Remote work also opens up some interesting travel and educational possibilities for the middle class. You could work from Latin America for a few months while learning Spanish. Or maybe take the kids to Europe for the summer. We shouldn't look at every new development as bad news.
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.
One thing I would point out is that these digital nomads have been priced out of their own cities by other nomads. A young person in Toronto or Vancouver is competing for real estate against Chinese and Indian money that wasn’t necessarily taxed that hard when it was earned. A common move is for Chinese parents to buy a condo for their kids in university. The affordability statistics are horrifying (see link below). So I think that these North American young people could reasonably say they have limited possibilities to get ahead in their own countries, so why not try something else? Maybe they can save for a down payment while abroad.
Remote work also opens up some interesting travel and educational possibilities for the middle class. You could work from Latin America for a few months while learning Spanish. Or maybe take the kids to Europe for the summer. We shouldn't look at every new development as bad news.
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.
One thing I would point out is that these digital nomads have been priced out of their own cities by other nomads. A young person in Toronto or Vancouver is competing for real estate against Chinese and Indian money that wasn’t necessarily taxed that hard when it was earned. A common move is for Chinese parents to buy a condo for their kids in university. The affordability statistics are horrifying (see link below). So I think that these North American young people could reasonably say they have limited possibilities to get ahead in their own countries, so why not try something else? Maybe they can save for a down payment while abroad.
https://thoughtleadership.rbc.com/homebuyer-blues-dreadful-affordability-gets-worse-in-canada/