptible."

Of course, humanity itself is not perfect and everywhere, no matter how "developed" a nation, there will be those who are corrupt and those who are not. The problem to me is that the latin culture is, for some reason, more corrupt than other European countries. I won't argue the reason for that because I don't know.

The other "of course" here is that we are all watching the US become more and more corrupt, more and more socialistic, and it is finding out that actually, the egg came first.


So, according to you the latin culture is more corrupt and worse than the others...

So we´re worse than the ones that made two world wars, the jewish holocaust, the bombings over Japan, Vietnam, the arabian and african countries, worse than the imperialists countries stealing resources in Latinamerica, Africa and Asia...
Worse that the ones that has destroyed the native cultures, worse that the ones that made the black people slaves during so many centuries... and then sending the black kids to different schools or making them to use a different bus... or make a special neighborhood or social level for each race like in USA, Southafrica..

Yeah, we´re worse than the european and northamerican societies... we are even an inferior race, that´s why we´re more corrupt... xD

Come on! all humans have the same deffects and virtues... and with a better education the people is more corrupt, ´cause the education can be used as a weapon sometimes, a lawyer is more corrupt than an amerindian in the morwest of Argentina... so the solution to the corruption is not the education at all...

By the way you´re using the alphabet of the latin and corrupt culture right now...


And if I write in spanish is ´cause before to make any critic to my culture or to my country you should learn the language...
 
SaraSara said:
Sounds like a rootless kind of life to me - the price of such freedom can be too high.

I didn't say I was going to bail right now just that we could bail if the going gets tough. It's true there is nothing rooting us to this country. It's been fun. But our roots are not & will not be here. I'm not totally disconnected from the rest of the world though. LOL. :D

bradlyhale said:
Yeah, speak English!!!! *snickers*

LOL. :D
 
almagestos said:
So, according to you the latin culture is more corrupt and worse than the others...

So we´re worse than the ones that made two world wars, the jewish holocaust, the bombings over Japan, Vietnam, the arabian and african countries, worse than the imperialists countries stealing resources in Latinamerica, Africa and Asia...
Worse that the ones that has destroyed the native cultures, worse that the ones that made the black people slaves during so many centuries... and then sending the black kids to different schools or making them to use a different bus... or make a special neighborhood or social level for each race like in USA, Southafrica..

Yeah, we´re worse than the european and northamerican societies... we are even an inferior race, that´s why we´re more corrupt... xD

Come on! all humans have the same deffects and virtues... and with a better education the people is more corrupt, ´cause the education can be used as a weapon sometimes, a lawyer is more corrupt than an amerindian in the morwest of Argentina... so the solution to the corruption is not the education at all...

By the way you´re using the alphabet of the latin and corrupt culture right now...


And if I write in spanish is ´cause before to make any critic to my culture or to my country you should learn the language...

According to you, it's everyone else's fault that Latin America is in the shape it's in. That, by the way, goes very well with your government's propaganda.

You are giving the US and Europe many of the same attributes that your country has as far as war (excepting the atomic bomb, but those were special circumstances and not black and white as you would have everyone believe) and genocide goes, including wiping out indigenous races. Or maybe you can ignore the complete destruction of the indigenies in Argentina and almost all of Latin America as well?

I specifically was talking about the standard of living and the fact that Latin countries are more corrupt than the US and many European cultures. That doesn't ahve anyhting to do specifically with one being better than the other - you're right, we're all human and we ALL make some pretty big mistakes.

But - latin countries have more corruption, have less opportunities, than other countries. It's not because the rest fo the world wants to "keep you down." Get over it. Quit fnding all the excuses except your own actions as to why latin coutnries are not successful.

You really think that there is equal opportunity for the poor here, more so than in the US? That's a good one. We don't make special neighborhoods for people there, any more than you do here. Like the villas here, people tend to live where they can and many times ethnic populations CHOOSE to live together. It's just that there's really not such a big ethinic population here other than latino to show as an example. But the poor in the US live MUCH better than the poor here and there are fewer.

There is less corruption in the US and more people try to stamp it out when they see it. Of course, neither is the US perfect. There are other countries that have much less corruption than the US!

But the opportunites, at least for right now, are much better for ANYONE in the US, be they rich or poor, than here. it's a cultural thing, that unfortunately is changing too quickly as people look to blame others that they don't have as much as some and want to be given something for nothing.

Of course, you will deny that all that. As you say that everything that has kept Latin people "down" is all the fault of the US and others like it - never the fault of "you the people" or your government.

Y hablo bien tu idioma, amigo. Quizas no perfecto, pero la verdad hablo suficiente para comunicarme aca.

Este foro es para los expatriados, nos comunicamos en ingles. La verdad, parece a mi que eres up poco mal educado venir aca y hablar en tu idioma, pero bueno, puedes hacer lo que quieres. Eligo escribir en ingles aca porque puedo. Hablo español todo el tiempo, cada dia. Nadie de mi familia hablan ingles. Nadie de mis vecinos hablan ingles. Los guardia en mi barrio no hablan ingles. Parece a mi que estoy funcionando bien sin ingles.

Tambien, intiendo muy bien algunas cosas de la cultura latina. Me puedes llamar rascista si quieres pero no tiene nada que ver con lo que dije. Lo siento si piensas que todos las culturas son iguales, pero no es asi. Yo no estoy diciendo que latinos mismos son inferiores, pero uno puede ver facilimente que hay diferencias grandes entre la cultura de los Estados Unidos y de casi cada pais Latino. Algunas diferencias son mejores, otras peores. Yo no se porque, pero se que no tiene nada que ver con la raza, ni con ADN, etc. Tiene que ver, por qualquiera razon, con la cultura.
 
tangobob said:
I believe you are half right. There is a world wide over valuation of property as the recent events in The UK and The States shows, but you cannot relate it to Buenos Aires, as a Capitol city it is amongst the worlds cheapest as far as property prices go, before buying here I looked at Madrid and Barcelona, I simply could not afford to buy there, and as for London the same appartment would have cost me ten times as much. That is not an exageration, just try to buy anything within the M25 corridor for less than half a million (sterling not dollars).
There will be no collapse here, mainly as you said because of limited credit, but also because property is cheap and still offers a significant bargain on a world wide scale, it can only go up.

I can never understand comparisons of B.A. with other cities like London or New York that are more expensive and that because of this B.A. must be a bargain. I don't think this has anything to do with it. Incomes are much higher in London or New York which support higher prices(which remain way too high and overvalued in my opinion). Incomes are much lower in Argentina which results in lower prices.

The test of whether property in a given location is fairly priced is whether not local people living and earning local incomes can afford to buy. If property becomes priced beyond what people can afford, prices will eventually adjust down to what people can afford. You can delay this day with easy credit and mortgages like was done in the USA but sooner or later prices will fall in line with incomes.

My point was that I wouldn't expect property values to increase in B.A. while people's purchasing power is being eroded by high inflation. To me affordability is a lot more logical predictor of prices than a comparison of prices some other city in a different country and continent.
 
mini said:
I didn't say I was going to bail right now just that we could bail if the going gets tough. It's true there is nothing rooting us to this country. It's been fun. But our roots are not & will not be here. I'm not totally disconnected from the rest of the world though. LOL. :D

Glad to hear that you have roots and family somewhere else, no matter how far away. As I said, life without them seems kind of sad.
 
almagestos said:
By the way you´re using the alphabet of the latin and corrupt culture right now...

And I had to make mention of this. Once upon a time I was actually a Latin "scholar." I studied Latin for five years - two in high school and three in college. I translated Cesar's De Bello Gallico, Cicero's De Oratore, and many other texts that were written by the greatest minds of all time.

The use of the word "latin" in this day and age really has nothing to do with the origin of things "Latin." The best comparison of modern-day "latin" culture would be to that of after the fall of Rome, or when Rome was about to fall, and the cultures were corrupt and nothing like they were in the days of the Republic.

The different cultures scattered to the winds, and English, yes, is a part-descendant of Latin and uses the Latin alphabet, as do the "romance" or "latin" languages. So?

Do you know where the number system we all use comes from? Sure as hell wasn't Rome. But neither does that make the ancient Phoenician/Arabic cultures any better than any other culture - in fact those particular cultures don't exist any more. Their descendants, as well, haven't gotten along so well either. I know, that's another fault of the US as well, right? :rolleyes:

To compare Latina culture with Roman culture because they use the same alphabet, had linguisticly similar origins...well, I'm not sure if that's what, exactly, you were trying to say, but either way it doesn't cut the mustard worth a damn!
 
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