They don’t care too much as long as you don’t qualify for / consume social benefits like medical.

It depends. And different people care about different things.

Eg some people complain about tourists renting AirBnBs. Some people complain about digital nomads competing for rental apartments.

As you suggest, lots of other people are happy for tourists and digital nomads to come in and bring money to the local economy.

And some people are happy to receive the benefits, and still complain about the drawbacks. People really like to complain!

This is not the full picture, as you surely know.

Remote workers from rich countries do pay tax locally, in the form of VAT and sales taxes. And they typically spend far more than locals, on food to accommodation and everything in between, all while requiring nothing of the local welfare state. It's a direct wealth transfer of thousands per month, earned in one economy and spent in another. In purely economic terms, it's hard to see how this is anything but a good deal for the host country, in the large majority of cases. Hence digital nomad visas.

This is not to say that countries - and societies - don't have the right to allow or deny access to foreigners as they see fit.

spending more than locals on rent is actually one huge problem with digital nomads

And that's a big shame!

You can set up your tax system so that you raise a lot of public money from foreigners using your real estate. Be that Chinese tycoons parking their money in London apartments, or digital nomads renting a large house in the countryside.

It's really straightforward: a high enough property tax will do it automatically. Or if you want to get fancy, use a land value tax, which is like a property tax, but you get a discount for the value of the building.

Between "renting an empty house in the country" and "buying a flat to park money", there is a major difference IMO. The second scenario pushes up housing costs for locals and is almost certainly not a good deal for the host society.

Even the first scenario will fuel inflation, especially given the typical spending power of rich foreigners. It's complicated.

> Between "renting an empty house in the country" and "buying a flat to park money", there is a major difference IMO. The second scenario pushes up housing costs for locals and is almost certainly not a good deal for the host society.

Developers are happy to produce more housing, if there's demand and construction is legal.

Why is producing widgets to sell to foreigners (=exports) generally seen as a good thing, but producing housing to sell to foreigners is seen as bad?

> Even the first scenario will fuel inflation, especially given the typical spending power of rich foreigners. It's complicated.

The central bank controls inflation.

Countries usually like tourism, don't they? But tourists are also living there and consuming services with no income tax. What's the difference?

One thing to note is that even if you're not paying income tax there, you're bringing tons of money into the country from outside. So that's worth something.