#1437 – The Expat Files: Technology, Economy, and Cultural Insights in Latin America

Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.

[00:00] South of the border down Mexico way That's where I fell in love when the stars above came up to play and now as I wonder Hello there all you ex-pad wannabes. I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to the expat files living in Latin America The show that tells you just what it's like to live work play and or retire down here in Latin America It's a mix of the good the bad the ugly and the great and it's all right here. So let's get started a Few days ago. I was stuck in Panama City I was flagging down an uber ended up in that car talking to the driver who was pretty intelligent I'd say I was stuck in that car for 45 minutes Came to a dead stop in two or three fantastic traffic jams

[00:49] Some of the locals call them top bones top bones a top bone is like a lid T-a-p-o-n top bone like a bottle cap so anyway after finding yourself stuck in a car for 45 minutes if He's friendly and outgoing much at a time you end up talking to the guy and at the very start of the ride the guy Asked you what kind of music do you want to listen to I say none. He says that's alright with me You're the boss. You're the hefe and since you're a gringo and everyone down here in Latin America Most everyone is a gringo wannabe. They'll try their English out on you and it won't be any good usually And that'll be the end of it, but do you know if you speak Spanish well by all means converse anyway I noticed he had a little stack of notebooks in the passenger seat obviously he was a student studying something

[01:37] So I asked him about of course all this is going down in Spanish wouldn't you know it business? He was going for his lesson see a tour that's a bachelor's degree in business administration Was in his third year had two semesters to go he said so I said what are you gonna do when you get out? What are your plans? He said my plans? Well, I'm certainly not gonna work in a big company They don't pay very well at all He said a base salary in a company even when you've got your lesson see a tuda your bachelor's degree is About four to five hundred bucks a month to which I said then I guess in some ways It doesn't even pay to get a bachelor's degree. It's sort of the same way up in the States I said he said oh, yeah, it's worth it you get your bachelor's degree It's an instant qualifier to get you in the door. It'll get you some kind of job

[02:22] Then if you're good you'll advance, but oh so slowly But he said you really don't make good money Until if you're in business anyway a master's degree and I said what's good money. He said thousand dollars a month That's very good money, but you'll never make that unless you have a master's degree Which the company will generally pay for you're gonna go to the night school and they've got master's programs on weekends The thing is the company will pay for that and that he says will open the door for you to make the big money I said like a thousand bucks a month or more. Yep. That's right. He said Hmm. Are you hearing this? $1,000 a month that's considered the big money entry level. So I said that's your plan How you're gonna get your bachelor's degree in a year, right? You're gonna work for a big company Go for that master's degree and hit the big time eventually, right? He said yeah

[03:11] well, that's a possibility but it's my plan B my plan a is to buy another car or two and Hire them out or lease them out as Ubers. I said, is that what you're doing now? You're leasing this car He said no, this is my car on Payments, of course, but Manny said it's a good business and I can do my homework here in the car while I'm waiting for clients There's always clients being an uber guy is a really good business. I said, what about the future? Have you considered the future? Aren't you afraid of those robo taxis? They're gonna take over the United States within the next couple years, you know You know uber killed the taxi business up in the States and robo taxis are gonna kill the uber business I said according to my engineer nerd buddies within five years They'll have completely changed the landscape of the United States as far as driving habits and displacement of jobs, etc

[04:02] He said robot taxis here in Panama. Are you kidding? He laughed and turned back and looked at me like I was crazy. He said are you kidding? Maybe in the US he said it'll never happen in Panama Have you noticed how crazy people drive down here and how unsafe the roads then I said to him I see you're using one of the late model Samsung iPhones. I said, you know 15 years ago I don't think anyone down here in Latin America had a smartphone But everyone had cheap flip phones and when I said to people There is a new kind of phone out in the United States that everyone's buying called a smartphone I explained about apps and that you could read your emails on your phone and they all laughed at me and said that's never Gonna come here to Latin America First of all way back when 15 or so years ago when I talked to Latinos here in Latin America

[04:50] About those smartphones and I told them what they cost they said. Oh that stuff will never get down here That's three four five times as much as a flip phone a couple of months salary No one's gonna be able to afford that by the way they said that about Starbucks to that it would never make it in Latin America because the coffee is three or four times as much as The same kind of coffee bought at a local coffee shop. In fact for a while. I was believing that too I was convinced Starbucks would show up down here and then crash and burn Well, it didn't they're everywhere and to be able to afford to take your girlfriend. There is a sign of distinction I hadn't figured that the gringo advantage would work for Starbucks to the point I'm trying to get at is Latin Americans are completely unaware of Societal changes that are about to come changes just due to robo cars. We're not even talking about AI now

[05:42] It'll take five years or so, but their society is gonna be completely unrecognizable in the states It's just starting to happen in three years. It'll really hit the same will follow within five ten years down here in Latin America But no one sees it coming not even fairly smart Latinos send the engineers and nerdy types They just don't see it coming. But man my smart gringo buddies and my very smart engineering nerdy buddies When we get together the subject of robo cars and AI seems to come up all the time now I wasn't about to tell this college kid uber driver that his plan to buy more cars and making a couple of ubers out of Would be a bad decision why rain on his parade on second thought it probably wouldn't burst his bubble because he just wouldn't believe it

[06:28] The truth is most people the average guys up in the states Anyway, don't believe it either but in the US the nerds and techies and engineering types sure see the Disruptive tsunami that's coming in short People just don't fully understand how much the flood of robo cars are gonna affect society Consider this and this might be hard to swallow But in the next five years the entire driving industry is gonna go away There won't be any more long-haul truckers and truck stops and all the associated businesses that thrive around truck stops They'll be gone or repurposed and as for regular people who aren't truckers You won't have to search for a parking spot anymore Your robo car or car with AI will pick you up drop you off and drive away It'll find some spot in a remote area or just hang until you call for its services again

[07:19] Oh, and did you know that something like 20% of the surface area of any given city is devoted to dedicated parking space City planners of the future are just not gonna include parking lots anymore in cities stables for horses disappeared a hundred years ago That's exactly what's gonna happen with parking lots. So then what's gonna happen on all those parking lots? Maybe they'll make regular green spaces out of them Build business towers apartment buildings. Who knows think of your own city How many parking lots underground garages all of guards and infrastructure and ticket machines? It takes to keep those things active and maintained within five years up in the States all gone That's a hell of a lot of empty real estate Oh and another thing fifty to sixty thousand people a year in the US Anyway, won't be dying in drunken driving accidents

[08:07] But still you can be as drunk or high as you want to be when you're riding home As long as you don't trip and fall and smash your face on the curb as you stumble out of your car in front of The house in any case if you die, you won't be a DUI statistic Now, of course, the transition is gonna be rough every uber driver truck driver delivery guys could be out of work And most of the auxiliary business is associated with them Let's put it this way lots and lots of professions will be eradicated completely and here's another prediction You're not gonna like your taxes are gonna go way up Probably not here in Latin America, but up in the States. Certainly. They simply have to and dramatically too because Just think of a city like LA Los Angeles They make over a hundred million dollars a year in revenue from traffic citations. Look it up

[08:56] You'll see it's true with robo cars. The city loses all that revenue. So how are they gonna get that money back? They'll tax the shit out of you some other way your utilities electric bill gas Internet bill you can be sure they're gonna nail you and they're thinking about how to do that right now Now the reason why I'm saying taxes might not go up in Latin America is because down here. It's different They almost never stop you for traffic violations. They're not strict about enforcing any of that kind of stuff Traffic citations are a tiny tiny revenue stream But up in the state cities will really suffer on the bright side They'll only need maybe five percent of the transit cops. They employ now on top of that for most people It won't be worth actually buying a car what most people will do, especially in the city

[09:44] They'll subscribe to a car service like uber but a robo car service with no human drivers Now, of course, you might actually want to own your own private car if you like driving but most people don't I'm in that league myself, especially here in Latin America. I can't stand driving By the way in 20 or 30 years people are gonna look back at this time and think it's absolutely absurd That we dedicated a quarter to a third of the interior space of our houses to store our car You know a garage It's a big chunk of real estate to be used exclusively to store an inanimate object Then there's all that concrete that's been poured around your property to lead up to that garage Your driveway is a totally useless ugly unusable space if you don't own a car

[10:32] In other words very soon you'll live to see the day when your driveway and garage are unnecessary Oh and think of how many tens of thousands of people who are gonna get laid off at the DMV Hey, I'm all for that. Aren't you those fat ass slugs who's gonna go get a driver's license when you don't need one Another huge loss of revenue for the state think of all the drivers testing stations and vehicle testing stations Drivers at schools, etc. That will get shuttered It's even crazier and more disruptive to think that the entire car insurance business will be obsolete No human drivers there goes Century State Farm Prudential and Geico almost makes you believe in karma, huh? Payback for the way they've been gouging us all these years

[11:18] So do get it through your head that the whole thing is gonna be massively disruptive It'll filter down here to Latin America to sure there's lag time Which me and lots of my gringo expat nerd buddies say will be about five years That is about five years behind the disruptive force you see happening up in the states Oh, and I forgot to mention no more gas stations Electric cars when their batteries are low will just take off to a remote charging station Most likely they won't be in the city at all. I Repeat I haven't met a single Latin American person who's put a dime's worth of thought into any of this Well, I repeat there's a huge disruption coming Well, no one ever said we didn't live in interesting times at least first world Americans and gringles and expats

[12:04] Of course have a heads up on what's coming So do try to take all of that into consideration Especially if you're planning on starting a business here in Latin America Oh and one last thing when robot cars finally take over We could finally I think say goodbye completely to car break-ins and theft now We all know there are some downsides to this too. You're gonna have to give away a lot of your personal information and Cameras and sensors are gonna be on you at all times because those cars are just filled with cameras and sensors I understand a robo car has over 200 sensors Measuring the driving conditions on the exterior of the car So you're stuck being monitored scanned and catalogued at all times when you're in a robo car However, if you're living down here in Latin America, there are ways to remain pretty much

[12:55] Anonymic at least very noticeably more anonymous than you ever could be in the States People don't have to know your real name where you live where you've been where you hang out Where you're going to there are steps you can take that'll help you fade away Or at least blend in nicely and not stick out like a sore thumb Of course, we discussed many of those things at my expat insider seminar next one's coming up in August 2025 by the way, you're letting lawyers a key part in helping you remain anonymous Well anonymous as you possibly can anyway by the way one of the main tricks to use to remain as anonymous as you can is To use your Latino lawyers address for correspondence and anything you might have to sign up for Requiring a physical address like for example your mail courier service that forwards all your Amazon and eBay and Home Depot

[13:47] Stuff from the US same thing when applying for a residency or a driver's license or internet service use your trusted lawyers address So you'll have to have a trusted Latino lawyer to make that possible And you'll also have to have a nice long powwow with them to arrange those things and of course our trusted seminar lawyer Jose Will be doing a nice presentation on those very things at the seminar by the way Did you know you could do a complete legal name change here through your trusted Latin lawyer for some folks? You know that comes in quite handy Yes, our trusted lawyer will be going over all of that at the seminar, too So bottom line if you want to get a two to five year head start on your plan B Be sure to mark your calendar August 15th through 22nd

[14:32] Check out the sign-up sheet at expat plan B calm Then just click on the expat seminar link for all the sign-up details and info. Oh And remember you will be drinking from the fire hose. It'll be an unforgettable experience Hope to see you there. All right now a personal boots on the ground experience Remember a couple of shows ago. I talked about going to the singing dentist Yeah, normally my general dentist is dr. Alex in Guatemala, but this time I had a little perinatal problem, you know Bleeding gums. Well, she took care of it It's all cured and while she was doing it She sang a couple songs threw in a couple of salsa and Rumba moves in between God that lady loves her work nothing wrong with that So anyway as luck would have it as life would have it

[15:17] I had an old root canal to done maybe 20 years ago and you know, those things are pretty structurally damaged That's why you end up with a root canal. They leak they generally have had cavities filled a number of times anyway a tooth that has had a root canal is pretty damaged and fragile now of Course no one except a masochist would want to get a root canal, but sometimes that's the only way to save a tooth I'm not really for them myself. I've read some bad things about root canals how they're never really sterile There's always a tiny little infection going on there some inflammation That never seems to go away completely So you can have a root canal for years and years and there's always a tiny bit of inflammation around the bone It's as if you've had a little sliver under your skin and you just never took it out your dentist knows that he can

[16:03] Point it out on an x-ray Most often if a root canal doesn't hurt it's considered a success I've had that discussion with some of the dentists in my family. My sister's a really well-known dentist in Chicago Anyway, she agrees to 100% that root canals are not all that great But one of the choices you have if you want to save a tooth anyway, just a couple of weeks ago I started having pain in an old root canal I realized it might be failing went back to the singing dentist because it was right in the area She'd been working on she said it's got a bad fracture deep down It's got to come out and in my case It was a bicuspid in the upper right and with a big black hole there after it was extracted if I didn't get it Replaced when I'd smile it definitely look like a gringo expat gone native and believe me

[16:49] You don't want to be tagged as a gringo gone native You know what I'm talking about right a certain percentage of gringo is an expat so end up living down here Thankfully a small percentage let themselves go they start wearing the same clothes day after day That baseball or Panama hat They're wearing as a sweat stained band that look like it's been through a couple of wars They neglect themselves in the hygiene department start smelling like a busload of French people Worship, especially with older expats who have gone native when they smile. There's a tooth or two missing Always a telltale sign that life is not so great Well, I didn't want to be that guy so I elected to get an implant to fill that extracted tooth space Oh, and I also elect to take a shower every day and have a clean change of clothes

[17:36] Just in case you were wondering Anyway, so as to not have a big gaping hole in my pearly whites when I smile I elected to have an implant So definitely I want someone who's really trained up to do that kind of work So my singing dentist would do the implant and after that a lady prosthetic dentist would do the final crown So I had two lady dental specialists working on me by the way dentists down here in Latin America are called dentistas or Odonthologos a real tongue twister So then what's the average cost of a dental implant complete because you know you have to have the tooth taken out You have the implant placed an abutment put on a provisional crown to wear for a while some months later the permanent crown

[18:22] So then what's the average cost of a dental implant complete? Well, I'm on the internet right now looking at the average cost to have that done up in the United States According to WebMD you've heard of that site the average combined cost of the implant the abutment the provisional and the final crown The range is three to five thousand dollars. That's in the ballpark of what my sister in Chicago charges And now I'm looking at my estimate sheet given to me by my own singing dentist grand total $1,075 now I've been in for the preliminary appointments. I'm going through the procedure as we speak So I'll keep you posted as to how things are going by the way if you have private health care Medical insurance down here some of those plans pay for part of that too So in the end we're talking about dental implants here in Latin America costing one-third to one-fifth of what you'd pay up in the states

[19:13] Oh, and of course in my case. I'm pretty much certain during some of those appointments anyway There'll be some singing and dancing involved Not me no no my lady dentist talk about a person enjoying his or her work There's no better signal than singing and dancing on the job remember that song whistle why you work Was a nice happy upbeat Disney song very famous came out a long time ago way before Disney went woke anyway That was exactly the point a noticeably happy worker man. What more could you ask for all right moving on now? Here's a question that came up a kind of conundrum. I wonder how you'd have handled this Just a couple of days ago. I went to a Latino circus. Yeah traveling circus now. I have to admit

[19:59] I'm sort of a sucker for Latin American circuses. You know they're never stationary They're in town for a week or two, and then they're gone off to another district another city another country Believe it or not most of the circuses are coming out of Mexico I'm not talking about big-time Ringling Brothers style circuses I'm talking about small outfits a tent that holds maybe 500 to a thousand people so then why am I a sucker for these things well? Because they're just loaded with talent talent. It takes all kinds of chances They take risks. You can't believe the performers in these circuses do death-defying stunts three shows a day They'd never be able to get away with that stuff if they were traveling through the first world for one thing They wouldn't be able to get any liability insurance coverage for example

[20:47] I was left just dumbstruck at this last circus when they brought out a big metal ball that you could see through Was a perfectly round cage made out of a metal lattice about 20 feet in diameter All of a sudden a guy in a motorcycle enters through a door and starts spinning around upside down sideways Every which way revving that thing full speed inside that metal ball made me dizzy Just looking at it then another guy in a motorcycle got in Whipping by each other missing each other by inches just unbelievable the watch then another guy got in I'm talking about three guys in a sphere just doing loop-de-loops and sideways angles You're thinking how did they ever get to this level of expertise and precision without crashing a million times? I mean look one wrong move and you're dead. You're just wondering how did they get so good without dying or breaking a bunch of

[21:36] Bones in the process then for the grand finale while the motorcyclists were whipping around each other a girl Who was previously swinging on a high bar? Trapeze walked in while the guys were whipping around on their cycles. They came so close It was painful to watch, but they didn't even knicker Oh, and when they mentioned these guys were certainly uninsurable right before these guys came on there was a juggler He was juggling some razor-sharp machetes Which he proved by not only cutting through a bunch of melons before he started but through some hard-ass coconut shells, too Anyway, the guy started juggling with three machetes kept adding one more till he was up to seven Then he put him on the ground and poured some diesel or lighter fluid on him or something one by one his assistant lit him up

[22:23] Then in the end he ended up juggling seven flaming razor-sharp machetes without a single incident And again, you got to think man practice makes perfect, right? How long did this guy practice and how many times did he fuck up? Well, it looked like he still had most of his fingers Then again, I wasn't that close so I couldn't really tell so in the end I do recommend if you're living or hanging down here in Latin America if there's a circus in town go see it The other thing is I was talking to a guy behind the refreshment counter He said people did multiple jobs in the circus and he was responsible for choreographing and selling refreshments Oni said one of the reason why some of these traveling circuses are so good So filled with star performers is that they have this dream of being discovered by a really big well-paying circus like Cirque du Soleil

[23:16] Believe it or not. He said some do get scouted out But the thing is they've got no papers to travel outside of Latin America No green card or visa to the first world. They could never qualify for a legal visa because it's not a steady job They're always traveling. They're nomads. So they don't own houses or cars or anything stable So their act has to be super entertaining and often death defying To gain notice when the big boys come around scouting which they only might do every year or two Again when the circus comes to town, I highly recommend you go see it Oh and for you guys and gals out there who don't like to see animals mistreated. Don't worry It seems almost all the traveling circuses have pretty much dropped animal acts completely So you'll see no elephants or hippos mulling around though. Some of the paying customers may qualify

[24:04] Even here in Latin America where they play loose and fast with laws and legislation The animal activist groups seem to have succeeded as a result traveling circuses have pretty much eliminated animal acts completely Which is a good thing really because I remember 20 30 years ago when I first started checking out circus and believe me back Then I didn't do it cuz I wanted to go is usually a friend or a girlfriend It sort of wrangled me into it. Well back then they certainly had death defying acts that were very entertaining plus Very very sad looking animals. Oh, and that's why I don't like to visit Latin American zoos either If you think some first-world zoos are sad and pathetic You ain't seen nothing yet in a way I don't get why Latin American countries have zoos at all

[24:49] They can't even take care of their roads and have clean water the electrical grids often suck The public schools and hospitals are shit yet They build these big old zoos that are never up to standard where the animals of attempts are just bored out of their minds Laying around out of shape and just waiting for their keeper to feed him. I just don't get it So anyway, the other day I went to one of those traveling circuses and I was not disappointed Wouldn't you know it I sat down in my assigned seat and I noticed right behind me a latino I knew a real estate broker. He bought his wife and three kids and their nanny now I knew this guy by name. He knew me too. I'd seen him around but I didn't know his family until then he introduced me to him First thing I noticed that one of his three kids a daughter probably around eight years old was bouncing off walls

[25:39] The very textbook definition of super autistic She was yelling and kicking and carrying on having tantrums run back and forth up and down the bleachers Endlessly and just wouldn't shut up She went down to hassle the clowns as they were mingling with the crowd Even the clowns tried to shoo her away. Remember her parents were upper class. They had money Even the cheap seat tickets to the circus were 25 bucks a hit So there certainly weren't any lower middle class or poor Latinos there Anyway, I kept thinking to myself. Why are the parents so calm and unmoved by their daughter's wild behavior? She was completely out of control bothering everyone and her parents paid her no mind in fact My little group of people got up and moved because she'd run back and forth between the seats and kick and push the back

[26:26] Sides of our chairs still the parents who were well turned out and very nicely dressed did nothing Yep, it's got to be something about Latin America. You know, no one wants to rock the boat I'll never forget the previous time. I ran into that real estate guy was in a lawyer's office We were both sitting in the lobby drinking coffee. Our lawyer was late manana time as usual now I remember he's a real estate guy and he said to me Johnny I saw the other day in one of the American real estate papers that Obama your ex-president Just sold one of his properties an old vineyard retreat for 39 million dollars He said 39 million that has to be a typo that can't be right. Maybe 3.9 million, but 39 impossible I said, nope, it's true. That's just one of Obama. It's four or five multi-million dollar properties

[27:16] Then the real estate guys eyes widened. He said really? How's that even possible? I said the same way it's possible for your ex-president to have a 12 million dollar condo in South Beach, Florida It's a club of thieves and we're not in it You've been listening to the expat files living in Latin America If you need some help with your own plan B We can schedule a one-on-one phone or Skype consult Just send me an email the expat files at Gmail dot com And if you want to get on the waiting list for my next week long expat insider seminar in Central America Where you're guaranteed to get a two to five year head start on your plan B Send me an email the expat files at Gmail dot com. No spamos