Comment by netjiro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by netjiro | Hacker News Reader

Let's get some data, Sweden, 2020 SEK/y:

Approximated historic exchange rates: SEK / euro-dollar-franc: ca 0.1 - 0.12

Gross salary income at 90th percentile: 567 600

Actual sales cost for a small-medium company: 1 084 050

Included: VAT ca 25%, social fees ca 31%, other misc ca 10%

Net income after taxes: 420 492

So, about 61% is lost in taxes from gross billing to net income after tax, for someone earning at 90th percentile. "The world's highest taxes" is misleading. It really depends on your family situation and lifestyle:

For those 61% you get quite a lot when the system works. Free health care, education, child care, work-life balance, freedom, nature, social life, etc. I do not recommend living in Sweden without a good private medical insurance. The public health care is top notch when it works, but without private insurance odds are it will not work well in your case. If you are willing to put in 10-15MSEK for a house/apartment you can choose areas with very good schools, but it will take you many years to find a decent rental below 30k/m.

Society is generally very nice, open, liberal, clean. Nature is wonderful. 6 month winter is made for working, 4 month summer is made for swimming. I generally expect to get ca 1500h efficient time on target from the people I had in Sweden, and I expect to pay around 1kSEK/h effective.

I used to hire people and place them in Sweden. I have sadly not done that for several years. Slowness of immigration, severe lack of rental housing, etc. A good gemeinde+canton in Switzerland is much faster and smoother.

* sources: statistics office, tax office: SCB, SKV

I've never heard anyone pay 30k a month for their rent. People consider 12 high, the median is around 6 IIRC.

I live in what is generally considered a "fancy" area (lots of bank directors and some ABBA people) and 10-15 million is what you'd pay for a nice house sure but our row house was way less and our previous apartment significantly so.

It is of course not common to rent for 30k because most people feel they can't afford that but it is essentially the "spot price".

Many apartments in central Stockholm are ~100k SEK per square meter to buy. So a 100 square meter apartment is 10 million. That is 16-17k per month just to beat the inflation target. Then you have the building fee which is probably 4-5k. And then profit on top of that of 8k per percent. So with 1% profit you are more or less at 30k per month.

A 100sqm apartment is very big. To give some perspective on hemnet.se (_the_ way to look for housing in Sweden) there are around 100 apartments in Stockholm up for sale that are 100sqm or larger. Around 1000 apartments in the ordinary range of 45-90 sqm.

I am curious about what you consider a good gemeinde+canton. I've been thinking about moving to Switzerland but coming from a much more unitary country I am not used to finding a particular gemeinde this improtant!

From my limited experience:

If the gemeinde wants more of the kind of professional skills you bring they will process the paperwork within a week.

There is a huge difference between cantons and gemeindes. There are tons of information online, but I cannot recommend without knowing, a lot, about what you are looking for.

> I do not recommend living in Sweden without a good private medical insurance. The public health care is top notch when it works, but without private insurance odds are it will not work well in your case.

What is this FUD? I've never had a problem here. Everything is far better than anything I ever had in the US private or public.

> If you are willing to put in 10-15MSEK for a house/apartment you can choose areas with very good schools, but it will take you many years to find a decent rental below 30k/m.

Again, you're just misleading people. There are plenty of places to live besides Stockholm and Göteborg and many of them even have startup incubators or large corporations with plenty of jobs.

I am really not trying to be an asshole. This is my limited experience.

Real estate prices are what I see as current. I am sure they were lower before, and outside the main tech regions, as always, everywhere.

Rental prices are accurate if I want the person to start within a few months. I am aware that the "normal" prices are much lower. But there are 5-15y queues to get a regular contract. None of my people have managed to get a "normal" apartment contract. Ever. We have had to rent from the private market pool which is much more expensive.

The issue with health care is anecdotal. But too many times my people and my friends have had excessive waiting times for simple consultations and treatments. This can be drastically reduced by having private insurance. Compare days vs months or years. When the health care works, it is very good.

Like I said, there are plenty of tech centers (with incubators and/or big corps) outside of STHLM and GBG, where none of this is a problem. It doesn't sound like you're a native or here anymore.

Waiting times is kind of a "first world problem" when the alternative is dying, getting no treatment, poor treatment or becomimg homeless if you do get treatment. All you're saying is pay more if you want to skip triage.

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