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Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture

• phaemon 11y ago
  I think living anywhere other than your home country for a while is a valuable experience. You learn to not only recognise the flaws in your own country (which you can then push to improve), but you also learn to appreciate what you previously took for granted.
  • logingone 11y ago
    This is why I think visas are better than immigration - lessons return to the original country.
  • sschueller 11y ago
    That is what it was for me when I moved to the US from Switzerland. Only then I realized that the way people live in Switzerland is not something you can take for granted and in the end made me move back. I always hear people complain about the Swiss mindset and how they should be more like silicon valley. But what these people don't realize is the reason Switzerland is the way it is is because of the mindset.
  • yardie 11y ago
    I moved out the US just for a few years. Almost a decade later I still haven't returned. And when I seriously contemplate picking my return date I see events in the news like Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Sam Dubose and think why should I move back.
    • toephu2 11y ago
      Wow you cherry-picked 3 examples (see confirmation bias) and thought stuff like that happens to every single person in America pulled over by a cop (in a nation of 300M+)?
      • Daishiman 11y ago
        It happens all the time in the Bay Area. Pretty much every week I have friends who are either witnesses or were very close to shootings or situations with police brutality. Hell I stayed there just for a few months and I saw firsthand a cop restraining a person with a boot up their face. I had never before seen anything like that, and I've been to some pretty violent places.
  • adwf 11y ago
    That's one of the most pernicious things about the US tax system though. Because citizens get taxed by both the USA and the country they're in, it strongly disincentivises people from ever moving abroad (unless they revoke their US citizenship). This leads to Americans never really discovering, en masse, what life in foreign countries can be like. They're just tourist destinations.
    • toephu2 11y ago
      not totally true, you are not taxed up to 100k while working abroad. see "Foreign Earned Income Exclusion".
      • jleyank 11y ago
        This and unless your country of residence has lower tax rates than the US you merely end up filing, not paying the US. If the tax rate is lower, then the tax hit is what you'd pay in the US less the foreign tax credit. Only thing would be tax free income in your country of residence that is taxable in the US...
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  • phaemon 11y ago
    Calvin was hardly an intellectual midget, and the concept that he put forward the notion that "work led to salvation" is almost perversely wrong!
    • hga 11y ago
      Indeed. In fact, I thought one of the most notorious aspects of his theology was predestination, as Wikipedia puts it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theology_of_John_Calvin#Predestination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theology_of_John_Calvin#Predes...): Near the end of the Institutes, Calvin describes and defends the doctrine of predestination.... The principle, in Calvin's words, is that "All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death."
  • frozenport 11y ago
    Ummm. Calvin is most famous for his work in Geneva, which is incidently what the author contrasts with our culture. The divergent views on work life balance happened later, perhaps during the USA's rapid industrialization and sold to the people under the idea of 'land of oppertunity'.
  • davidgay 11y ago
    Hmm. Calvin lived and preached in Geneva. Geneva is in fact sometimes referred to as "La Cité de Calvin", and on the whole is viewed quite positively there...
  • vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    I consider predestination to be a more harmful idea than any Protestant work ethic (however inconsistent it is in practice), honestly.
  • notNow 11y ago
• asdfologist 11y ago
  Can someone here elucidate the downsides to living in Switzerland, over the US, particularly for those in the HN crowd?
  • intrasight 11y ago
    It is very expensive
    • Locke1689 11y ago
      Compared to San Francisco, or Oklahoma?
      • dpeck 11y ago
        yes
      • pathy 11y ago
        Seems moderately comparable to SF. [1] Switzerland is generally considered to be very expensive compared to most places though. [1] http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&city1=San+Francisco%2C+CA&country2=Switzerland&city2=Zurich http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...
      • rsync 11y ago
        Yes, it is more expensive in every way than San Francisco. Given the re-float of the Franc, it's even worse now. (I live in SF but one of the rsync.net locations is in Zurich and I travel there frequently)
        • MHordecki 11y ago
          Given the re-float, it's actually much better now (for residents) - prices of imported goods have fallen.
          • rsync 11y ago
• andresmanz 11y ago
  Living in Switzerland ruined me for America, too. Depending on where you grow up, it's like being put in a box full of old, silly stuff, whirring through a giant universe of interesting things. Breaking out of it can be very hard.
• simonw 11y ago
  This appears to be copy and pasted straight from http://www.vox.com/2015/7/21/8974435/switzerland-work-life-balance http://www.vox.com/2015/7/21/8974435/switzerland-work-life-b... - this link should point there instead.
  • liquidwax 11y ago
    That's the first line in the link. It says "From VOX" and links to the vox article.
    • frisco 11y ago
      The original link should be used here.
  • cantrevealname 11y ago
    Not only that but they[1] didn't bother to copy and paste the author's name. It's seems extra obnoxious to copy the entire article but not the author's name and two sentence bio. [1] https://ukiahcommunityblog.wordpress.com/2015/07/23/living-in-switzerland-ruined-me-for-america-and-its-lousy-work-culture/ https://ukiahcommunityblog.wordpress.com/2015/07/23/living-i... (I'm mentioning the original link--so this comment makes sense--in case the HN moderators later change the link to the real article on Vox.)
    • Eupolemos 11y ago
      And that's why I also look at the comments before the actual link. Or maybe not THE only, but it is a fine excuse.
• rsync 11y ago
  In Europe, many, many people were essentially slaves. They were property of a small class of landed gentry who ruled over them with, at best, patriarchal indifference and at worst homicidal, spiteful authoritarianism. They were peasants. Then, over the course of about 200 years, some of these gentry got their heads chopped off or were stripped of their papal lands or were rounded up and put in front of a firing squad and thrown down a well. But there were still plenty of gentry left, and so a deal was struck: we (the peasants) get old age pensions and some trifling property ownership and a handful of other "benefits" and protections, and you get to retain the landed class privileges you've constructed and ... we promise not to chop your heads off. Ok, deal. The european social model is not the result of sophisticated empathy and communalism. It's a deal made fair and square - you stop treating us like cattle, and we won't revolt and murder you and your children. But there's a converse to all of this ... What if a population was not systematically enslaved and disenfranchised for, oh, say, 2000 years ? What if there is not an intricate system of landed class and privilege and you build the social and welfare state first ? The deal still gets made, it just gets made in reverse. You want cradle to grave welfare and benefits ? Fine. These folks over here will give it to you (the money has to come from somewhere, after all) but they will absolutely assert a system of privilege and class benefits. You won't like it. It's "unamerican". Those consequences will be unintended, but there's no way to leave that equation out of balance. After all, a deals a deal.
  • airza 11y ago
    what? America had an actual slave class. Also indentured servants.
    • rsync 11y ago
      Nobody would dispute or ignore that - of course that occurred to me when writing the original comment. I stand by my analysis since American slaves were (at the time) a small minority of the country that existed in a fraction of the geography and lasted for less than 90 years after 1776. No portion of americans were "systematically enslaved and disenfranchised for ... 2000 years" and no majority (or even large plurality) of americans were ever enslaved at all.
• colordrops 11y ago
  On the flip side, living in China for nine years made me appreciate many of the good things in the US.
• pluckytree 11y ago
  Interesting read but I think the author makes a false conclusion that taxes on wealth is better than taxes on income. If the US income-based tax system really were progressive in practice, then you could compare apples to apples. A wealth-based system could be just as non-progressive if there were similar ways around paying your fair share like there is in the US. Given systems that are equally difficult to circumvent, the type of taxes that would be most beneficial are those that don’t punish earning income and saving and investing money. Things like sales taxes, consumption taxes, and transaction taxes discourage consumption and also discourage financial system manipulation by the super-wealthy. But I think the Swiss succeed despite this because they have a much more compassionate view towards their fellow citizens and are willing to pay higher taxes if it’s used for things that genuinely make people lives better rather than line the pockets of big business and cronies. Also, US workers have a terrible work ethic and an adversarial relationship with their employers. If you feel you should get more out an employer than you give them, you’re not really understanding how the system works. If you provide high productivity and there is mutual interest in the company succeeding, then taking time off or working a normal work schedule is not anything an employer would need to argue about. A company has to make money in order to hire people. They aren’t a public service. If you’re not productive, then you are probably going to have to work longer hours so that the company can succeed enough to keep your job. And in general, Americans are greedy. It’s what brought people here as a young country and it’s in our DNA. What works in Switzerland probably can’t really work here. But what actually could work is to use economic incentives to try to encourage a healthier economy. Instead, we waste our time thinking that taxing the rich more is the solution to everything. Sure, they should pay more than lower income people do, but it’s a multi-layered problem.
  • bmelton 11y ago
    > But I think the Swiss succeed despite this because they have a much more compassionate view towards their fellow citizens From what I've heard, that is predominately only true so long as their fellow citizens are sufficiently "like them".
    • seunosewa 11y ago
      It's a human thing, not a Swiss thing. Which is why homogenous countries have more sane political systems.
• valleyhut 11y ago
  I had a similar experience to the author. Despite earning tons of money in the Bay Area, life quality here just doesn't compare to Europe.
  • nnoitra 11y ago
    Can you tell us more about that?
• fla 11y ago
  I think average wage is a bad metric. I can't find any source ATM but I think the median salary is around $75k.
• benkuykendall 11y ago
  Although Switzerland and America may have very different work cultures and social support policies, that's not the most obvious difference. Consider our per-capita GDPs (2013, nominal dollars)[1]: Switzerland 84,748 United States 53,042 So even if the US passed new employment laws and embraced work-life balance, we would still have only 63% of Switzerland's money to spend on each person. I'm not saying that the US couldn't improve its working conditions, but its unavoidable that a wealthier nation will have resources to treat its working class well. [1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=switzerland+vs+united+states+per+capita+gdp http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=switzerland+vs+united+s...
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  • hga 11y ago
    The picture looks very different if you use purchasing power parity; per Wikipedia, which cites roughly the same nominal per-capita GDPs, in PPP dollars: Switzerland 58,731 United States 54,596 If you then factor in the demographics....
    • sampo 11y ago
      Just to make comparison even more complicated, I assume in Switzerland you don't need to pay as much for health insurance, and put as much money aside for retirement, and people in US do. And I know college fees in Switzerland are around 1000 to 3000 per year, not 10 000 to 40 000 like in US. So if you have kids, you don't need to save for their college. (...But then you can only send them to European universities. If you want to send them to a US university, you still need to save money for that.)
      • letitgo12345 11y ago
        On the other hand you have to pay a lot more in taxes.
        • 11y ago
• jkot 11y ago
  I think article skips anything negative. For start "lunch hour" is mandatory and in reality it means you spend extra hour at work. I would rather spend a hour with my kid than eating with my boss. Second the taxation leaves various compulsory "contributions": social, pension, wealth, tv, petrol etc. It is not 5% but more likely 50% of average salary. And third, I have totally different experience with american companies. All american corporations I worked for had strong life-work balance, holidays etc.
  • perfTerm 11y ago
    Yea, and you're also a software engineer judging by your profile. Lets not pretend what we experience is the same as the average American experience.
  • chaostheory 11y ago
    There's one thing I'm interested in since this is on HN... How easy is it to start a venture over there? Also, my old roommate from college works at CERN now as a researcher. He tells me that he can't afford to go out and eat since it's so expensive. Is this true?
    • Vespasian 11y ago
      I don't know anything about starting a company in Switzerland but as someone living next to the swiss border I can tell you it's really expensive to live there. On a typical weekend the supermarkets on the german side of the border are filled with swiss people buying all sort of everyday stuff like food. Gas is typically somewhat cheaper which is why equally many people cross the other way. ;)
    • peterjancelis 11y ago
      There are some smart contracts / blockchain tpye startups in Zug. Monetas for example. You could reach out to them.
    • Lukas_Skywalker 11y ago
      There are some agencies which help you set all the paperwork up for free. You have to deposit 20k swiss francs on a locked bank account (the amount) you can be held liable for, founding and entry into the central corporation register costs 1-2k.
• notNow 11y ago
  From now on, we should call it "The Swiss Dream" and let go of any preconceptions that America is the land of opportunity and the proof is in the pudding by the much higher average annual income earned by the Swiss over their US peers despite the longer hours they put in and the jobs that enslaved them for eternity.
• blfr 11y ago
  "Driving Bentleys ruined me for BMWs and their poor make quality" Switzerland is one of... three maybe (Luxemburg, Norway) countries with higher standard of living than the US. Not even Switzerland's neighbours (Italy, France, Germany) with people coming from the same populations can reproduce it. All these great states are tiny (8M people) outliers. There are more people enjoying work-life balance in America than alive in Switzerland. You could carve out multiple Switzerlands of the US if you broke it up and tightened immigration (as the Swiss are doing right now).
  • Havoc 11y ago
    >There are more people enjoying work-life balance in America than alive in Switzerland. Thats a little bit disingenuous comparing absolute numbers of countries with very different sizes. I do agree that they're outliers though - seems very difficult to duplicate.
    • bdcravens 11y ago
      As disingenuous as comparing a small country to the US as a whole.
      • Havoc 11y ago
        >As disingenuous as comparing a small country to the US as a whole. Why? Countries seem to scale pretty well. A social structure that works well in one city can work well in 200 cities.
        • bdcravens 11y ago
          We regularly see startups do a belly flop when they scale from 5 employees to 50, yet somehow what works for a country 1/5 the population and 1/10 the size of California could apply to all 50 states?
        • jareds 11y ago
          A social structure that works well in a city of 100000 people will not be able to work the same way as a city with a population of close to 4000000.
• alexashka 11y ago
  "Currently an estimated 28 percent of all funds held outside the country of origin (sometimes called "offshore" funds) are kept in Switzerland." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Switzerland#Banking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Switzerland#Banking It's cute that she even provides numbers and leaves this out. This is the only number you need to know. Everything else is the direct result of this. You know who else does awesome? A closed community of multi-millionaires in the USA. Except you're not a part of that elite. Somehow, you got to be part of the European elite (anyone who lives in Switzerland) and feel like the rest of the world can magically live like that. No, that lifestyle is at the expense of the rest of the world.
  • eps 11y ago
    > Everything else is the direct result of this. Pray tell the details.
    • IshKebab 11y ago
      Pretty obvious no? Switzerland is a smallish country that acts as a moral-free world bank. It's easy for them to become rich in that situation.
      • once-in-a-while 11y ago
        Where I live, "moral-free" is called "immoral".
        • IshKebab 11y ago
          Nah I actually meant amoral (just forgot the word). Amoral means ignoring the morality. Immoral means that it is definitely bad. In other words, not all money held in Switzerland is ill-gotten - they don't care either way.
  • bsbechtel 11y ago
    Exactly. The reason Switzerland can live like this is because of the political environment in Europe that allows specialized, regional industries to keep their wealth instead of transferring it to poorer regions through cross-continental benefit programs. Vox, where this was originally posted, posted multiple times about how this is one of the causes of the Greek crisis, but never mentioned Switzerland or the other Nordic countries, just Germany and France. Switzerland's situation is similar to if New York were its own country, and didn't have to pay any federal taxes. Instead, New Yorkers would pay high taxes from their high salaries, mainly from Wall Street, to lift the living standards of only New Yorkers, which costs significantly less than paying for an entire country.
• loblollyboy 11y ago
  How is all of that sustainable? Are us Americans just being massively lied to?
  • vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    Not necessarily. The United States just harbors an enormous amount of path dependence.
• bsaul 11y ago
  Nobody here mentions anying about the very peculiar banking system that let the swiss economy get a huge chunk of the illegaly made money of the world? Of course, you can have a very generous social security system and a great transport infrastructure when you've been financed by crime for decades. It's probably not the only reason of course, and we surely have many smart things to learn from this country.
  • alkonaut 11y ago
    The discussion, quite correctly, isn't about Switzerland vs. the U.S. but about northern/Western Europe vs the U.S. since everything in the article applies pretty generally (sometimes even more) also e.g in the Nordic countries. Some outliers (Norway, Switzerland) have weird economies, but others such as Finland don't.
• zak_mc_kracken 11y ago
  tl;dr: America sucks for work when you don't have a college degree. Too bad OP doesn't realize that this applies outside of America too.
• cletus 11y ago
  Ok, I have some perspective on this. I'm Australian, lived there most of my life. I've also lived in London (3 years), Cologne (9 months), Zurich (almost 1 year) and now New York (coming up on 5 years). There's a lot of good things about Switzerland but there's one part of this post I think is misleading: taxes. The poster mentions the low rate of federal tax on the average wage. This is only part of the story. I forget all the specifics but you had to pay: - federal tax - cantonal tax - tax for what part of the canton you lived in (I forget what this one is called) - 3-6 mandatory insurances covering health, retirement, unemployment and so on Now I still think it works out rather well but don't be under any illusions it ends at 5% federal. It does not. In a way it's good because the other way to do this is just to tax you at a higher rate and decide what to do with the money after the tax. The Swiss system is definitely more transparent. You also have choice. You can choose health insurance with a higher deductible to have lower costs. Swiss law mandates the minimum coverage required. Switzerland is also very expensive for day to day expenses. I seem to recall seeing steak in Migros for 60+ CHF/kg. This was 10 years ago however. I do remember reading about a supermarket chain in Germany that opened a store just across the border from Basel (about an hour from Zurich) and it had the highest turnover of any of their stores because all the Swiss went there to shop. There were limits on imports of various products like meat into Switzerland. It's true that the public transportation in Switzerland is simply amazing. If you live in a city there's really no reason to own a car. I can't speak for more rural lifestyles. Culturally however I think the German side of Switzerland (I have no experience with the French or Italian sides) was difficult for expats. Honestly I found Swiss Germans to be _incredibly_ rude and insular. Now bear in mind I've lived in Germany (Cologne). Cologne I consider to be one of the friendliest places I've ever been. Like I'd be at the train station and someone would arrive and ask "Wie spaet ist es?" (what time is it?). I'd reply and they'd know immediately I was a foreigner (Auslander) and strike up a conversation. This happened _routinely_. So whatever experiences you may have about German culture from Germany (and even Germany is a very different place in the Northwest vs the more conservative South vs the old East vs Berlin), Swiss Germans are something else. Housing is interesting. They have (or had at least when I was there) low interest rates (~3.5%) but owning a house then deemed you with the income that house would get if you rented it out but that was offset by the interest you paid. So no one paid off their mortgages. Also, Switzerland punitively taxes capital gains on real estate. The idea I think is to not create a speculative market in real estate as they consider that bad. So there weren't the huge swings in property values you might see in the US or Australia. That's probably good. Still there are criticisms. Like the richest areas have the lowest taxes. This could apply in Zurich (the Gold Coast I think it was called along the east bank of Lake Zurich) or some even stayed out of the canton and, say, lived in Zug, choosing to commute each day (it's about 30-45 minutes to central Zurich). The details may have changed but when I was there when you got a work permit (a B residence permit) it was basically a work visa. After 3 years it automatically converted to a C permit, which was essentially a residence permit, and you could stay as long as you kept renewing it. This is in stark contrast to the US system with H1B lotteries and the gruelling torture that is the green card process. One other thing worth noting was that unless you married someone Swiss it's almost impossible to get Swiss citizenship. I seem to recall reading about families that have lived there for 3 generations since the 1920s and were still residents. You'll note that after being there 10 years the poster still said they had a residence permit. That won't change. I'm a little surprised they got residence permits at all actually. One consequence of the tighter integration into Europe (it's much easier to get a work permit as an EU citizen now than it was 15 years ago) is that it became more difficult for non-EU citizens to get one. I'd be curious to know what her husband does/did. As for the US, I live in New York and as others have said to me New York isn't the US. Not really. I like it here and I'm probably going to stay. As much as I like Switzerland (and everywhere you go really is a postcard) I'm not sure I could live there permanently. I'd be wary of saying the Swiss way of doing things is better because, to me, the Swiss system probably isn't sustainable in the general case. Switzerland prospered as a center of banking and of being ostensibly neutral (eg being spared the horrors of WW2). It's a bit like Monaco. I hear Monaco is amazing but Monaco is a haven for the wealthy that essentially cherrypicks its residents. Switzerland isn't quite that but it's similar. In Geneva for example you have many workers who live in France and commute every day (there's a special work permit for this).
• Havoc 11y ago
  Thanks to the way my industry is structured a bunch of my peers went overseas for a couple of months to various countries. I paid careful attention to the feedback & reached the same conclusion - USA is very far down on my list of countries I'd like to work in. Something about their work/life balance culture doesn't sit right with me. Its not that I mind hard work - I've done my fair share of 20 hour work days...but there is a dissonance there that I just can't quite place.
• mariusmg 11y ago
  Oh, poor you....You should come work in Romania (where i am ) and see how it is.
• ohsnap 11y ago
  That's nice but she's just a spoiled rich lady. Americans work hard - but so does the rest of the world (except the Swiss I guess).
• ausjke 11y ago
  Size matters. Switzerland shall be compared to Singapore etc instead of US.
• JamesBarney 11y ago
  While I agree with many of the sentiments in the article, I don't think a comparison of wages is entirely fair. Some small nations have an out-sized GDP per capita such as Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Singapore because of their large financial industries. These industries are possible because the countries attract wealth and the wealthy through very low taxes(like Singapore) or very strong banking secrecy laws. And while bringing in a large amount of wealth can lead to a GDP per capita for boost small countries its not reproducible when a country is the size of the United States.[0] [0] - Because if every billionaire in the world moved to the U.S. it would barely move the needle on wealth per capita unlike Singapore, Switzerland, and Luxembourg.
  • cjsthompson 11y ago
    GDP doesn't mean shit.
  • lispm 11y ago
    The US also has a skewed GDP per capita. Large financial industry, various economic bubbles (housing, stock market, ...), printing money, huge debt financed consumption, huge military expenses. The trillion dollar Iraq war costs are increasing the GDP.
    • adventured 11y ago
      The trillion dollar iraq war cost harmed US economic performance massively in fact. It stole productive capital and put it toward destruction. The debt cost then goes on perpetually in the form of interest (currently at $430 billion per year), making it even worse over time. Instead of investing into factory production, business expansion, R&D, science, healthcare, infrastructure, long-term economic growth in general, you accumulate a trillion dollars in long-term veteran care costs, and perhaps destroy hundreds of billions worth of equipment, and run up the price of oil, gasoline and commodities in general by devaluing the dollar and destabilizing the middle east - for absolutely zero real benefit.
  • mike_hearn 11y ago
    Swiss banking secrecy (or privacy, if you want a better sounding name) is pretty much over these days. The Americans killed it as part of their worldwide citizen taxation program (FATCA). The Swiss send all your banking data to the IRS directly now and have done for several years. The financial industry is large but not outsized, relative to GDP. For instance it is a smaller component of the economy than in Ireland.
• mmaunder 11y ago
  How about no commute because you're working remotely from anywhere in the world, awesome pay, the best health care coverage, dental,options (even with a great base pay package), 401k, relaxed work culture and a company that goes out of it's way to spoil the team. Our company and team are all US based. Sounds like the author picked a nasty US company for her article.
  • Veratyr 11y ago
    And you're picking an unusually great company. I think her point is more that the benefits she's talking about are average for the Swiss, they're to be expected wherever you work by default and they're not just for tech industry workers. In the US, they're something so unusual that you feel lucky for having them, even if you work in the tech industry.
    • mmaunder 11y ago
      And my point is that hers is very one-sided and there's some serious selection bias going on. Living in Switzerland can actually suck. It's expensive - about 2+ times the rest of Europe and there is some serious xenophobia. Benefits in the US are not unusual and are pretty darn good by world standards. But hey, everyone loves a grass-is-greener post.
      • Veratyr 11y ago
        I'm sure it can suck but compared to the US I think it's far better for the majority of citizens. I'm saying this not as a European or an American with a particular bias either way but as an Australian who's been in both countries and frequently interacts with their citizens. I'm also someone who's worked in "low" positions (cooked fries at McDonald's) as well as someone who's worked in "high" positions (Software Engineer at a rather large company) and the conditions I've noticed in the US are just straight out bad. I got more vacation time as a McDonald's fry cook than I do as an engineer at one of the world's largest tech companies (20 days McDonald's, 15 in US tech). And that company is one that's celebrated for being one of the "best" places to work in the US for its revolutionary benefits. The majority of those benefits are statutory back home or in the more affluent European countries. Just have a look at some of the numbers: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statutory_minimum_employment_leave_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statutory_minimum_empl... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave#Americas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave#Americas - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_leave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_leave - http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/ http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/ (adjust by work life balance and watch it fall even further) The US has no statutory parental leave, vacation time, very limited sick leave and a minimum wage that in many cases leaves full time workers living paycheck to paycheck. Switzerland by comparison has 4 weeks statutory leave, 14 weeks at 80% pay maternal leave, 3 weeks sick leave and while it has no government mandated minimum wage, most of the population are covered by union agreements giving them a minimum of $15k/year PPP adjusted (http://www.therichest.com/business/the-top-10-countries-with-the-highest-minimum-wages/?view=all http://www.therichest.com/business/the-top-10-countries-with...), one of the highest in the world. Sure there are some people who have it better in the US than Switzerland but the people right at the bottom get a lot more benefits from Switzerland than they do from America.
• ohsnap 11y ago
  Switzerland is the world's most successful parasite. So it's hard to recreate their 'success' unless you have lots of host countries to feed from https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Switzerland:_A_parasite_feeding_on_developing_world%3F https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Switzerland:_A_parasite_feeding_o...
  • x5n1 11y ago
    When private interest does this, and they do it commonly, it's not a problem -- that wealth is privitized... but when a country does it and benefits its citizens it's a big deal.
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  • alkonaut 11y ago
    The nordic countries have similar quality of life. Granted, a bit less purchasing power and much higher taxes, but even better work/life deal (longer holidays, more parental leave) etc. And apart from norway it's not oil. And none is a parasite I think.
    • pepon 11y ago
      I guess we all have different definitions of "quality of life". IMHO, the salary may be very high in the nordic countries, but with the weather the have, I wouldn't consider that a high quality of life.
      • alkonaut 11y ago
        That is true. I specifically meant work/life balance. Where life is considered life even with 1h daylight and -20C outside (and I agree that might be stretching it).
        • namenotrequired 11y ago
• lordnacho 11y ago
  I live in Switzerland, and have lived in two other countries. Also have lots of connections in the US. Here's my take: 1) You have work-life balance, but it is forced on you. Especially women. If you go out around noon, you will see loads of school kids walking home to get their lunch. Full time childcare is CHF30K at my local nursery. School is free, but lunch will cost you extra. And the nursery has holidays, btw. So if you're working you need to either find someone to take the kid, or you have to spend your holiday when the nursery is on holiday. When it comes to school, the kids will probably have more holiday than you, so I don't know wtf people do. Relatives seem to play a big part, especially grandparents. 2) Stuff is expensive here. Everyday stuff just costs a silly amount compared to across the border in Germany or France. Local builders cost a fortune to hire, again compared to across the border. And they're not even local, just foreign guys getting arbed by the local cartel. 3) Sure, you get 80% of salary, for two years, up to a max insured salary of CHF10500, not bad. But you pay for that, too. Or your employer does, so you are paying too. It's about 20%, according to my accountant. And when you do go on unemployment, there's a guy who treats you with much suspicion handling your case. And they still have the same circus of sending you on mandatory courses of zero benefit that they have in other countries. 4) Tax is reasonable. I should say you don't get to keep 95% of the salary. There's a good 10% or so that's a sort of forced saving that goes into a pension pot. It's your money though. And wealth tax isn't crazy, just a fraction of a percent most places, progressive so most people won't feel it. 5) Vacation is very different between the US and Europe. I've never been in need of more due to being self-employed most of my life. But if I were to move to the US as an employee, that would be one of my big marks against. 6) Sure public transport is good. But if you live outside of the big towns it's useful to drive. And there's plenty of parking, too. Road taxes are sensible, and car insurance is cheap. 7) I went with my wife to a birthing course for first-timers. The other couples we met told me it was standard for paternity leave to be 2 days. And 14 weeks is on the low side in Europe, especially compared to Scandinavia. I can't imagine what it's like in the US if she thinks Switzerland is good for parental leave. On the plus side, the birth experience is amazing. You can get a single room (or just upgrade if you got cheap insurance, costs a couple grand) and the father can stay there as well, for a week. Well, that's when we got bored. Until then it was basically like a hotel where they bring you 3 meals a day and clean the baby for you. - Other things to note: The job market feels rigid. There's almost no unemployment, but as a foreigner with a foreign degree and a foreign accent, it feels like employers are not keen to take a chance on you. The education system seems to be a sort of silo, where every degree course has certain jobs they send people into. In Angloland any degree will suffice for most jobs, which is liberating. As an employer, it's hard to get people to change jobs. I chatted with the CTO of a startup the other day, and he found far fewer good developers here than Scandinavia, and many people didn't want to take the chance. Going around the Zurich startup scene, you get the feeling the startup guys are a whole other world, separate in ethos and outlook from the rest of society. - There's a social awkwardness quite unlike any other society I've lived in or known people from. Hard to describe, but people behave in strange ways here. There's a lady across the street who comes to stare at us from her window when we park the car. Instead of asking someone in person to move an impractically parked car you get a note saying police will be called (she could see us the whole time). It's generally harder to strike up a conversation with people here (the USA is the best for this btw). - People don't seem to be afraid of treating foreigners differently to everyone else. The other day my wife's car stopped working at a light and a bus driver got out and told her this doesn't happen in Switzerland. Also hard not to feel targeted when doing one home renovation causes two lawsuits from guys who are clearly just chancing.
• joesmo 11y ago
  The frustrating part about living in America is that the solutions to problems are not only known, they're achievable. Yet because of a combination of stupidity amongst regular people and corruption amongst officials, people continue to suffer needlessly. There isn't a single thing in this article that wouldn't work if adopted in America, especially taxing the rich and having mandated time off. Yet it's not just the people that run the oligopoly that are understandably against such changes for the better, but also the average poor American who votes for the representative that is guaranteed to make life worse, not better for regular people.
• xyz03 11y ago
  I'm Swiss and I have been working in the US for a few years and some prejudices resonate with me. However, there are also some explanations for this: Xenophobia: Swiss are probably less xenophobic than other countries I have experienced (including the US where I was mildly surprised about some things. Of course you shouldn't tell it loudly at your work-place). About one third of the population in Switzerland are foreigners and the number has been strongly increasing in the last few years. I think Swiss are fed up about "soldiers" (aka expats) and other foreigners that don't want to integrate. I had some bosses that didn't speak German and also didn't understand that some things are socially unacceptable. Unlike other countries, there is rarely violence towards foreigners. Banks: I worked in banking. Other countries do the same as Switzerland. When you go to a German bank just over the border as a Swiss until recently, they will tell you that you can hide your money there and tax authorities in Switzerland won't know. I won't speak of Delaware, Miami, Singapore, Hong Kong and all these other places. The US is well-know for having ambiguous policies. Bankers in Miami are specialized in taking money from Latin America. Prices: Prices are a lot higher for certain things. You can go shopping in Germany to save money. Some other items, e.g. electronics, are cheaper except for the US. Expect to pay high prices for rent, meat, vegetable, other fixed costs (health insurance, electricity etc.). However, the money left after your fixed costs is a lot more than the average person in another country. And to revert back to xenophobia, there are foreigners that somehow are unaware of the prices and accept low offers. Swiss don't like them very much. Working: I worked in New York (not the US I know). I worked on a fixed two-year contract, so I couldn't be terminated. My US colleagues had an at-will contract. I always thought it crazy what my colleagues were willing to put up with. When they got a better offer, they just disappeared within a few days. But I had to adapt because I was the foreigner and the Swiss nowadays also expect you better adapt and integrate (see xenophobia) or you better leave Switzerland. Although I lived in the US for some time, I'm a strong supporter of limiting the number of foreigners in Switzerland. It's not in Switzerland's interest but more in the interest of employers who try to take advantage of it.
  • chrisper 11y ago
    So which country do you prefer?
• evilhaskeller 11y ago
  As a French living in the US, I share your sentiment. Western Europe's quality of life is ridiculously high, I am not sure if that is reflected very much in the way we measure QoL but that's my experience. I thought that public transportations in Paris sucked, that was before I had to ride BART. Same goes for homelessness, crimes etc... I love SF, there is a ton of amazing places to hang out at etc.. but damn, I do miss Paris.
• curiousjorge 11y ago
  Reminds me of a local recruiter from a while back who wouldn't stop calling, emailing and then resorted to sending messages on twitter (creeped me out) asking if I was interested in a 1~3 month contract with a fairly esoteric stack with no overtime pay and a generous minimum wage, no lunch, 4 hour commute. I told him no and he asked if I knew anyone else that would be interested.
• ap22213 11y ago
  I grew up very poor in the U.S. Poor as in, my single mom earned $6000 / year with little federal benefits to raise four kids. But, now, I'm in my late 30s and very successful. So, in that regard, I love the U.S. For the upper middle class and wealthy, the U.S. is like an adult playground. And, I don't mind the long hours of work; I still get plenty of work-life balance. But, honestly, the only way that this occurs (unless born rich) is if one is smart, ambitious, hard-working, cunning, and lucky. If one is poor and doesn't have those attributes, they'll have a very hard time here. For instance, intelligence will not get one very far, alone. I grew up gifted and talented. All of my siblings were also gifted and talented. But, of my family and classmates, only 20% made it out of poverty. In that way, the U.S. is quite horrible.
  • myth_buster 11y ago
    I think the times are a-changing. Upward mobility is on the decrease and inequality on the increase. Only a small subset of industries are currently seeing rags-to-riches stories and if one is ideological, the options may dwindle further.
  • Cthulhu_ 11y ago
    This is what I liked about my upbringing; my parents weren't rich either, but at the same time my quality of life was decent. Thanks to government funding, I was able to get a decent education (bachelor's degree, I could go for a master's but I couldn't be arsed) and as a result a very good job (I've got the best job of anyone I know besides my colleagues). Upward mobility is very good here, unlike in the US where as far as I know you either need to have your parents save up half a house worth of college funding, or some magic college fund that only kids in movies get by playing in bands or being good at sports, or however that thing works. It's an equal opportunities system. Which unfortunately has been cut / downsized thanks to the economic crisis and probably capitalist goals, so the generation after me has less opportunities and can't, for example, do a master's after they do a bachelor's without working alongside it or taking out a big loan.
    • gorbachev 11y ago
      You can also shackle yourself for decades by borrowing money on student loans, some of which you can't discharge in a bankruptcy thanks to legislators who thought the student lending industry needed a handout.
• TravisJamison 11y ago
  This was just painful to read about how little the author understands about basic economics and the privileges afforded to that ONE tiny nation.
  • swehner 11y ago
    What is that lack of understanding?
  • amag 11y ago
    Yeah, only it's mostly true for the rest of EU as well which means that similar privileges are enjoyed by some 400M people, not so tiny nation now, eh?
• chrisper 11y ago
  I am currently studying in the US on a visa. I WAS considering trying the H1B route. However, the longer I am here the more I see what the "real" America is like. Due to my European citizenship I can work in most (if not all) European countries without the hassle I'd have here (visa application). Yes, the pay might be lower, and yes I might not be in the start up mecca, but I never cared about start ups.
• toephu2 11y ago
  The author claims she was double taxed by the Swiss and American governments. I doubt that she actually paid the U.S. taxes, as up to 100K earned abroad is exempt. It's called the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Foreign-Earned-Income-Exclusion http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Forei...
  • refurb 11y ago
    There are plenty of errors in her article. Like when she used Romney as an example of low taxes for the rich. She conviently failed to mention it was because he gave a HUGE chunk of it to charity.
    • toephu2 11y ago
      technically she was right though about his tax rate, it was low because most of his income came from long term cap gains investments
• zobzu 11y ago
  i pay 45% tax in the usa. time to move ;)
  • chrisper 11y ago
    Moving won't help you if you are a US citizen.
    • zobzu 11y ago
      im not, thats part of why i pay 45%.
  • cmurf 11y ago
    How do you figure? Top tax bracket is 39.6% when taxable income is over $413,201. On the first $9225 of that you pay 10% just like everyone else. From 1944 to 1963 the top rate was not less than 91% From 1932 to 1981 the top rate was not less than 63%
    • greenyoda 11y ago
      39.6% is the top federal income tax bracket. There are also state income taxes (in most states), local income taxes in a few places (e.g., NYC), payroll tax (social security, etc.), real estate taxes and sales taxes. Add up all the taxes and you can easily reach 45%.
      • zobzu 11y ago
        exactly. 45% is actually pretty near the maximum :/
• anon4 11y ago
  60% work time Oh man, I've been asking for this at almost every company. "Hey, can I work 4 days a week for 80% of the salary?" "WHAT? NO! Think of all the synergy collaboration meeting time you'll miss you won't be able to communicate without being present all of the time what if someone needs to talk to you during the week you must have the same schedule to maximise the convergence serendipity" "Oh well... what about work hours?" "We have a flexible system. We have people coming in as early as 7 and ones arriving as late as 12, both are fine as long as you do 8 hours" I didn't have the heart to tell them.
• dola 11y ago
  > Switzerland immediately taxes dividends at a maximum of 35 percent [...] This is not quite true. They do impose a 35% tax on all dividends and interest of bank accounts (if the amount is over 200 Swiss Francs) but you get that back when filing your tax return. However you will have to pay income tax on dividends and interest. The goal is to ensure people don't commit tax evasion by not declaring some of their wealth. [1] [1]: https://www.admin.ch/opc/de/classified-compilation/19650189/index.html https://www.admin.ch/opc/de/classified-compilation/19650189/... (in German)
• itaysk 11y ago
  While I agree with the her general message, I don't see how "The Swiss work hard, but they have a strong work-life balance." is demonstrated in the article. Judging by the article you work half as much as an American an earn the more, which sound amazing, but hard? I doubt the "produce" of an average worker in Switzerland is more then or even equal to that of an American. (PS I am not an American)
• guelo 11y ago
  The reason American's benefits are so stingy is because of racism. White people do not want any benefits going to blacks.
• NAFV_P 11y ago
  Yesterday I finished a job in Cheltenham, England. The post was 50 weeks long. The commute to and back from work came to around two and a half to three hours. Often I would feel physically sick on the bus due to insufficient rest. I would go to work even though I felt unwell. This includes dealing with a trapped ulnar nerve which means my arm and shoulder ache all day, and is aggravated by using a laptop. I pushed myself too hard, but this can occur when you are expected to work till you drop dead from exhaustion. This is what my first supervisor expected of me, because she thought I was a low life piece of shit. I had hardly any experience in insurance, especially claims which a lot of people in the building considered to be the sharp end of the business. Administration on a new claim was estimated on average to take around 90 minutes, it took me a day and a half. I was furnished with written procedure notes (about 40 pages worth), a laptop with no mouse and told to get on with it. I didn't consider this to be unfair, because this is the attitude I have experienced in most of my jobs. I had been in my new role for two days when I was given this task. All the thanks I got was a casual remark from my supervisor "Well, that's our Christmas bonus gone isn't it." I was often shouted at in the office. Being an open plan space this behaviour was witnessed by about 80 other people. If my queries were not understood at first, the response I would get is "WHAT?!". When the day ended and the office was mostly empty, my supervisor's behaviour became very hostile. The experience was incredibly stressful. My ulnar nerve issue worsened, so now it feels like I have a knife stuck in my little finger. Also I became so nervous about making a mistake (because my mistakes were over emphasised) that I worked at a rate about 4 times slower than my colleagues. Trust in my proof reading ability was lost, so I would check every single lexicon in a letter of correspondence and rereading my work nearly a dozen times. Some people would recognise this as OCD. I was considered incapable of performing my role, a bit offensive I might add. I have a suspicion that I was treated like this partially because I am genetically male. My hope is to get a new job in the company's call center, and occasionally I would dress as a woman (or most of the time). I would like to see how I am treated by my ex supervisor/torturer while wearing a skirt, and how someone who is quite religious reacts to someone slowly coming out as transgender. I recently referred to her as a "fucking bitch" in a conversation with one of my other work colleagues. I regret that a lot, because (s)he isn't a real woman, and I'm more of a woman than she'll ever be.
• carsongross 11y ago
  "Now that I’m back, I’m angry that my own country isn’t providing more for its people." If you want Switzerland in the U.S. there is only one option: break the U.S. up into distinct, smaller countries that are able to foster a common culture that can be relied upon to solve the prisoners dilemma inherent in all social welfare schemes. A side benefit for our friends abroad: maybe we'll stop bombing the shit out of the rest of the world.
  • myth_buster 11y ago
    The US was like this some years earlier. Those were the prosperous years where everyone was capable of achieving the American dream. Then the tax cuts for industries came into effect and the middle class bore the blunt of it and dwindled. The wealthy are able to avoid this since they can afford to pay an army of lawyers to channel their wealth through loopholes. A social safety net is essential for progress. There are quite a few examples of entrepreneurs who were able to make it because they were not starving to death. Also going bankrupt due to ailments is ridiculous! The tension brewing up in various parts of the country is a sign of the inequality and corruptness in the system. And the solution is not to split the country but to fix the broken system.
    • carsongross 11y ago
      And the solution is not to split the country but to fix the broken system. Leaving aside the preposterous rewriting of U.S. history in your comment (the US was never like modern Switzerland, even when it was significantly more homogenous), your goal is not possible with the current size and cultural diversity of the US. If you want social safety nets, you need a homogeneous culture that stresses (irrationally) not taking advantage of them, thereby making them sustainable. I know this is not a happy thought for you. It was not for me, as well, for quite some time.
      • myth_buster 11y ago
        I came from the other end wherein I believed social safety net and welfares breeds parasitic behavior. But now I've come to believe the benefits of those programs outweigh the negative aspect where a section may starts taking undue advantage of it. In the absence of such safety nets, I think people will go for more safer bets which make them financially stable as opposed to riskier bets which may bring innovation but could also endanger their livelihood.
• mattfrommars 11y ago
  It's nice living in Switzerland but the OP is like works in some ad agency and earning like 120k? How do I get a job in Swiss if I'm not from the Europe but a third world country? Yeah Swiss life is great if coming from the US or something. Swiss are asking for American works, they don't give a shit to skilled labour from third world country.
  • atmosx 11y ago
    Well, you can't. If you don't have 100k in deposits, you seriously can't. And IIRC from 2017 not even Europeans (even ze Germans) would not be able to go and work/stay in Switzerland without citizenship (which you can only get if you marry a Swiss wife and live there for a number of years IIRC).
  • comrade1 11y ago
    $120K is pretty average in Switzerland. As for getting a job here, I know a handful of people from 'third-world' countries here although the term doesn't mean as much these days (India, China, and Brazil) and they all have MDs or PHDs. The only other way is as a refugee, but I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Switzerland does give a small benefit to Americans and Canadians - we get our C permit after just five years. But that's all as far as the benefits go. The system is quiet rule based.
• comrade1 11y ago
  Happy Swiss National Day Switzerland! You've been a democracy since 1292(?). Good luck and hopefully you'll be independent and free for another 800 years.
  • bbu 11y ago
    Nope, about 160years.
• atmosx 11y ago
  > Instead of taxing salaries at high percentages — a practice that puts most of the tax burden on the middle class, where most income comes from wages and not from capital gains — Switzerland immediately taxes dividends at a maximum of 35 percent and also has a wealth-based tax. That's the secret. The Swiss are brave enough to tax the wealth. They are not afraid to do so. They also are extremely respectful of their electorate: They do referendums often and for any reason (building a bridge or allowing foreigners to work in their country). There is a sort of just distribution of social responsibility which unfortunately lacks elsewhere. If you look for the city with highest living standard in the world though, it's not in Switzerland but right next to it, the beautiful Vienna :-)
  • comrade1 11y ago
    Taxes in Switzerland are quite low. Federal around 2 or 3 %, and at the state level, from 7% to 22%. Wealth tax is usually less than 1%. But it is always a level society.
    • atmosx 11y ago
      Taxes in Bulgaria are quite low too (10% for businesses and 5% when you pay dividends). Salaries are extremely low too, compared to Switzerland. Unfortunately Bulgaria doesn't look like Switzerland at all, I wonder why.
      • Nosewearer 11y ago
        50 years in the Warzaw pact?
  • lordnacho 11y ago
    Where is this coming from? I got a dividend in Switzerland, and it isn't taxed at 35%. What they do is they keep 35% until the next year, at which time you can have it. Dividend tax is a much lower amount.
    • atmosx 11y ago
• aalhour 11y ago
  Can anyone explain if this holds true for international companies, say for example Facebook, Google or Amazon? Are the Swiss offices, if any, this different than the States offices?
• geff82 11y ago
  Switzerland is the closest to paradise a state can get. Much more libertarian on the business side than its European neighbours, much more welfare than USA and most other countries that are business friendly. All that with having the most democratic system in the world. Did you know that the 4 major political parties are all in the government together - by mutual agreement? Do you know that all three months they vote on whatever they think is important? That is why that country is so stable. All that with a clean superb environment, beautiful countryside and diversity baked into every citizen (4 official languages in one country...). Switzerland never seizes to amaze me. Hope to move there next year (and yes, the salaries are enormous... while rents are high in absolute money, they are low relative to the salaries paid).
  • sltkr 11y ago
    > Did you know that the 4 major political parties are all in the government together - by mutual agreement? It's actually 5 different parties (with only 7 seats in the federal council). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Federal_Council#Members_of_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Federal_Council#Members_...
• justwannasing 11y ago
  She works almost seven days a week and blames the US for that? Never in my life have I worked seven days in a week, and I own my own business! (Granted, I did when we started up for a few months.) And then she claims her $30,000 salary, at seven days a week, turns out to be the equivalent of minimum wage? On which planet? At $7.25 an hour, times 56 hours (7 days at 8 hours per day) times 52 weeks (though she got 10 days off) equals $21,112. This article is of ill repute.
• TYPE_FASTER 11y ago
  I think there are variations in American culture that are not covered here. For example, when somebody asks "what do you do" in Boulder, Colorado, they might be asking which outdoor sport do you do when you're not working. When somebody asks the same question in a city like Boston or NYC, they're asking about your job. I'm not judging here, that's not to say Boulderites are slackers or East Coasters only care about work, just saying that I think the comparisons made in this article don't apply to the whole country.
• hrshtr 11y ago
  I had the same feeling when I moved from India to US. May be its Swiss time, and I dont have to pay big portion of my income to US.
• hippich 11y ago
  What surprised me - average salary of $90k+. Does someone have any insight what this country produce to be able to pull of such pretty significant wages?
  • hippich 11y ago
    It also appears that this $90k+ is less than GDP per capita - https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gdp_pcap_cd&idim=country:CHE:NOR:DEU&hl=en&dl=en https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&... which is really weird.
• rebootthesystem 11y ago
  As is always the case, these comparisons are almost always ideologically biased nonsense. What I am saying is that you can't compare two countries with such dissimilar profiles without examining and making sense of a lot of data. And you certainly can't conclude that one has a great work culture and the other does not. Just a few data points... Population US 320,000,000 CH 8,000,000 Employment among 15 to 65 year old population: US 67% CH 80% Tourism (arrivals): US 60,000,000 CH 8,600,000 (yes, more people visit than live there) Employment US 123 million CH 4.2 million Number of businesses US 18,200,000 CH 160,000 Number of billionaires US 615 CH 29 Foreign aid (given to other countries) US 30,154,000,000 (it's actually double this number if grants and loans included) CH 2,295,000,000 GDP US 18,125,000,000,000 CH 688,000,000,000 Tax revenue: US 3,001,721,000 CH 217,900,000 Deficit/Surplus US -648,805,000 CH 3,400,000 National Debt US 18,540,448,667,000 (58,437 per capita; 106% of GDP) CH 1,610,897,000,000 (154,063 per capita; 229% of GDP) It's interesting to see that the debt to gdp ratio is CH is astronomically high. Three times that of the US with a GDP that is 26 TIMES smaller. While the budget is balanced right now it seems that a huge amount of debt has been piled-up, perhaps to support the standard of living? This is conjecture on my part, I don't know. Clearly in the US we can do a lot better. And we do this by voting the right people into office. We are at a point where fiscal responsibility isn't an interesting concept but rather a requirement for survival. What we have been doing is not sustainable in the long term, not even close. So, tax and spend needs to go out the window. And no, we can't fix it by taxing the rich. The differences are huge and, while it might feels good to write a blog post trashing the US, the reality is that nobody --blog post writers and people posting comments on HN-- ever seems to want to take a few hours to throw numbers up on a spreadsheet, build some economic models and try to understand the underlying data. That's where the truth lies. Not in how we feel. That's all bullshit. Everybody feels great just before a tsunami. Yet, the earthquake that triggers it has been building-up underground for years, for decades or centuries. What matters are the numbers. Most everything else is complete nonsense. I'd like someone to explain the impact of a per-capita debt of over $150K and 229% of GDP on the People's Republic of Switzerland. A house of cards looks great until the reality that is happens to be a house of cards has to be confronted. Don't argue with me with feelings or ideology. Put numbers up on a spreadsheet and figure it first. In the end, we are all bailing water in one way or the other. And a lot of what's going on points very solidly at China, in more ways than one.
• cmarschner 11y ago
  Fwiw, this article contains a graphic summarizing vacation days in different EU and non-EU countries. Surprisingly, Portugal and Austria lead the pack: http://m.welt.de/wirtschaft/article144702793/Der-Mann-der-sechs-Monate-im-Jahr-Urlaub-macht.html http://m.welt.de/wirtschaft/article144702793/Der-Mann-der-se... There's another graphic where people were asked how much vacation they prefer. Not surprisingly, many want more than what they have... The article, by the way, is about an American who works for only six months per year. That's all possible unless you want to get some financial security (sickness, age, family) or if you are lucky and have a nicely paid seasonal job. I do know examples of people like that - the operators of a sailing/surf school/café, for example, who only work between March and September, but then often 12 hour days.
• aramadia 11y ago
  Article taken down to DMCA. Heres a mirror link: https://web.archive.org/web/20150801183904/https://ukiahcommunityblog.wordpress.com/2015/07/23/living-in-switzerland-ruined-me-for-america-and-its-lousy-work-culture/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150801183904/https://ukiahcomm...