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Comment by acccret8 | Hacker News Reader

Stockholm suffers from extreme housing shortage. I live here now but in a student flat I got after 3 years of queue time, and moving in a couple of month. Not worth it and I think this will limit the number of startups in the future.

Someone said something about old-school tech and it is true, I rarely meet anyone who is on the edge on new technology. I find myself always explaining what something is, but regardless of tech there are some talented people here.

There is also some serious tax problems, long over 50% in tax. People think they only pay around 23% in tax since the government splits up the tax in two parts, one for the company (around 32%) and one for the employee but money that would have been yours. Then you have tax on items and for example gas tax. Everything is very subtle and perhaps why they get away with it.

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>, one for the company (around 32%) and one for the employee but money that would have been yours.

This is similar in the US. There are lots of additional costs beyond the salary for an employee. It's just never really advertised to the employee how much money the company actually puts up to pay the salary in your offer letter.

Yes, employer side of payroll taxes and other costs, along with the gigantic health insurance costs (employer side). These should be eliminated, let the compensation flow to employees and then tax it in land values or consumption taxes, ideally. Then people can get an idea of just how much tax they are paying, and maybe Americans will stop thinking they're getting such a great deal.

That said, it's still pretty remarkable how high US salaries are even with all these costs.

> money that would have been yours

Yep, employers aren't realy interested in profits

> Stockholm suffers from extreme housing shortage.

Is that much worse than Silicon Valley (legitimately curious, I've never looked into the housing situation in Stockholm)? 1brs go for nearly $3k (if not more) in many of the more populated parts of the peninsula and SF.

A 1-bedroom for $3k inside SF is a steal.

Median rent for a 1-bedroom in SF hit $3600 in October -> http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2015/10/09/the_median_rent_for...

You can't really do a straight up comparison like that. The median salary for a software engineer in Stockholm is somewhere around $50K or $60K. Based on that, the rent situation in Stockholm is quite dire, and availability is atrocious.

You also have to compare the cities, let us say they are on equal terms in housing shortage.

Stockholm is piss dark and cold 8 month a year, in Silicon Valley not so much right? All the big boys are in SV and you earn more and pay less in taxes. You also get other perks from living in the USA.

So you are a talented guy, Stockholm or SV? The choice is obvious, SV. So I don't see the point in trying to fight for a place to stay in Stockholm when you can go somewhere else better.

Not only that, just the last 5 years have done much harm to the housing in Stockholm due to mass immigration and now immigration peaks at 2000 people per day so expect it to get even worse.

Rents aren't that bad. But you have to wait for 1-2 decades to get an apartment, due to the special Swedish brand of rent control.

So you have to buy. Which is very expensive. Not sure how it compares to SF very expensive.

While I don't think Stockholm can "afford" the state of its housing market, renting a sublet is quite comparable to the rest of the world. It's just that people expect more, including myself.

For some reason the swedes think it's a good idea to have insanely long mortgage terms, if they don't just pay interest. Prices in Stockholm proper is around $950 per square feet, which I guess is comparable to SF [0].

[0] http://www.maklarstatistik.se/ [0] https://www.google.com.mt/search?q=86304+sek+per+square+mete... [0] http://my.paragon-re.com/Docs/General/SixtyFortyImages/Avg-D...

Your last part is in the direct contrast to low tax countries.

Not only do you pay tax on both sides of your income. But we have moms on everything. Essentially you pay more than 50% tax.

In Singapore, restaurants will usually show prices excluding tax, forcing you to see the direct impact of tax added on the total sum.

Swedish receipts do contain the amount of tax, but it's never as apparent as they always include the sum into everything you buy - thus normalising the concept and make it easier to melt down and eventually accept.

Sure, it sucks to split bills with an explicit tax added on, but I rather do the math than having the government normalise taking tax. Very few Swedes are aware of how much tax they actually pay when you go beyond your side of the income tax.

40% loan of GDP doesn't mean jack when the GDP includes a housing bubble about to burst.

EDIT: I am not arguing against taxes here, I am just pointing out the differences on how taxes are presented to you.

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