Livin' Large On Borrowed Money & Time

Live your best life at affordable prices while serving the cause of social justice at home. What could be sweeter?

Mexico City

Few things are more definitive of our times than the phenomenon of remote work. It’s provided a level of flexibility for both employees and employers in that it only requires access to the Internet. It’s nice not having to commute to work, or at least being able to work at a location of your choosing, and not being under the constant watchful eye of workplace superiors or being wedded to an office or cubicle.

Remote work is the topic of an essay written by Germán Saucedo, a Mexican and fellow Substacker. You can find this essay at Compact online magazine and it piqued my interest because it’s one of the few pieces I’ve come across which examines the remote work phenomenon critically. Not that remote work is bad, per se, but Saucedo scrutinizes who enjoys its benefits, what it costs to maintain, and what it says about the existing social order.

Saucedo looks specifically at the influx of expatriates into his country, well-off members of the “laptop class,” synonymously known as the “professional-managerial class,” or PMC. You can think of PMCs as white-collar professionals who are paid for their organizational abilities rather than any special expertise or skills. PMCs are a hot topic as of late, mainly because they comprise the developed world’s bourgeoisie, to use a Marxist term. In other words, our economy revolves around catering to the needs and wants of the PMC.

Saucedo speaks of “Andrew,” a Canada native, who has decided to reside long-term in Mexico [bold mine]:

Andrew doesn’t plan on ever going back to live in Vancouver full-time. He will return in a few weeks to attend a wedding and then head south again, restarting the six-month limit the Mexican government imposes on tourists. There is no way he could have the life he has here back home. In Mexico, he pays about $600 a month for an apartment the equivalent of which would cost nearly 10 times that much in Vancouver. Still, he assured me, as he was walking down one of the most upscale and foreigner-heavy streets in the city, that “the people and the culture” were the most important reasons for coming here.

I bolded the last sentence because it’s an important part of the story Saucedo comes back to later on.

More:

The pandemic accelerated the trend of companies relying on remote work. “Email jobs” became “work-from-home” jobs and, eventually, “work-from-wherever-you-want” jobs. Suddenly, many young and child-free professionals acquired the ability to move wherever they wished, while still earning salaries pegged to the cost of living in New York or San Francisco. They became true “digital nomads,” not merely mooching around cyberspace, but wandering the world with jobs that require only an internet connection.

I don’t have any statistics to back it up, but I can personally attest many youngish people in the United States are working these “work-from-wherever-you-want” jobs. It’s a sweet deal, not being tied to a particular location, and being able to enjoy more of life even as you work. America has always been a workaholic’s paradise, but now you can be a workholic with a hip cafe or the swimming pool as your office!

Yes, life is splendid for the remote PMC, even better in a place like Saucedo’s home, Mexico City:

Mexico City has become one of the preferred destinations for digital nomads, particularly Americans. The weather is neither too hot nor cold, and it’s in a similar time zone as most of the continental United States. It’s also safe compared to the rest of Mexico (and some US cities), especially in the upscale European-style neighborhoods where Americans tend to congregate. It has world-class museums, excellent restaurants, and some of the best bars and clubs in North America. Not too far from the capital, you can find beautiful seaside resorts as well as idyllic tourist destinations like San Miguel de Allende. Finally, it also has the distinct advantage of already being packed to the brim with foreigners. The more of them there are in a city, the likelier it will be to attract them; after all, this means there are plenty of compatriots to befriend, minimizing their interactions with pesky locals.

But beyond all these advantages, the main attraction is simple enough: Compared to most North American cities, Mexico City is dirt cheap. This is because, beyond the high-end neighborhoods frequented by foreigners, it’s poor. In 2020, Mexico’s National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy found that close to a third of the city’s population, or around 3 million people, still live in poverty; for comparison, in New York City, it’s 13.9 percent of the population. Poverty may not be great for urban aesthetics, but it provides a greatly sought-after resource for digital nomads to exploit: cheap labor.

It may shock some of you, but America has become one of the most expensive countries on the planet. According to the website Numbeo (a great resource for learning what life is like elsewhere in the world), the cost of living in Mexico is nearly half as much as it is in the U.S. A pint of beer averages around $2, compared to $5 here. The rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Mexico City is around $800 per month. In most major American cities, $800 in rent means you’re living in a dangerous, run-down part of town. Even countries like Japan, once a notoriously expensive place to live, is cheaper than America these days. Looks like there’s indeed a high price to pay for being #1.

Of course, places like Mexico are cheap relative to the U.S. As Saucedo explained, it’s easy to live like kings and queens when everyone else around you is poor. One can benefit from living in a place like Mexico City only if you’re getting paid in U.S. dollars. Try making a living off Mexican pesos and life becomes dramatically more difficult.

How difficult? Based on current exchange rates, 1 U.S. dollar equals 18 Mexican pesos. Suddenly, that pint of beer seems more expensive, doesn’t it? Especially in a country where the average monthly take-home pay is 12.7 thousand pesos, equivalent to 675 U.S. dollars, and where it costs a single person on average 10 thousand pesos per month in living expenses, not including rent.

But that’s neither here nor there, because unlike the poor Mexicans, the laptop class can afford to live there in style! Never mind the fact these colonists, as they are, jack up the cost of housing by their ability to afford prices that’d stretch the budgets of even relatively well-off Mexicans. On top of that, few of these people ever become Mexican citizens, opting instead to become permanent tourists, thereby never paying any taxes while enjoying all the benefits and services of life in Mexico.

Surprising as it may be to some, Mexicans are actually not okay with this any more than Americans are okay with immigrants, legal and illegal, overwhelming our own country and making life more costly and crowded [bold mine]:

These issues have provoked public outcry. Some have called for the governor of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, to regulate their arrival or the digital platforms they use to rent out an apartment, such as Airbnb or Inmuebles24. A few have taken their grievances further, confronting the foreigners in the streets and hanging signs in English that read, “New to the city? Working remotely? You’re a fucking plague and locals fucking hate you. Leave.”

The irony of Mexicans complaining about American migrants isn’t lost on some. US citizens have been making comparable points about unregulated border-crossings from Mexico for years. But the progressive, higher-income Mexico City natives complaining about digital nomads aren’t generally from the same class of Mexicans who make the journey across the border—often to work in service jobs attending to the US-based laptop class.

It’s easy to speak well of immigrants when someone else has to deal with them, it seems. For others, the affinity for migrants, especially the poor and often illegal ones, is more transactional. In many ways, the laptop class and the migrant class constitute one team, one fight. The laptop class provides employment for the Latin American migrant class, who in turn make it possible for the laptop class to enjoy premium lifestyles at affordable prices. We often hear how migrant workers are a big reason why the U.S., for so long, enjoyed abundance in goods and services at low cost. There’s truth to this, though I’d argue there exists a hidden price tag of mounting debt that can never be repaid.

For one, to maintain low cost, you need to a constant stream of cheap labor, ultimately serving as a permanent underclass. The stability of this underclass depends on their ability to remain employed or a state sympathetic to their welfare, regardless of their legal status in the country. There will always be a demand for cheap labor, but then, don’t expect wages to go up. Why would they? Speaking for myself, the only way I’d be willing to pay higher prices is if it means American citizens who’ve spent their whole lives in this country are the ones benefiting from it. Otherwise, I prefer lower prices, just like everyone else. The laptop class goes a step further, being unwilling to pay higher prices even if it means American workers benefit. They wouldn’t move to places like Mexico City if they felt otherwise.

Point being, America’s urban, cosmopolitan, professionals need that cheap, disposable labor more than anyone else. As much as they’d insist otherwise, they also need them to remain a permanent underclass. If children of low-wage workers manage to escape the underclass, do you think they’re going to work the fields or bus tables for a living as their parents did? Many will, but some won’t. In fact, they’re going to want the same thing their parents’ clientele had. Having such a massive underclass is deeply problematic, but so is elite overproduction. The economy isn’t a zero-sum game like the Marxists claim, but add too many people and the pie, even as it enlarges, begins yielding smaller slices.

For now, however, the relationship between the laptop class and cheap labor is mutually beneficial. The absence of conflict between the two means PMCs don’t need to feel bad about what they’re doing, leaving that guilt to a broader collective such as “White people” or outsourcing it to Heartland Americans, who rely less on cheap labor and are hurt more than helped by mass immigration.

Or, they can just leave it all behind by moving to another country:

Mexico City isn’t the only place flooded by the digital-nomad wave. Other cities across the globe have become preferred places for the escapees: Lisbon, Cape Town, Bali, and San José, Costa Rica, to name a few. All of these places are, to a greater or lesser degree, lower-income countries riven with inequality, where foreigners can live like aristocrats. That isn’t how they  would explain their motives, of course: Most come from liberal enclaves like New York, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, Washington, and Toronto, and think of themselves as committed egalitarians. When asked, those I interviewed characterized their political leanings as “left-wing,” “very left-wing,” or “progressive.”

Ironically enough, these Americans have for years cheered on the implementation of the policies that jeopardized their brunch-enjoying lifestyle. They have complained about gentrification in their cities, and advocated for rent-control policies that might lock in below-market housing for some, but don’t address the overall rising costs—and may exacerbate them by limiting supply. They have also supported the establishment of higher minimum wages, which increase the cost of the services they depend on.

You’re going to hear me say it for as long as you read my blog (which is forever, I hope): America is divided by culture, not by class. You can’t explain a mega-billionaire New Yorker like Donald Trump becoming a working-class folk hero or urbanites and cheap migrant labor forming a coalition of sorts if you think the U.S. is a class-stratified society. I’m not going to get into why the laptop class is so left-wing, except to say it most certainly is, but like all social classes, they are first and foremost concerned with their own personal well-being, regardless of how they vote or what their political views are.

The laptop class isn’t threatened by the permanent underclass serving them. Unlike other societies throughout history, where the upper and lower classes were of opposing political persuasions, the laptop class and cheap labor are politically aligned solidly on the left. Even if the laptop class was threatened by the help, the true enemy is found in the Heartland, so there exists a common enemy they can point to should tensions ever rise between them and cheap labor. Better yet, as Saucedo explains in his piece, this is what moving to Mexico is for! By living somewhere else, they can leave all the high costs and problems of home behind for other people to deal with, while making sure to voice the correct opinions and vote for left-wing candidates via absentee ballots. Live your best life at affordable prices while serving the cause of social justice at home. What could be sweeter?

The irony is that in Mexico City and elsewhere, the laptop class benefits from even cheaper labor, with the added benefit, says Saucedo, being that Mexico isn’t their country and they can leave any time. But it also means they can benefit from cheap labor with even less guilt, since it’s not their fault, as foreigners, that wages are so low in Mexico. As in America, whatever guilt they might feel can be outsourced. Finally, once the appeal of being a “world citizen” loses its luster, that U.S. passport gives them a place to return to, one that happens to be the world’s lone superpower.

I strongly recommend you read Saucedo’s entire essay, for it’s an utterly fascinating and provocative piece of writing. For me, the significance of his piece is the revelation our world is increasingly revolving around a class of people who, despite their high-ish incomes, aren’t particularly invested in anything beyond their own personal satisfaction. Sure, they’re willing to pay high prices, but only if they can afford it. Because they’re not devoted to any particular place, whatever economic impact they have is diffused and provides no long-term benefit. Meanwhile, the Heartland American who speaks just one language, has never left the country, but has bought supplies from the same local stores and has visited the same local bar since he could legally drink? He’s the bad guy, even though he contributes more to a single community on a smaller income than the cosmopolitan who earns more and spends more at once, while contributing less over the long term to any one place.

This lack of investment in any one place is deeply troublesome for a country united by nothing else beyond a piece of paper certifying your nationality as “American” and the pursuit of the almighty dollar. More troublesome is the fact the dominant laptop class so lavishly benefits from the existing order, they’ll do things to exacerbate and ensure its continuity. They’ll demand higher wages for migrant workers and legalization for those of questionable legal status, even if it means life becomes more expensive. After all, they can move somewhere else if it starts impacting their bottom line. But even if they don’t, better pay and conditions for cheap labor means they remain a compliant class, posing no political threat to them. Turns out, you can buy your way to the world’s most potent political coalition. Again, how often throughout history do you find the upper and under classes united like this?

Even if culture is the true reason they decide to live in places like Mexico City, what does it say when they prefer the cultures of others over their own, while still retaining passports of their home country? The dilution of citizenship seems an ultimately inconsequential thing in the mind of a PMC, but a committed citizenry is what creates nations in the first place. It’s tough for many of us to appreciate because we’ve come to take it for granted America will always be there and globalization will never end. But America will not always be here, at least not in its current form. In 10 years, we may no longer be a superpower and ongoing de-globalization will make us wish we’d invested more in our country than trying to buy the favoritism of others.

It’ll be interesting to see how the current mass layoff wave impacts the laptop class. Their jobs are likely to be among the first on the chopping block, since these jobs don’t produce anything nor provide services demanded by the general public. Put another way, PMCs aren’t developers, CPAs, or machinists. In some ways, this is reminiscent of the ‘90s dot-com boom: lavish lifestyles funded through big-spending by companies that never produced anything beyond inflating their stock values. Maybe today’s companies are making their money more honestly, but the point is, someone still has to pay these PMCs and make it possible for them to lead elite-caliber existences.

The laptop-class/PMC phenomenon is something we see unfolding around us and is certain to become an even bigger issue going forward. Because their jobs don’t produce anything, nor provide a service in-demand with the public at large, they’re living on borrowed time and money. Millions of Americans, many of them young, make a living as members of this class and, as I noted in the last paragraph, are extremely sensitive to economic downturns. They are the political base of the existing Regime, the current order built around catering to their lifestyles and sentiments. They are the new “conservatives,” invested in the continuity of the status quo. When their status is threatened, expect them to become reactionary, demanding the state do whatever it takes to maintain or restore their status, setting the stage for deepening political divides and, eventually conflict.

I hate looking too far ahead, but it’ll be interesting to see where this class ends up in 20 years. Will they, like their Baby Boomer and Generation X (to a lesser extent) parents, form a stable base of capital and political continuity? Or will they have become a destabilizing force?

UPDATE: Reader “Reckoning” says in the comments:

I also don’t think this is a viable long term strategy for most workers. There are times when you have to or should be in the office: key meetings, training, social events, picking up a new laptop. Also, how would you find a new job if laid off? Finally, a lot of employers would have problems with remote workers from a legal sense, and there would be health insurance problems. So I think this is something someone can do for a year or two, in most cases. I don’t think it’s something that is necessarily a huge trend.

The only way I see remote work panning out long-term is if employers progressively offload costs onto employees. Over the long term, companies tend to spend less per employee to stimulate growth, maximize earnings and ensure future viability, or at least cut back on costs, since human resources is typically the largest expenditure for any business.

So, while employers may spend a lot on employees now, over time, the incentive will be to spend less. This means we may see those who work remotely to be eligible for fewer benefits than an on-site employee, having employees provide for their own work equipment, etc., under the pretense that a remote employee is in some ways an independent worker who has chosen a more convenient working arrangement for themselves and thereby doesn’t need as many perks as someone who

Max Remington is a defense, military, and foreign policy writer. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentLoyalist.

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