It only costs me like 150-200$ to fly from USA/Canada to Central America sometimes, and once you get there it's really cheap, so you'd be surprised! You do see people making proper bank out there living in stupid overpriced condos for sure, but I would fathom they're the minority. On the lower end of the income spectrum for digital nomads, you do see a lot of people who do stuff like corky little wordpress sites, copy writing, translation work or whatever on fiver.com making like what you'd make for that, who can't even write code and just outsource it to other people on fiver in India or whatever, living comfortably in cheap hostels and stuff on under 1000$/month. This is comparable to the middle class income in Costa Rica which is around 750$/mo. I don't even think people making this much money abroad are going to be paying taxes back home on what you would basically be making doing spongebob squarepant's job, which is interesting because as far as I know Costa Rica still doesn't even have an income tax despite measures to try and introduce them, which was met with widespread protest.

Of note is that the people on this lower income tier of people who travel on a low budget while working are going to be on tourist visas. Costa Rica's tolerated this for many years now but I think they're pretty much officially encouraging more people in the higher income bracket to come through too.

I've lived the lifestyle for 10 years. By my estimation, there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands. But it's not a strictly defined concept. Some people consider themselves nomads because they have virtually no home base anywhere in the world and home is where they stored their stuff this week. Others consider themselves nomads because they travel 2-3 months a year. And there's a whole range in between.

> There have always been rich travelers.

It's surprising how untrue this is. Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo were really outstanding exceptions, but even they were within the past millennium; from the dawn of human history 2 million years ago until the advent of metal money around 3000 years ago, there was no way to be a rich traveler, because wealth, to the extent that it could be accumulated at all, was not portable. It took the form of land and livestock. If you were a traveler at all, you lived by the hospitality of the people in the lands you visited, who could also kill you without fear of repercussions if they felt like it, and very likely would if they thought you were stealing their deer or their millet. You had no way to pay them; your granary deposit receipts from Ur were of no value in Egypt, and vice versa.

So there have only been rich travelers for the latest 0.15% of human history. But if you are shortsighted enough I guess that might seem almost the same as "always".

I'd put the number of digital nomads at probably tens of thousands. We founded coworking in part in order to make digital nomadism possible.

Good point. One nit though:

>So there have only been rich travelers for the latest 0.15% of human history

I would prefer the phrase "human existence" here because in the social sciences, prehistory ends and history begins when the society or region in question acquires people who know how to write, so for example the history of Scandinavia begins around 800 AD.

True!

Certainly in the tens of thousands or more depending on how strictly you define it. There'd be thousands in any one country alone. Remember that a lot of the hype is extolling the freedom/lifestyle rather than the riches. You don't have to earn a lot if your expenses are low, so the entry barrier is minimal.