Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture | Hacker News Reader

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

ukiahcommunityblog.wordpress.com

427 pointsjeena432 comments

"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).

>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.

As disingenuous as comparing a small country to the US as a whole.

>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.

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.

Again, I don't see why it can't scale. Whether you've got 50 blocks of city employing a specific social structure or 500 blocks at a ground level its the same.

Granted mega cities add a level of complexity, but on a very broad level I don't see why people here thing you can't scale a system employed by a 8m country to say 80m. Its just more of the same.

Well just compare a large company with tens of thousands of people, to a small one, the smaller ones are much more nimble and able to implement new best practices.

Imagine you had 1 team of 10 people working on ABC, or 100 groups of 10 people, working on ABC, yet having to cooperate between groups. It's really hard, it creates all kinds of friction, you need all kinds of overhead human capital to organise everything, everything moves slower, there's more resistance to change, and various of the smaller groups create their own working cultures and approaches, and squaring all of that into one cohesive vision is really tricky.

Then consider that companies are relatively dictatorial compared to the runnings of most OECD countries, where a CEO has more power to simply lay down a vision and expect everyone to get behind it, much more than a president or prime minister doing so.

I think that's mostly it. For a more academic approach look up diseconomies of scale, although I'm sure you're already familiar... It also applies to government. I do agree with you though, to a large extent I think we can scale, but there are limits and disadvantages at some point.

Beyond that I think to a large extent the differences can be numerically explained. It's not true that small countries do best across the board. Germany does better than Italy, Kenya does better than Malawi, China does better than Vietnam who does better than Cambodia etc... all larger countries that do better.

But imagine you have a list of 10 'large' countries, and 100 'small countries'. Obviously the large are less common, after all only two countries have more than 1 billion people, no other ones more than 500m, only 3 other countries have more than 200m, while more than 100 countries have less than 10 million people.

So imagine 10 large and 100 small countries, and they're randomly distributed. The chance of a small country in the top 10 is very large, as it is to be in the bottom 10, while for large countries the chance is really small to simply end up anywhere. Yet if you break up the US into 100 little regions of a few million people, like about 80 countries on the planet, similar to say Norway, Singapore, Finland (all 5m ish people), or Iceland (300k), you'd surely have many of those little regions hitting top 10 rankings for standard of living. Places like greater San Fransisco would probably do quite well.

Very valid points, but I think your example is a little tangential in that I'm talking about societal structures, not an organisation where there is a need to coordinate. Societies are self-organising to some extent, especially in their local cluster. e.g.

Suppose you have a room full of 5 people building a bridge with legos. They're a small group and thus benefit from say the agility small teams provide. They finish their lego bridge in record time & live happily ever after.

If you need to provide lego bridges for 10 people though then you've got a choice: you can stick 10 people into the room and make them build a bridge twice as big, or you can have two rooms each building their own bridge in close proximity & benefiting from the speed of small teams.

Thats a simplification sure, but I feel societal structure (e.g. the mindset that makes canada's healthcare work) are to some extent imprinted in the people & thus apply regardless of the size of the border on some random map. If you stick another hospital on a map in Canada it'll work just as well.

As a side note, not convinced about the big company thing either. It can certainly be like that, but well managed its not inevitable. I work for one of the biggest companies out there & absolutely everything is split into ad-hoc ~7 man teams that have essentially absolute power over that project.

Bit fuzzy post/argument I know - apologies for that.

Wall-mart beats the mom and pop stores Starbucks kills the local coffe shops. Local grocery shops just can' compete with Tescos.

In academic terms, this is known as the "economies of scale" And there is a reason why the mom and pop stores are always the underdog when Wall-Mart moves in. The economies of scale are bigger than the diseconomies of scale by degrees of magnitude. I mean, it would be nice to imagine that the nimble local stores are going to win out over the big chains, but theory says thats not going to happen, and in practice we observe that this does not happen.

The economies of scale are simply so much larger than the diseconomies that they steamroll them withotu noticing that they were ever there.

What is more is, we can observe how these things scale in countries from Iceland at 300 000 people, to Finland at 5 million to Germany at 80 million. There doesn't seem to be much evidence of diseconomies of scale over this span.

I dont really think we can assume they'd somehow spring into existence beyond the population of Germany.

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?

Exactly.

I really do love switzerland, but a proper comparison would be to say, Marin County or Boulder or La Jolla.

I think our pockets of "switzerland" stand up pretty well in comparison.

I've lived in all three of those locations, and I have to agree that there is awesomeness in all three.

There's also crap, though; all three are only awesome if you're toward the top of the earning spectrum. And even then the vacation allocations (and the guilt tripping related to using vacation) are pathetic, pretty universally in the US (with a few notable exceptions, but even those rarely give you a MONTH OFF every year and expect you to TAKE IT).

Until we have free health care and more standard vacation time and less expected overtime, there will be no Switzerland in the US.

Only privileged rich people living in enclaves have their own Switzerland experience. For all intents and purposes I'm one of those at this point, for what it's worth. I can take my extended vacations now (between contracts), and a few people I know will take an unpaid month away from work every few years. If I work overtime, it's for a high hourly rate for every hour I spend (depending on project type and client, between $150-$250/hour).

But the majority of people, even here in Boulder, still have a max 2 weeks of vacation a year, unpaid mandatory overtime, and pretty pathetic salaries to boot (considering the cost of living). Hardly paradise. Certainly not Switzerland, for them.

Few in the US who make a lot of money seem to spend it on working 80% rather than on buying a big house or a nicer car. The quality of life difference is cultural, not economical.

Doctors and small practice lawyers work 80%... School employees get summers off...

The difference is in Switzerland you don't have to be mega rich to have a good life and because those places don't have different laws than the rest of the US, they only compare if you're rich enough for laws not to matter, at which point it's a moot point. Even the rich won't get paid leave or sane taxes or decent working hours, so to be comparable the level of richness has to put one beyond the necessity of work. In other words, our pockets of Switzerland are no such thing.

Can you explain how you think you need to be mega rich in America to have a good life?

Most of the US has a low cost of living compared to eg Switzerland. In most of eg Texas - most of the US actually - you can live well on $50,000 to $60,000 per year.

You're aware I'm guessing of the economic metrics of the top 50% in the US? It seems obvious to me that in fact you do not have to be mega rich to live well. The top 80 million Americans in the labor force would likely qualify as having at least as good of a life as the median Swiss standard of living.

> Most of the US has a low cost of living compared to eg Switzerland. In most of eg Texas - most of the US actually - you can live well on $50,000 to $60,000 per year.

You won't get >4 weeks paid vacation in "most of eg Texas", or actually affordable healthcare, or paid maternity leave (let alone multiple month worth) and post-leave work-hour arrangements, or a "sacred lunchtime", or the ability to work flexible hours without being looked at like a loser (unless you're self-employed maybe), or 80% salary unemployment, or the ability to live without owning a car.

A privileged few may get those. Not "most of eg Texas", not by a very, very long shot.

I love how we went from "The USA has awesome parts too, like Marin!" to "well you've got to be rich to live in them" to "well you don't have to be rich to live in Waco!"

Firstly, while 50k is far from "mega rich", only 50% of households in Texas earn more than that, so it still excludes a lot of people (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/48000.html).

Beyond that the differentiators are working hours/flexibility and healthcare. A household in Texas might have quite a good life in many respects with an income of 60k/year, but do they get 6 weeks off, flexible working hours (useful if you have kids), and paid maternity/paternity leave that lasts more than a few weeks? In the US if you want/need that extra time away from work you might need to take time of work or go part time, causing a drop in income and perhaps company sponsored healthcare, but in many European these things are available by default to fulltime employees.

Because if you're working in the US, you don't get any of the benefits the article refers to. Without guaranteed health insurance, I don't consider life to be good in America or anywhere else. When you're one small injury (or pregnancy) from being bankrupt and out on the streets, that's hardly the good life. Not to mention the rest of the overworked, under-vacationed life that's generally required by jobs here even if you manage to score a decent one. If you think it's about the money, I'm not sure you've even read the article or any of the comments about it.

Well at least having 20+ days of paid vacation and (compard to the US) cheap health care is a thing in many european countries

20 days paid vacation is the legal EU baseline, FWIW. Most of europe is at or above 5 weeks when you include legal holidays.

Yes you're right of course. 6 Weeks here + quite some legal holidays

Also looking at PPP per capita (59K vs 53K), it's not that much higher. Norway, I'm not sure should count given their large oil reserves which one cannot really replicate.

10% is actually a pretty significant disparity when you consider the fact that both are developed countries.

The oil is a curse rather than a boon.

How? Oil is largely the reason Norway is better off than Denmark and Sweden. Norway seems to manage it's oil very well with an eye towards the long term.

From the perspective of swedes, we just notice the higher prices in norway. We don't consider Norway and the norwegians "rich" when we visit. The per-capita gdp doesn't translate to purchasning power.

Pretty much the whole damn coast has come to a screeching halt as the oil price drops. This because Everything is tied directly or indirectly to the continued extraction of oil and gas.

Anything else is a minority industry that can barely keep going because the oil export is driving the exchange rate through the roof.

This to the point that the government is fearful of doing anything major or else the exchange rate will really go out of whack.

Here is the thing, public buildings are disintegrating around us while the continued line out of the politicians is that we need to save "for future generations".

If you want to care for future generations you build, and you maintain what you build. But no, we must "save it for the future".

Damn it, we have basically turned Poland into a factory for "Norwegian" products. If you glance at a "Norwegian" chocolate bar these days it is likely to read "made in Poland".

Sweden seems to be replicating it pretty well, without any oil.

Sweden is also grappling with serious economic problems (as is most of Scandinavia in fact).

For example, in dollar terms Sweden's economy hasn't expanded since about 2007.

They have a ~7.8% unemployment rate.

They have about twice the household debt to income ratio of American households, and have a present debt crisis among those households:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/09/sweden-economy-idU...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-23/sweden-s-d...

7-8% is bad but not as bad as it would be elsewhere. The natural rate of unemployment is pretty high. Also, labour force participation is high, which helps.

The household debt is exclusively housing, simply because interest rates have been low for many years and mortgages in Sweden were traditionally not 30 years but rather 100 or infinite (interest rate only), and interest is deductible making it even cheaper to borrow. We also didn't see the bubble burst after the 2008 crisis, unlike many other countries, so many predict a bursting bubble now. That said, the mortgage market has tightened swiftly now, down payments have gone from 0% to 15-25, mortgages are repaid 1-2% per year etc, so the market is at least better prepared for a dip now than it would have been in 2008.

Although Sweden has a long history of giving away natural resources virtually for free to private interests, while Norway has made sure to get paid adequately, and then put that money into funds. As a result, Norway now owns 1% of all global stocks.

Since 2001 I've lived and worked in Finland, Denmark & Sweden. Achieving a healthy & meaningful work-life balance is emphasized in the Nordic countries (I do not know about Luxembourg) The authors experience in Switzerland strikes a familiar chord with me. I have close friends in the Valley who envy me because I get 6 weeks a year off. I don't think this article is necessarily about high salaries and the luxuries you can afford with that salary (and I'm not saying that that was what you were saying) but I have come to believe that there is a better work-life balance in certain northern european countries than anywhere in the U.S.A (I'm willing to be corrected of course) especially when it comes to maternity and paternity leave. In discussions like these, I am reminded of a video my American friend sent me a while ago : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8

Sadly there are concerted political effort being focused on going American in the Nordics, as the current system is considered "inefficient". Even the supposed left is in on the game, pulling a double talk akin to UK's Labor...

That's because the benefits are expensive, from a capitalistic point of view - six weeks maternity leave? That's six weeks of lost productivity!

I think it's important that everyone keeps defending the liberties and rights that we (in Europe) have right now - and that the people in the US that just accept their shitty working environments because it's considered normal fight it, and demand what I think is getting basic human rights like caring for your newborn without losing your job or getting into financial trouble over it.

> I have come to believe that there is a better work-life balance in certain northern european countries than anywhere in the U.S.A

It really depends.

I know several companies offering 6 weeks of paid leave, plus holidays, in my area.

On the other hand, that's certainly not the norm. There are many people working jobs which provide no paid holidays or vacation.

At my previous job it was expected that you'd work overtime and weekends if anything remotely important was going on (and not get flex time or anything like that to make up for it) for no extra pay. At my current job there is no such expectation at all and nobody does it. Critical events wait until Monday.

My perception is things are especially bad in startup culture/the valley, but that's not necessarily representative of the US.

I think the real difference between the US and European Country X is the lack of any universal minimum standards in the US. There is the federal minimum wage and the FMLA, and that's about it. There is no federal requirement for paid leave or maternity benefits. But there are plenty of jobs with paid leave and maternity benefits (other than FMLA unpaid leave). So in reality, the work/life balance in America differs dramatically by locale, industry, and company.

>>It really depends. >>I know several companies offering 6 weeks of paid leave, plus holidays, in my area. >>On the other hand, that's certainly not the norm. There are many people working jobs which provide no paid holidays or vacation.

Yeah, so on average, the parent's point is correct: on average, the standard of living and work-life balance in the US are abysmal compared to those in most Northern European nations.

I almost can't even believe that commercial is real.

I would love to see how it affected Cadillac's sales.

Oh it's real alright. I'm pretty sure that was a Super Bowl ad recently.

Jesus that ad is horrendous. It's definitely tragic, and almost a comedy, if only I didn't know that there are some people who think that for real.

[Off Topic] - did he have his bottom button done at https://youtu.be/xNzXze5Yza8?t=41 ? :)

The three first Google results for 'Quality of Life index' put the USA at the 16, 12 and 10th place.

While salary in Italy, France and Germany may not be as high as in Switzerland, they all have longer maternity leave, bigger number of vacation, better public transportation and better benefits than in the USA

Sane health care is the biggest one.

There was another long and widely exposed article about an American citizen going to Europe (France IIRC) to treat his father's cancer. He said that healthcare spirit only would have been worth it, more human and less a business than in the USofA.

I guess we should all travel to get perspective on our local environments and see what's possible with different organizations and beliefs.

Eh, outside of the U.S. just watch the first 1/2 season of breaking bad. It's fiction, of course, but deciding to cook crystal meth to pay for cancer treatment is an idea that would only make sense in the U.S.

Well, as much as I believe 'cultural' production reflect the subconscious of a group, it's still a stretch to me.

https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/3eux61/if_breaking_...

Oh, those communists!!! :-P

Well you have to remember that the Swiss have both better income sources (assisting the world's wealthy & many corporations evade/optimize taxes for instance) and don't have military expenses and such due to neutrality.

While many problems of the US are of its own creation due to either ideology or wealth dominating politics (healthcare & education spring to mind), it is quite unfair to compare what the Swiss government provides with the US.

On the contrary, IMHO, it is totally fair.

The roots of their respective prosperity and poverty come from the long-term effects of their respective ideologies. The US choses to let corporations evade taxes, and the US choses to project military might to pursue private corporate aims.

Just because a behaviour and culture is endemic and has occurred for generations now, that doesn't make it written in stone.

The Swiss attitude is that many countries, including the u.s., are corrupt with corrupt governments and it is your responsibility to put your money someplace safe and out of hands of that corruption.

Not to Godwin, but, the Swiss supported plenty of money stolen by Nazi government.

Much of the money being "protected from corrupt government" was obtained through corrupt activity.

They provided a place for the jews in nazi germany to move their money outside of germany. But if I was Jewish and in Nazi Germany I would have done the same, as my Catholic great-grandparents did by moving their money from Germany to Switzerland when the Nazis came to power.

It's unfortunate that most of their Jewish customers were killed by the Nazis. They also accepted deposits from the Nazis, but I can understand their attitude of not taking sides. In the end you want a neutral party like that, no matter what side you're on.

It's a common meme. The entire financial industry is only about 11% of the GDP (or around 7% if you use a different statistical method). That includes insurance, pensions, etc.

The idea that Switzerland is propped up by tax evasion simply isn't true. The UK thought it was true and actually wrote proceeds from better Swiss cooperation over banking records into their budget .... then discovered there was a huge shortfall, because there was much less evasion done that way than they had imagined.

OK, but if a larger percentage of Swiss residents emigrated there for the favorable tax laws than emigrated to the US for the same reason, that could inflate Swiss GDP, i.e., make the Swiss per-capita GDP an overly optimistic measure of what life is like for Swiss residents who haven't acquired wealth outside Switzerland.

GDP is not a measure of the static wealth of the citizens of a country, it's a measure of economic activity (literally adding it all up).

OK, but if someone who made a fortune in Germany moves to Switzerland and buys a Mercedes, does that not add about $50 K to Swiss GDP? The reasons I suspect it might are (1) GDP is essentially a measure of economic activity, i.e., transactions, and (2) how all of the small tax shelters, Monaco, Lichtenstein, etc, have very high per-capita GDP.

Regarding (1), it is possible that living in a tax shelter gives residents without a fortune more opportunities to make money than living in a country like Germany or the US does, but I lean towards the possibility that per-capita GDP is simply inaccurate or flawed as measure of the economic prospects of the residents who don't have fortunes.

Also, Singapore's per-capita GDP is very high compared to the personal income of its human residents (I have read) and I figure that was because a large fraction of Singapore's businesses are owned by non-Singaporeans (which has been the case, BTW, since Singapore's founding by British trading interests).

Actually, neutrality requires more military spending. As a NATO country, Switzerland could specialize more and better coordinate on technology and purchases. But on its own, it needs to maintain a full defense machinery without outside help.

The number one reason for Switzerland's wealth is that they were clever enough to stay out of wars as much as possible.

Other countries start from ruins and rubble periodically. Switzerland grows its prosperity incrementally, without catastrophes.

They were lucky to not get invaded by the Germans but they totally expected to be invaded and built a defense strategy based on this belief that lasted until the 1990s.

Twice the Germans started the process of putting together a Swiss invasion and gave up early because they realized they would have lost.

Reading this as a European, it's fun and telling that you focused on salary differences, whereas what mattered to me were the other quality-of-life elements (I assume you're living in the US).

To sum up, what matters to me, in what she described, were the consequences of the belief that one shouldn't be ashamed of having a life outside of work, and needing some time and peace of mind to actually enjoy it.

More money won't make me happier if I don't have holidays, week-ends, and some time during workdays to actually enjoy spending it, without being chronically on the verge of a burn-out. This is common sense in Europe, whereas it seems to be considered leftist heresy in the US.

Did parent edit? Because all I see is work-life balance.

In America you can choose your job based on how you want to live. You can pursue your life and goals based on what you want out of it. Is that not true in Switzerland?

I think you've bought into little more than propaganda. Americans take off weekends. And how do you judge 330 million people when it comes to burn-out, given the vast differences among them all?

BS. I have seen far fewer Americans in a position where they can take the Friday afternoons off like a lot of Europeans can. Or extended paternity leaves. Or sabbaticals.

I have yet to see a software company in the US with the amount of time off as European companies despite the fact that most of the people I know in the US would trade salary for time off.

It's simply a race to the bottom; with no incentive for employers to reduce the number of working hours (because there are no laws for it, because white collar employees are exempt from overtime, because Americans stupidly believe that they can't achieve work improvements through collective bargaining), it is obvious that they will attempt to squeeze as much work out of employees up to, but not beyond, the point of futility.

America needs sane ("first world") labor regulations (mandatory vacation/sick time, longer maternity/paternity leave, etc).

I have come to believe, for better or worse, that you cannot be the leading economical force with those things in place. I think it is needed for that.

The most productive places in the US also have relatively strong labor laws and labor unions. I'm not implying a causal relationship, just saying that it can't be that bad.

> In America you can choose your job based on how you want to live.

So the millions of poor people having to work two or three shitty jobs just to make ends meet chose to do so and want to live like that? Bullshit. Go watch some documentaries about the subject.

The number of people who can choose their job based on how they want to live is dwindling rapidly.

More money would make me happier. I'd give up a few Saturdays for it. One day a week is enough rest. Besides, few pleasures compare to productively working.

More time off would make me happier. I'd give up $10k/year for it. $90k/year is enough money. Besides, few pleasures compare to spending quality time with your loved ones.

So now we have two pieces of anecdotal evidence, worth exactly twice as much as one (2*0)

So do it. Do what makes you happy. If you aren't happy working or you don't get enough time off... change the situation. But don't spend a bunch of your life unsatisfied.

The vast majority of Americans simply do not have that choice. They can't go to their boss and say, "hey boss, I want to take a 10% pay cut and get an extra 2 weeks off." American work culture simply doesn't allow that.

Any smart boss with decision making power should instantly give workers an additional 2 weeks off for a 10% pay cut. (Assuming the workers work more than 20 weeks a year and their duties can be taken up by someone else). It's pure profit at that point.

That aside... there is always a choice. Don't ever think otherwise. You don't have to stay there. You don't have to drive a nice car. Always a choice. It's just a matter of tradeoffs.

It's not profit, it's saving money. But also less production. You get my point.

It's only less production if you assume that productivity remains constant or decreases if you give the employee that extra time off.

Again, easy for you to say when you're in your early 20s, single, no kids and few friends.

I'm actually 44 years old. But sometimes I feel like I'm still in my early 20's. I credit it to staying interested and staying moving.

I'm not single either. I have a great girlfriend I've lived with for over 10 years.

I don't have kids and only a few close friends, so you did hit that part correctly.

I guess I didn't meet that many smart bosses then!

I am actually a freelancer, my example was not of my current situation. But while I was employed it was very hard (I didn't manage to get it despite trying for a while) to get a job as a developer for less than full time regardless of salary.

Anyway that wasn't the point, my point was that stating your particular preference doesn't really add much to the conversation.

Don't give up - I heard of one in Boulder last year, and looking at their site, I see it's still listed.

I am quite happy with my freelancing but thanks :)

few pleasures compare to productively working

There is something seriously wrong here. Many, many pleasures in life are as pleasurable, or more pleasurable, than productively working. For many people, productively working is actually not pleasurable.

I suppose it depends on what you enjoy doing and what job you have.

Yes... there is something seriously wrong here. If you don't enjoy your work, quit! I work because I love it. The money is a nice side benefit.

Most of American workers don't have that choice. The tech world is an echo chamber, and it's do well to realize we are a privileged few who can dicta to our compensation (for now).

Do you work in Stockholm?

Few pleasures compare to earning money/kudos/badges with something you love. Productivity? Eh? I worked stacking shopping goods for supermarkets when I was 13; doing 1000 did not feel better than 200 for anyone there, including the full time staff. I understand you probably meant something else but productivity needs definition here.

What's the point of earning even more money if you're too busy to spend it?

There is a law of diminishing returns when it comes to money, past a certain point it's not worth the time you gave up to get it.

Put it another way, when you reach retirement age, would you rather be a millionaire with health problems or a modestly rich person in great health?

Could you not potentially retire earlier? In that way you're basically "back-loading" all of your vacation time, if one could freely exchange salary for time off.

I'm a little surprised by the negative reaction. You people don't derive pleasure from working... from the process of building things, from molding reality? I damn sure do. But then again... I'm an American.

I felt the same way when I was in my early 20s, had recently graduated from college, was single and had few friends. My idea of a good Saturday was one in which I sat at a coffee shop by myself and continued working.

A decade later, my perspective has widened and my priorities have shifted. I still derive a lot of pleasure from work (even though I wouldn't describe it as "molding reality"), but I also realize that work is ultimately a means to an end, which is to spend time with my friends and loved ones and/or develop my hobbies.

It's not contradictory at all. One can derive pleasure from working, and still enjoy their free time. The good thing about free time is that you can use it to build things if that's what you want.

And don't forget that most people don't have the luxury of an enjoyable job.

That last point is debatable in the Western world but yes it holds globally.

Sure, I derive pleasure from work. But I don't work for free, and I would rather be doing a lot of other things that are more enjoyable, but less profitable, than working.

Do you live to work, or do you work to live?

What's the difference?

Work. Bees don't do it.

Well, it's largely because you're trolling. It worked, too.

I don't think trolling. I'm just saying I like being busy. I don't want hour and half lunches at the cafe. I don't want 6 weeks a year off. I like working, I like making stuff and I like making money. I like resting too. I rest especially well when I'm tired from work. It's a good feeling.

"You guys are lazy. I like work... because I'm American" is a pretty garden-variety troll.

Where is the word lazy mentioned or even implied?

I do like working. And this is a traditional characteristic of Americans. With all the America bashing that goes on (some admittedly deserved) this is a thing I'm particularly proud of about my country. I'm proud of what we have invented, what we have achieved in very short period of time. I'd like to be part of that tradition.

Your trolling accusation is entirely unfounded.

"I didn't imply others were lazy, I'm just proud that America is different because we work hard"? Seriously?

One would have to really stretch to get the lazy implication. America is different. That's factual. America does (or did) have a culture of hard work and innovation. I'm proud of this and don't make any attempt to hide that. That says nothing about other people.

I did take a moment to read the complaints in your profile and have some kind of idea that you might be susceptible to feeling abuse from public forums and have very rigid ideas of how people should behave in them. I encourage a bit more flexibility in your thinking. Again, not trolling. That accusation is way off base (and in fact, a trolling behavior itself). You really should apologize.

> That says nothing about other people.

If you say group X is different because it has more of quantity Y, then it means that you think non-Xers have less of quantity Y. You can't say a demographic is noted for a virtue, then say that this is not a comment on other people - because those other people are the baseline against which the measure is made.

> You really should apologize.

Really? Right after you accuse me a stretching, then immediately use my profile to say something I never suggested? My profile commentary is asking for accountability in the way the forum moderation works, not demanding that people behave a certain way. People are free to disagree all they want, but the way the forum manages disagreement sucks - how many times do we see people genuinely puzzled about why their comments get downmodded, and asking for explanations?

It's also a bit much to be accused of being susceptible to feeling abuse, then having an apology demanded over a passing internet disagreement. You want me to grow a thick skin, but don't have one yourself?

I'm not down voting you and I don't have any friends on here to do so. I don't know why you are getting greyed out.

I looked back through your comment history. Mostly reasonable comments with a couple of sort of unfounded accusations of trolling. I did see one comment where you talked about Japanese being hard workers and industrious. Would you consider that calling everyone lazy?

It doesn't matter. I gave my opinion. You are free to consider it trolling if you chose. I like working mostly. I'm proud of my culture. You seem like a generally decent guy. I'm dropping it.

Ironically this is a good example of the screed in my profile :)

We're being downvoted because we were in something of a flamewar, and people are trying to discourage that with downvotes. If there were mandatory reasons and attributions required for modding, you wouldn't have to second-guess what was going on. I also know it's not you downvoting because you can't downvote a direct reply to your own comment.

Anyway, yes, time to move on.

What I gather left and right, and from the story linked, is that in the US, working more hours does not equal more income. Maybe if you're a freelancer that can charge by the hours, but given the US's horrid worker protection, what is an employee in the US might as well be considered a temporary freelancer in other countries.

I'd probably work Saturdays if I got paid by the hour, but at the same time, if I did and it was a decent income I'd probably opt to work less - and I don't even have a family.

Well. Not sure if this is the EU only but I am from the Netherlands and moved to Spain. Cost went down, quality of life is so much higher it now seems like a joke I ever lived in the Netherlands. And was born there. If quality of life is what you are working for the south of the EU is something to consider.

Disclaimer: I am very leftish ( I was very right when I was young; if you will not work fuck off ) by circumstance : by design of what you and me do, there will be no jobs like there are now. And people cannot die in the streets so we need to change things. I spend all my waking ours trying to do that and loving it.

I think you're getting entirely the wrong message from the article.

It's not about whether it's possible to reproduce Switzerland's standard of living in America. It's about asking some difficult questions about the fundamental aspects of American work culture and how they can be changed for the better.

For example, why isn't there mandatory paid maternity and paternity leave in America? Why does the culture essentially force people to choose between careers and family?

It's funny because you show inappropriate content on TV and everyone goes "think of the children!" and loses their minds, but no one bats an eye when mommy and daddy has to work 60+ hours a week each and has no time to spend with their kid.

Why the hell is the U.S. Presidential campaigns about which clown did the fewest embarrassing gaffes, rather than who can actually stand up and promise to do something, like "If I'm elected, 3 weeks paid holiday will be the new minimum"?

Are business interests too strong? Is everyone afraid to be labelled "socialist" and thereby disqualified if suggesting something worker-friendly?

The top 0.1% are the SuperPAC contributors and they control the entire debate. "Democracy" in America is about who has the most money.

And they all are known as tax havens except for Norway which has half a million dollars of oil reserves per citizen :).

But I do think the article is right in pointing out a lack of options in the U.S. if you want to live a lifestyle that doesn't center around work. I love writing software but 40 hours a week + 5 hours of commute + 6 hours of software practice + recovery time seems to me to not leave enough time for enjoying the parts of life that don't involve compiling.

> And they all are known as tax havens except for Norway which has half a million dollars of oil reserves per citizen :).

> But I do think the article is right in pointing out a lack of options in the U.S. if you want to live a lifestyle that doesn't center around work.

This is the "option" of being both a very small and very rich state, which is simply not feasible.

To put this into perspective, Norway is just over half the population of New York City. If New York City had half a million dollars of oil reserves per citizen (as you point out) and started to mint its own currency, and established immigration and trade barriers[0], yes, we would see a massive quality-of-life improvement compared to the status quo.

But that's simply not an option, because (a) we can't produce massive oil riches out of thin air, and (b) NYC is not a sovereign state.

[0] Norway is not part of the EU, but even if it were, EU member states are able to restrict trade and immigration within themselves to a far greater degree than a city or even state in the US can.

The oil doesnt' really make that much difference in Norway. They tend to keep most of the money in a state reserve to not create too much inflation.

Subsitute Norway for non-oil Sweden, a country with huge immigration. Sure it's a small and "rich" country, but the cultural things like good work/life balance applies anyway.

Edit: as was pointed out to me in another comment: this is using a loose definition of "life" which includes 23 hour nights at freezing temperatures. Not for everyone.

> The oil doesnt' really make that much difference in Norway. They tend to keep most of the money in a state reserve to not create too much inflation.

It absolutely does make a difference to have the world's largest sovereign wealth fund[0], as well as the economic status that allows you to leave it untouched. Simply having guaranteed future access to that kind of wealth changes your political and economic options today.

> Subsitute Norway for non-oil Sweden, a country with huge immigration

Sweden is also comparably small (same size as NYC proper), and much of the "huge immigration" comes from other Scandinavian countries or EU member states. Sweden refuses to publish data on ethnic backgrounds[0], but by all accounts it is overwhelmingly white[1]. Of the top ten countries of origin for Swedish immigrants, 6 are predominantly-white European countries, and the rest are countries with majority Muslim population[2]. Muslim immigrants in Sweden have on average a dramatically lower quality-of-life than the general Swedish population and compared to what is being discussed here. On top of that, they face incredible racism and xenophobia.

So if anything, this supports the point that allowing free migration (as all US cities do) brings average quality-of-life down, not up. (Or to put it another way, it's very easy to maintain a high quality-of-life when you have the freedom to exercise strict control over your borders).

[0] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24049876

[1] Manhattan, by contrast, was majority non-white for most of the 20th century, and only just surpassed 50% white in ~2011.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden#Populat...

> It absolutely does make a difference to have the world's largest sovereign wealth fund[0], as well as the economic status that allows you to leave it untouched. Simply having guaranteed future access to that kind of wealth changes your political and economic options today.It absolutely does make a difference to have the world's largest sovereign wealth fund[0], as well as the economic status that allows you to leave it untouched. Simply having guaranteed future access to that kind of wealth changes your political and economic options today.

It probably makes a political difference yes, but I mean that if you woke a swede in norway, they wouldn't really notice apart from that everyone sounded funny.

> much of the "huge immigration" comes from other Scandinavian countries or EU member states.

The biggest recently is Syria, followed by Eritrea (2014).

I'm not saying that immigration is a net positive economically in Sweden (this is a hot topic, which isn't PC to talk about btw), short term at least that is very hard to believe, especially for refugees. Long term you get a different set of factors though when you weigh in demographics etc, the opinion on immigration is somewhat positive here though.

> Sweden is also comparably small (same size as NYC proper)

You must be confusing it with something else. Sweden is slightly bigger than California (450295 vs 423970 km2).

He probably meant in terms of population (around 9M).

> On top of that, they face incredible racism and xenophobia.

Going slightly OT here but I'm pretty sure that racism/xenophobia against muslims in Sweden is no worse than elsewhere. I'm not saying things are peachy, but incredible seems like an overstatement in this case.

I don't think so either. Sure we have problems, but we did also accept a much larger stream of refugees than most other countries. Friction isn't unexpected. A lot of xenophobia is between different migrant groups.

If anything, I'm surprised how tolerant this society is.

Over time Norway's GDP expansion almost perfectly matches the increased production domestically and price increases globally.

Track the price of oil against Norway's extreme GDP per capita growth from 2000 to 2008 ($37k per capita to $95k per capita), a time in which the price of oil went up ~10 fold. It's plainly obvious that Norway's economy is highly dependent on the performance of oil. Their wealth boom the prior 15 years came almost exclusively from the big oil run. Until the year 2000, they did not stand out as especially wealthy compared to other top tier nations. Their GDP per capita was almost identical to the US throughout the 1990s.

There is a big difference between the wealth of individual norwegians, and the wealth of Norway the state and the gdp/capita of Norway.

Each norwegian citizen is like Warren Buffett, they sit on a shitload of money but you can't tell.

> this is using a loose definition of "life" which includes 23 hour nights at freezing temperatures. Not for everyone.

That is when we exert our five+ weeks of vacation and travel to a warmer place...

No kidding. Thailand seems like it has more Norwegians than Norway during the winter.

Basically every country in Europe will give you longer vacations, standard health care, shorter working hours, ...

In some countries you might even get worker's rights like workers councils, unions on the board, ... If you work for example for Volkswagen, every factory in the world will have strong unions, only the US factory won't.

Interesting note - switzerland has workers councils too.

What I recall is that the US used to have strong unions too - although my view of that may be skewed by TV and such.

Nowadays though people can get fired if they join a union, which is why shit companies like McD's and Wal-mart get to continue to exploit their employees. I mean "associates".

> Switzerland is one of... three maybe (Luxemburg, Norway) countries with higher standard of living than the US.

You have to be kidding me. The average standard of living in the US is not the fourth best in the world. The US only got universal heathcare this century, it has a ludicrous work-life balance, the minimum wage in some states is very low (and sometimes includes tipping!), the infant mortality rate is lower than some third world countries, and maternity and paternity leave almost doesn't exist.

In fact America does have one of the highest standards of living. It also has one of the highest median incomes, and among the highest disposable incomes.

OECD better life index:

http://i.imgur.com/ekhWXeG.png

Maternity leave is common in America. You are free to choose your job based on the benefits you desire, including vacation time and maternity leave.

Switzerland and Germany to name two, are famous for not having fully socialized healthcare systems, instead they blend private and public. Poor Americans have had universal healthcare for a lot longer than just this century, via Medicaid. US healthcare has only become particularly expensive in the last 15 years as costs have soared, prior to that the US had a very affordable, mostly private healthcare system.

The infant mortality rate in some third world countries is far more likely to be fraudulent, including in places like Cuba where they force abortions to artificially prop up their infant mortality rates.

The minimum wage in the US is set federally, and all states must at least meet that line. It's also likely to jump by ~50% nationally in the next few years, as major cities move to $11-$15 minimum wages. Italy for example has no minimum wage, and Germany just finally got one. Only 1% of American labor earns minimum wage. The median income of the bottom 25% of workers in America earn as much as the median income in all of Italy.

Maternity leave in America is basically unpaid vacation. In most countries you get paid maternity leave.

Vacation time is also the lowest (2 weeks) compared to Europe which on average has 4 weeks of vacation time.

Where did you get your information about healthcare from? Very affordable healthcare in America? Seriously, what are you smoking?

Yes, in fact healthcare in America used to be affordable.

The two big price jumps were in 1990-2000, and then 2000-now. The last one is what finally broke the private system in the US in terms of affordability.

It's easy to look up the facts and demonstrate where the costs began to soar:

http://i.imgur.com/OXg7Nx7.png

http://i.imgur.com/R6MbaD9.png

Healthcare costs per capita have gone up four fold since 1990 roughly. Real household income in the US was about $47,000 in 1990. Today it's around $58,000 or so. That means people in 1990, with just around 20% less income, were spending 75% less on healthcare. Yes, it was affordable back then.

You can easily prove this another way: look up medical caused bankruptcies, and look at how they surge from the 1990s forward.

> Vacation time is also the lowest (2 weeks) compared to Europe which on average has 4 weeks of vacation time.

The EU mandates a minimum of 4 weeks, so 4 weeks could hardly be the average.

Yep, in Sweden the minimum is five weeks with a lot of companies offering six. That is not counting "other" days off, e.g. "squeeze days" (a day between a public holiday and a weekend) that a lot of companies have. All of it 100.8% payed for and completely guilt-free!

I am not sure in which EU countries you get less? It is a question.

> I am not sure in which EU countries you get less?

Normally none, as I said 4 weeks is the minimum mandated by the EU. The only way an EU country would have less is if it recently integrated the union and has yet to transcribe 2003/88/EC ("Working Time Directive") into local law.

> Vacation time is also the lowest (2 weeks) compared to Europe which on average has 4 weeks of vacation time.

As far as I know, no law requires employers to give their workers paid vacation days in the US. Although the most common vacation time is 2 weeks, there are some jobs with no paid vacation time at all. Also, from what I've heard, what the article mentions about people feeling guilty for taking vacation time is very real in American's work culture.

Here in the Netherlands, in contrast, the minimum paid vacation time by law is four times the number of working days in a week. For full time that's 20 days. Typically, companies provide a bit more than that.

For a lot of people healthcare would be a huge expense... I'm actually pretty happy about "Obamacare" even though I don't agree with the methods... I actually have better healthcare out of pocket today, for less money per month than my last job offered. I was surprised, as I'm big, and diabetic so the last time I looked at out of pocket it was a couple thousand a month. That said, I think there could have been better ways to do it, and the number of exceptions was too vast imho.

As for vacation, I'm feeling it... I've spent most of my career doing contract/hourly work, and for several years the only time I really had off was both unpaid and between jobs with half the time spent interviewing. The past three years I've forced myself to take a couple weeks off over the year, and it's a world of difference... Still unpaid, but worth it.

If I come across a company that gives me the freedom as an employee that I've had as a contractor, I'd be happy to be there. I've done far better in positions where I'm able to get work done, instead of minutia and meetings all the time. Where quality of output is worth more than the number of Jira tickets closed. Unfortunately, that hasn't been the majority of my work experience.

Who knows how things will work out in the end... at least it's not like the first .com bust.

That index is almost comical. They prefer quoting the average wage over the median, the indicator of water quality is asking people whether they are satisfied with their drinking water, and the US wins the category "percentage of people with access to an indoor flushing toilet" due to having successfully eradicated the traditional way of living for native americans.

> In fact America does have one of the highest standards of living. It also has one of the highest median incomes, and among the highest disposable incomes.

For the top X percent maybe; the US also has a poverty rate of over 16% [1], over half a million homeless [2], food stamps programs to support the poor, etc.

> You are free to choose your job based on the benefits you desire, including vacation time and maternity leave.

Do tell that to the big employers like McD's & co (who are now replacing their employees with order computers after they asked/demanded a minimum wage), Wal-mart, Amazon, etc. There's far too many people who do not have the luxury of choice - and even if they did, they can't get the education they'd need to get hired anywhere unless they have rich parents or happened to be eligible for a grant from somewhere.

And as long as people that don't tip in restaurants and such get mistreated or scoffed upon, don't even start about minimum wages.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta...

This is laughable... I only checked your link and saw Poland's bottom 10% having a better life index than France's bottom 10% by quite a wide margin, and Poland's top 10% having a better life index than France's top 10%. It's a complete joke.

There are at least a dozen countries I'd rather live than in the US when it comes to well being. And that's not bad by the way, for a country of over 300 million, to rank top 5 or top 10 in an very broad and averaged parameter (like standard of living) is very hard to do. There's a ton of stuff the US gets wrong, but for a country of its size and age, it's a very successful experiment in politics that does extremely well, all things considered. But that doesn't mean it's among the top 10 in standard of living, which its not.

One of the key issues with a lot of these indices is that they have tons of factors that are based on nominal income. So the OECD better life index for example, has about 10 factors, one of them is how much you earn from a job, the other is wealth and household income, another is spending on housing and real estate prices.

But what it fails to mention is that in Germany, university is free. In the Netherlands, I pay about $2k per year and I get an equal stipend from the government for free (as long as I finish, if I don't it becomes a 1% interest rate loan). In France it's a few hundred bucks per year. Similar stories for all of scandinavia etc etc, only the UK is an outlier in this regard. And if you look at the rankings, probably half of Dutch universities are in the top 100 worldwide, the average US student pays orders of magnitude more and doesn't go to even remotely a world class educational institution.

In other words, would I prefer to be an average American and rack up $30k in debt and go to an unknown local university? Or go to a world class uni in the Netherlands for free? The answer is clear.

Which is why purely droning on about income levels is ignorant. Just to make this clear, would you be willing to reduce your income by 50%, if your expenses would drop by 90%? Obviously. Yet you only look at income, and don't look at expenses. I mentioned education but it's really broad. I live in a lovely apartment by the park with my gf for a few hundred bucks in Amsterdam. My net healthcare payments are a few hundred bucks a year for full coverage. Do I really care I could make a few grand more somewhere else? Nope.

You mentioned maternity leave, one of the issues within work life balance that was covered in this thread before... according to your OECD index the US doesn't even make the top 25 in work life balance, they're in place 29. Out of a possible 36, by the way. It's poor. So you have all these financial indicators that say 'we make this much money and it's the most', yet very little about 'things like healthcare is twice as expensive, education makes you a debt slave instead of being free or near free in many other OECD countries', and then to make all that money to pay for much more expensive stuff, you sacrifice work life balance and come in at an appalling figure.

Time devoted to leisure and free time? Oh place 32 out of 36. Must be amazing. You also work some of the longest hours of all the countries in the study. The only reason the final score isn't as bad is because gender equality was better than average. (which was quite suspect given the Netherlands, quite often respected for being a frontrunner country when it comes to equality in many forms, including gender, came in last by a wide margin. Why? Because Dutch mothers tend to work part-time out of choice, considering they're better educated than men and have financial independence without having to work overtime. And the positive effects of that shows. Yet it's regarded as the worst country of all of them.)

In short, I'm not terribly impressed with the OECD index, but I think that's clear to anyone who sees Poland's bottom and top 10% rank better than say the bottom and top of France or Japan, with all due respect to Poland.

Again, for a country of 300 million I can't think of a more successful country or region than the US, an absolutely great feat for a country and one of the reasons I do admire the US, but it doesn't mean that compared to smaller countries it ranks in the top 10, often not even the top 20 depending on the metric. That's not to bash the US as it's not a fair comparison, but if you do want to make the comparison and list countries of 1 billion and 1 million in the same list, then you'll naturally end up with a lot of the small countries that are outliers at the top.

How much do you know about life in Poland? It's a rapidly developing country. You might be surprised.

Members of bottom 10% of Poland are picking fruits in France as we speak because said job is to shitty for bottom 10% of France.

A common misunderstanding.

My wife is from a very comfortable middle class Polish family and went to one of the best universities in Poland. In her summer holiday before starting university she worked in a factory in the UK for minimum wage assembling car headlights. She did this because the pound-złoty exchange rate made this work more financially rewarding than anything she could have done in Poland.

I have more examples of Poles who are working in the UK right now, simply because of the exchange rate.

I've met many UK-based Poles and not one has preferred life in the UK to life in Poland.

If anything, the exchange rate allows someone in the Polish bottom 10% to climb out of that 10% much more easily than a bottom 10% Frenchman could: Go to western Europe and work for the minimum wage for ten years. Upon their return they'll have more than enough for a nice house.

Standard of living has barely any useful meaning. The US has a relatively high standard of living sure but in practice you only get to enjoy that, if you are at least middle class.

In Switzerland or anywhere else in Europe (excluding the east) you enjoy all the benefits mentioned in the article no matter what income or job you happen to have.

Actually the average European enjoys a way better living standard than the average American. Just take a look at healthcare system in the US. A disease in the US could ruin a family in Europe is taken care by the state... Same goes for education, etc.

I'm a dual national UK/Australian resident in the US. If I were to find that I needed serious medical attention, I'd be on the plane back to either country as soon as I could. Out of interest I'll look up how much it costs to rent a jet and pilot.

Of course you would! Anyone in their right minds would. I still don't understand why the USA has such a lousy healthcare system[1] and why people don't demand something more appropriate.

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0386032/

Probably the same reason why people stay in North-Korea - they don't know any better, or they keep believing in the nationalist propaganda that the US is the best country EVAr.

Thanks for linking that, Roger Moore may be controversial, but he does a good job of pointing out why the reality of the US just doesn't match up to its propaganda.

That's Michael Moore, not Roger Moore. The latter is an Englishman who played James Bond. And it has nothing to do with what Americans believe, but everything to do with the fact that money controls politics in America. And moneyed interests want American healthcare to stay exactly as it is.

Thanks for comparing us to North Korea. I appreciate it. Also, the reason people stay in North Korea is because they will kill you if you try to escape, and will kill your remaining family if you succeed.

I will also let you know when I meet the first American who thinks our healthcare system works.

I really do hope you continue on your path of caricaturing others in order to make yourself feel better.

You have to admit though, there does seem to be a fair amount of Stockholm Syndrome going on with Americans and their health-care system - it really is that bad: Americans are being held hostage by their medical lobbyists who use the terror of a visit to the public hospital for a sprained ankle to keep their minions in line.

You can get insurance in your home country that includes airlifting back to that place.

here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_immigrant...

Switzerland 2,335,059 immigrants, 28.9% of population

United States 45,785,090 immigrants, 14.3% of population

> Switzerland is one of... three maybe (Luxemburg, Norway) countries with higher standard of living than the US.

If you're judging by average income. The wealth distribution is so off in the US that you'll find several dozens of countries where people in the low middle class are much better off.

This doesn't sound hugely informed. I spent the evening discussing this yesterday with Americans in a beer garden in Munich.

Actually, more than the working conditions, the Americans didn't want to go back because of the guns.

Isn't Switzerland one of the few countries with a higher proportion of adults having guns than the US ?

It is, because they get them after serving mandatory time in the military. So more or less every swiss man has a military grade weapon at home. Only in newer times the ammunition is stored in special houses in each community. Before, they had their ammo at home.

They're also rifles, not handguns - and it's handguns that are the problem in the US. Around 75-80% of firearm murders in the US are by handguns.

Do you think people just run around with guns in the US? Not everything is as crazy as the news makes it sound. Its definitely a problem, but its not like were living in constant fear

I didn't until the Americans told me it was a significant problem. I was a bit surprised. Minneapolis.

Nonsense. Almost all that is described in the blog is the standard across western (or at least Germanic) Europe.

>>> There are more people enjoying work-life balance in America than alive in Switzerland.

How is this even remotely relevant to the discussion?

you may say the right thing. But there are too many things they did right in democratic, business or welfare aspects that one should ask what they have to teach us to make the hundred millions of Americans live better. There are smaller and bigger countries doing things worse than Switzerland, so size of population is not a reason to ignore them.

There are more people enjoying work-life balance in America than alive in Switzerland.

It would be more meaningful to boil it down to a different ratio. Even per-capita would represent the differences better.

I see your random statistic and raise you... Saudi Arabia: http://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.js...

Not so much disagreeing as pointing out that condensing something as complex as living standards into a league table is a somewhat absurd reduction.

I'd agree that Switzerland would probably be considered an outlier and difficult to reproduce. However, Denmark, Holland, Sweden, Finland, Austria? I would put Germany in there, too.

Good point. That along with high prices (2 to 3 times rest of Europe) and xenophobia can make Switzerland a fairly miserable place for an immigrant.

>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.

Sure, but the standard on living on most of the things she mentions is better than the US in lots of others European countries, even if they're not as high as Switzerland...

>All these great states are tiny (8M people) outliers. There are more people enjoying work-life balance in America than alive in Switzerland

That's beside the point, since that "work-life balance" is enjoyed by the overwhelming majority in Switzerland -- whereas that's not true for ANY city of comparable size in the US.

This appears to be copy and pasted straight from http://www.vox.com/2015/7/21/8974435/switzerland-work-life-b... - this link should point there instead.

That's the first line in the link. It says "From VOX" and links to the vox article.

The original link should be used here.

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-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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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 :-)

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.

Here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Switzerland#Federa...

http://www.lawyersswitzerland.com/dividend-tax-in-switzerlan...

ps. Is there any change you're tax-evading? :-) j/k probably to get taxed at 35% you need to be pass a specific amount or something (not sure though).

It says it can be deducted in full. That's not really a tax now, is it?

Depends on the specifics, I don't know how easily and under what circumstances you get the refund. But you have a point there, sure.

On the other hand, their tax system seems to work wonders and gives you the impression that there is a strong justice estate.

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.

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.

50 years in the Warzaw pact?

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.

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.

This is why I think visas are better than immigration - lessons return to the original country.

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.

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.

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+)?

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.

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.

not totally true, you are not taxed up to 100k while working abroad. see "Foreign Earned Income Exclusion".

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...

"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

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.

> Everything else is the direct result of this.

Pray tell the details.

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.

Where I live, "moral-free" is called "immoral".

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.

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.

> The reason Switzerland can live like this

Oh bullshit, all of the points enumerated in the article save for average salary (which clearly isn't the article's focus) are equally applicable throughout western and northern europe, except maybe in the UK.

So you're essentially agreeing with the point that the rich countries (western and northern Europe) can afford to live like this, while the poor countries of Europe suffer through crisis after crisis because they can't afford the social programs their richer neighbors have.

That was a long time ago...Since 2009 actually the U.S. started going after them, it was all over the media.. not sure if you saw it..http://www.irs.gov/uac/Offshore-Tax-Avoidance-and-IRS-Compli... and http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2014/10/25/73-0f-100-...

From the paragraph you quoted:

> In 2003, the financial sector comprised an estimated 11.6% of Switzerland's GDP and employed approximately 196,000 people (136,000 of whom work in the banking sector); this represents about 5.6% of the total Swiss workforce.

So while it's clear that the banking sector is big, it's not the only thing propping up the Swiss economy.

There are other prosperous countries in Europe (e.g. Norway) that don't have a disproportionally large banking sector, and some which do but recently failed (Cyprus, Iceland).

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.

what? America had an actual slave class. Also indentured servants.

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.

Sweden, Norway, and Finland did not have serfdom.

If your analysis is correct, shouldn't there be a large difference in the social welfare systems between those them and the Nordic countries with serfdom-like systems; the Danish stavnsbånd, from 1733 to 1788, and the Icelandic vistarband, from 1490 until 1894?, or between the Nordic countries and, say, The Netherlands?

False.

Sweden, Norway and Finland all had monarchies, a landed gentry, and a peasant class. If you'd like to make a subtle (and perhaps useful) distinction between "peasant" and "serf" then I suppose that's worth talking about, but my generalizations about Europe include the nordic countries.

"The peasant proprietors, who, under the name of the "Lantmanna" party, formed a compact majority in the Second Chamber, pursued a consistent policy of class interests in the matter of the taxes and burdens that had, as they urged, so long oppressed the Swedish peasantry;"[1]

"Outside the political sphere, however, the peasants were considered at the bottom of the social order—just above vagabonds. The upper classes looked down on them as excessively prone to drunkenness and laziness, as clannish and untrustworthy, and especially as lacking honor and a sense of national spirit."[2]

"The difference from serfs elsewhere was that the farmer did not directly own the life and property of the homesteader (Husmann), but in most cases, he practically did."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_during_the_late_19th_ce...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Finland#Peasants

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_serfdom

You said "What if a population was not systematically enslaved and disenfranchised for, oh, say, 2000 years". You used the terms "systematically enslaved" and "They were property". Those are terms applied to serfs. They do not apply to all peasants.

You therefore cannot be referring to Sweden's relatively recent and short period of absolute monarchy when you talk about 1000+ years of time. See for example https://www.quora.com/Sweden/In-Swedish-history-why-did-most... "In Swedish history, why did most of the peasants own land, and why did they ally with the king against the nobility? This is substantially different from the rest of Europe, and I wonder why it developed this way?" Quoting from it:

> The Swedes retained that almost primordial, archaic concept of individual liberties and rights when other Germanic tribes had been subsumed into other legal or property concepts, such as what happened in the Holy Roman Empire.

You second link, for Finland after it was conquered by Sweden, says:

> In contrast to serfdom in Germany and Russia, the Finnish peasant was typically a freeholder who owned and controlled his small plot of land. There was no serfdom in which peasants were permanently attached to specific lands, and were ruled by the owners of that land. In Finland (and Sweden) the peasants formed one of the four estates and were represented in the parliament.

These are not "systematically enslaved and disenfranchised" peasants who were "property".

As your third link says, the "Norwegian serfdom" social system for Norwegian lower class farmers 1) started in 1750, so well after slavery was firmly established in the American colonies, and ended in 1860, that is, before the US abolished slavery, and 2) was "not actually in serfdom by European standards". This isn't the 2000 years or even 200 years you alluded to.

"American slaves were (at the time) a small minority of the country"

11% is a minority. It is not a small minority. Slaves were also a majority in Mississippi and South Carolina. http://thomaslegion.net/statesandslaverypercentagesintheunit... .

Your start date of 1776 is irrelevant. Colonial America also had a slave class, starting in the 1600s, which the US inherited.

But the freed slaves were a disenfranchised minority and only shaped culture a little bit. When slaves were still in bondage, the European immigrants could go west for free and cheap land.

The cheap land and lack of landed gentry created a culture that values entrepreneurship. Even today America LOVES rags to riches stories.

You can also see that the black community today is considerably more liberal than the general population.

Ah yes, the American (pipe) dream...

Whether it's true now or not we still beleive in it.

The medieval peasants were slaves, too – legally they were owned by their landlord.

That's one theory that is easy to believe, but it's not true and is a gross simplification of how the European welfare system came about.

Here's an even more gross simplification:

All that great free stuff you want ? You will pay for it. Probably in ways you didn't imagine.

Go look at the economic flows (not the details, just the gross flows of resources) between master and servant in pre-revolutionary france ... now compare those resource flows to those proposed in a utopian "minimum basic income" society.

Those resource flows are the same.

EDIT: to be clear, I am not knee-jerk-opposed to MBI schemes - I find them somewhat intriguing. I'm just wary of them because they introduce a dynamic that ends up being very similar to other dynamics that have, in the past, been quite bad.

Does that imply Europe is more oligarch than America?

Those days, money is more or less a direct measure of power. Inequality of power and social immobility are marks of servitude. In this regard the US doesn't fare well (and has been getting worse): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...

If there isn't already an intricate system of landed class and privilege, who are "these folks over here" that give the money for the welfare and benefits?

The answer is "all of us", or at least in the very level and equal society that existed post-WW2.

As outcomes become less equal, a smaller and smaller proportion of individuals foot that bill. We should expect that as that intensifies, some of those folks are going to look around and start asking where their hereditary and class privileges are.

Let me introduce to Swedish progressive income taxation and VAT percent. Folkshemmet certainly isn't paid by landed gentry.

Post-WW2 America had less income inequality than now, but it was far from a "very level and equal society."

In 1945, the share of the total income of the richest 1% was 11.07%, while in 2014 it was 17.85%. For the richest 10%, 32.64% in 1945 and 47.19% in 2014. A big chunk of the US segregated K12 schools and disenfranchised a race of people that politicians now use as a caricature in order to de-fund welfare programs. Women were kicked out of paying jobs after substantially contributing to the war effort because men came back and expected women to be homemakers.

The belief that post-WW2 America was some kind of glorious classless meritocracy is a myth. It just took a few decades of the natural self-reinforcing loops of capital to highlight the inequality that was already there.

Peasantry was different from slavery. The middle age has actually seen slavery disappearing from Europe, which is incidentally why slaves had to be taken from somewhere else to bring to the "new world".

Class struggle that led to welfare and benefits wasn't against the gentry but against the bourgeoisie (factory owners). The same bourgeoisie who had chopped the gentry's heads before.

Peasantry wasn't slavery, but they were serfs, and in the end serfdom didn't end up being very different to slavery.

AFAIK (I'm not a historian): serfdom started disappearing from most of Western Europe around XV century. In XVII-XVIII it was mostly forgotten, and peasants were free men, who either owned land or rented it from the big land owners. Having said that, their standard of living was dismal (including starvation when prices or crops were low) - often actually lower than in countries which maintained serfdom, such as Poland or Prussia.

Yeah, urm, no. Okay, the "deal" part isn't that far off.

The landed gentry lost much of its status and importance during 19th and 20th centuries, or joined (if they invested wisely) the class what the left likes to call "capitalists". This was caused by what is called "industrialization". Old aristocracy managed to continue to exist in some form in some countries (the UK is great example of that) and the class divisions didn't disappear, but turned into something slightly different.

And the implied threat socialist / communist revolution was part of the deal, but it isn't that simple. Far more important was parliamentary democracy. Of the much praised Nordic countries (the ones Bernie Sanders seeks inspiration from), only in Finland the left actually tried a violent revolution. It failed, and they were mostly kicked out and kept out of politics until after WWII. Compared to Sweden, where the factory owners and unions started to negotiate decades earlier, the deals after that were always worse.

> (the money has to come from somewhere, after all) <

And where did they get it in the first place? When it comes to money it is effectively turtles all the damn way down.

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.

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.

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?

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. ;)

There are some smart contracts / blockchain tpye startups in Zug. Monetas for example. You could reach out to them.

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.

I work there.

It is indeed expensive but salaries can change wildly depending on your position.

I think I could afford to go out and eat out but I decided not to. This way I save money to bootstrap my own thing afterwards and I can find some free time to teach myself the skills I will need to do so.

The procedure to start a venture depends on the canton, expect to put in at least 10k to start, plus whatever the notarial fees will be. I do not think I will be incorporating here.

Since I live in Switzerland, I'll try to address these issues for you.

>There's one thing I'm interested in since this is on HN... How easy is it to start a venture over there?

On paper, it's easy. You go to a bank, deposit either 20K or 50K depending on your corporation type, and they give you a letter. You take the letter to a notary, and the bank gets a doc from him. They put your money in your new company's account. Whole process may cost you 2.5K in notary fees and a few hundred more in government fees.

Of course, there's some more things a company needs than mere existence. If you're looking for capital, it isn't SV. But they do have government programs to help startups and that sort of networking thing. There's contests. What I mostly see though is high-tech university type stuff rather than "guys hacking in a garage".

There's also a number of designated venture parks where you can find cheap office space and infrastructure. A friend of mine rents one in Luzern, and my wife went to see some in the one in Zurich. They're reasonably large buildings, but not entire towns like in SF.

>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?

It is ridiculously expensive to eat out in this country, and your friend is probably not exaggerating. A pizza can easily cost 25 CHF. You can't do a meal at a middling restaurant for less than 100CHF. And the food is not great for the price. I've been to Michelin star places that cost less money than an ordinary meal at a Swiss restaurant.

>eating with my boss.

Why? Lunch hour is your own time - I doubt any European places actually require that you spend it with your boss. Hell I walk home, cook a (fast) meal and chill for a bit.

> 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.

Her boss invited her to lunch for one time, just to demonstrate that lunch is supposed to be (in Switzerland) something else than eating a sandwich at your desk. If you read 4 sentences further, there is:

"When I was on maternity leave, my husband came home for lunch to help me care for our daughter."

So you are free to spend the lunch hour however, also visiting your home and children. Lunch with boss is not mandatory.

Taking the lunch break isn't optional however. Not sure exactly but I think I'm required to have a 40-45 min lunch break, which doesn't count towards my daily 8h of work.

In practice as I'm in a white collar job with flexible hours, this doesn't matter so much. I count as work when I check my email while commuting. If I take a lunch at my desk because something needs to be fixed, I count it as work. Simple as that.

>So you are free to spend the lunch hour however, also visiting your home and children.

Sure, if my job is very close to my house. Otherwise it's an hour spent neither working nor at home.

> Sure, if my job is very close to my house.

I'd guess that is indeed quite common in Switzerland. So having a 1 hour lunch break in the middle of the day makes sense for them, but would not make sense in the US, where much longer commutes are the norm.

The commutes are just the other side of the same coin: The way the US treats it's work/life balance has had deeper consequences. If you aren't expected to leave the kids to school and also have dinner with them at 5pm, then you might just as well work a long day. And since you are working late anyway, you could just as well have a longer commute. On a weekday, work is expected to be a full day. Not just half the day. The 2yo will be asleep when you come home anyway. So imho the sprawling city is born from not just the car culture, also the work/life balance culture.

If you are supposed to leave kids at 8 and pick them up at 4 then obviously a 1h commute isn't really doable. Public transit and compact cities follow naturally from that.

> The 2yo will be asleep when you come home anyway.

This implies only one of the parents goes to work?

Yes, that is the second consequence of being expected to work >8h with 1h commutes - one parent stays home when you have kids.

I have to wonder, which is more efficient/beneficial for the society, two people both working 7.5 hour days, or one person working 10-12 hours and another staying at home.

I think it depends. In the long run the trap that must be avoided is when women (usually women) leave the workforce after having children since "one parent stays at home" often means "mothers stay at home", after which they have a hard time reentering it (or have to re-qualify/take other jobs etc, which is a huge waste).

If the burden of looking after children is split more evenly between mother and father (say 1 year at a time as long as necessary) and both parents keep their careers afterwards, the difference is smaller. The question is what the state can do to encourage this kind of equality and prevent women from leaving the workforce. The view in progressive economies tends to be that it's long parental leaves, where there is a large part earmarked for the father.

Edit: I should add that the US actually has a pretty decent labour force participation for women. The view that women in the US often end up "homemakers" after having children seems to be pretty exaggerated.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2012/ted_20120907.htm

There are countries (Italy and Turkey stand out) where the situation is much worse, to the point where it probably makes a significant dent in the GDP/Capita.

I never understood the ripoff that the "lunch hour" was.

So... you are going to keep me away from other stuff, but I'm not paid for it?

Also, you might not be hungry. If you live on a low carb high fat diet, you can easily go 12 hours or more without feeling the need to eat something.

And some companies will even go to the length of banning sites like youtube. "Try to kill an hour... but we'll remove anything that could distract you... Have fun twiddling your thumbs!"

I guess lunch hour is much nicer if your home is under 10 minutes from work. If your commute is longer than 30 minutes, going home for lunch hour makes no sense.

Because this concept stems from a time when people still performed physical work and had to eat at least 3 full meals spread over the day to stay healthy (enough).

Reading the comments here makes me realise how firmly embedded the "time not spent working is time wasted" attitude is.

> Reading the comments here makes me realise how firmly embedded the "time not spent working is time wasted" attitude is.

Time spent not working is NOT time wasted. Time spent away from what I love, while not being paid IS.

Labour laws in Switzerland demand a 15 minute break for >5.5h working days, 30 minutes for >7h and 60 minutes for >9h. [0]

This is mostly to protect the employees and depending on the sector, people are pretty flexible about that. Lot of people I know just eat a sandwich at the desk and leave earlier in the evening.

After compulsory taxes and insurances, a swiss household has on average 70.9% of their income left for spending. [1]

[0] https://www.admin.ch/opc/de/classified-compilation/19640049/...

[1] http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/en/index/themen/20/02/bla...

wrong in some aspects. As in most European countries an hour off at noon is mandatory, so you can't leave early for family. Tax is indeed not 5% (only the federal part), but rather 10-20% depending on where you live and how much you make. Including social contributions you can expect to go 25-30% away.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Switzerland actually has quite a diverse economy, and depends a lot on the export market to the rest of Europe and tourism. That's why the strength of the Swiss Franc is always a problem for the economy here.

One downside of living here though is that the housing density is fairly high, or at least it is in Zürich. Most people live in flats and getting a bigger place with a garden for the average person is not very feasible.

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+s...

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....

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.)

On the other hand you have to pay a lot more in taxes.

/u/hga compared purchasing power, so taxes are already accounted for in the numbers above.

Switzerland has considerably lower taxes than the u.s. (I'm an american living in switzerland)

Incomes taxes or all taxes?

Income taxes.

As for sales tax, it's 7% here. Lower than most of Europe, and lower than some parts of the u.s., but not all parts of the u.s. But the low taxes more than make up for it. (about 1/2 compared to the u.s., but depends on your income level)

There's also a Value Added Tax (VAT), which probably makes comparing the Swiss and US systems difficult: https://www.ch.ch/en/vat-rates-switzerland/

I was writing about vat. That's basically sales tax. It looks like it's 8% now.

Hmmm, OK, although I note a VAT imposes higher compliance costs on an economy, and is harder to evade. And still, comparing to the US is very difficult, seeing as we have 50 state wide taxing regimes with much more complexity in what's taxed how much, many many many more local ones (the small-medium sized city I live just outside of has at least 3), and it's generally ignored on out of state mail order purchases.

Hard to compare, but probably not grossly larger in Switzerland.

I wonder how property taxes compare.

Ah, here we go, taxation as a % of GDP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tax-Revenues-As-GDP-Perce... Overall we, the US and Switzerland, track very well.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Switzerland which I'm just starting to look at.

That's the reason I used GDP per capita instead of after-tax income. Even if employees do not need to pay for insurance, retirement, or schooling, the nation as a whole still has to.

But that comparison is flawed too; I don't know about Switzerland, but e.g. both Canada and Israel have effective single payer healthcare systems, which cost half as much per capita as in the US, and deliver higher life expectancy with 100% coverage and no medical bankruptcies.

It's too complex to summarize it with just one number per country.

Purchasing power matters for stuff within a country, but swiss people still have more money that they can spend on imports.

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).

> 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_...

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_o...

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.

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.

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.

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).

You don't have to live in the polar circle to enjoy Scandinavian laws...

Yes your correct, nordic countries have achieved a very high standard of living without 300 years of government supported racketeering, money laundering etc. Unfortunately, anything Switzerland brings out my ill tempered side.

That logic applies to anybody who has somebody below them who's poorer (so, everybody).

The richer guy simply dominates the poorer guy. This logic applies on any scale - person, city, country, continent, social class... People like Jesus were against this system (and personally, I'd abolish this system in a heartbeat if I could).

Most of the US financial industry is a parasite, yet I don't hear much complaining about that.

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.

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.

Can someone here elucidate the downsides to living in Switzerland, over the US, particularly for those in the HN crowd?

It is very expensive

Compared to San Francisco, or Oklahoma?

yes

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?coun...

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)

Given the re-float, it's actually much better now (for residents) - prices of imported goods have fallen.

Yes, but my datacenter rates in Zurich rose quite a bit :)

In every way except rent, though. And given rents in San Francisco...

Rent is cheaper than SF. Average going rate for a 1 bedroom apt. in places like Zurich is slightly less than 2k (this includes utilites).

You can save big time by not having to use a car. Switzerland has an excellent public transport system. This also gives you a lot of freedom in terms of where you want to live (which also influences rent prices). There's an ubiquitous Zipcar-like service.

Imported goods are usually the same price as the rest of Europe ("Swiss" markup is offset by lower VAT most of the time).

Everyday goods such as food are much, much more expensive, though. Expect to pay about 20-25 CHF for a meal in a "hole-in-the-wall" kind of place. For a nice evening out for two, add a zero to this. Groceries cost accordingly, chicken breast go for 13-20 CHF per pound for example.

Still not the most expensive place I've lived in, so I can't complain.

In the richest countries in Europe, Switzerland and Norway, also supermarkets and restaurants are priced to match the general income level of the population.

In the US it is easier to have a six figures salary, but still drive over to a cheaper part of town to buy lunch for under $8, or buy cheap stuff from Walmart, ShopRite etc.

Whereas if you live in Norway, you have to drive to Sweden in order to buy cheaper groceries.

Visiting a country can be expensive. Then you make money in country A, which you spend in country B with higher prices.

If you live in a country with high salaries and high prices, it just means there are nominally high prices, not necessarily "expensive".

Some parts and some markets of Switzerland are "expensive" for example Zürich housing. The same is true for SF.

They know too many languages.

Bit too pretty in some towns.

Too much democracy.

I hardly "lived" there, but I found the culture to be lacking a sense of silliness and in general less personable. It's like what they say about German comedy, it's no laughing matter.

I still really like Switzerland.

In my experience, Germans (Bavarians, anyway) see the Swiss very much as Americans see Germans ;)

It's important to note that there are 3 different regions (German, French and Italian) which all have their own 'sub-culture'.

Behaviors can be quite different ;)

Plus the Romansh area in Graubünden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romansh_language .

Why would you want people to be silly? Do you mean wasting your time and getting in your way kind of silly or something else?

I believe it's not trivial to get a job there, especially if you come from outside the EU. And soon restrictions will be imposed on EU countries as well.

What type of restrictions?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_immigration_referendum,_...

Well, if you don't like mountains I don't recommend it

The language is a challenge as well, though most people speak English

Smaller houses (and places in general)

A very demanding society, basically https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/11pcs1/while_i_l...

If you are american or from a western country you would be probably fine, but if not, there are some caveats. Swiss are not bound by the same EU laws about on agism/sexism/racism. They are surprised when you don't include your photo on the CV. They really can get away with a lot of crap. I have heard a lot of anecdotes about increasing xenophobia as well. Popular political parties with anti immigration agendas can pass surprising laws because young people do not vote.

I spent 25-50% of my time working in Switzerland - rest of the time in the UK. There is literally no downside of Switzerland - it is a truly magical place. A commenter mentioned too much democracy, and it's true that it's one of the most democratic places on the planet - so the harsh side of people come out - but it's fair. Also the languages - there's 3 or 4 official languages, and the German is a special dialect, but in business it's all English so it's not an issue. The prettiness is the worst part in many ways - you either feel like you're dreaming (Lucerne) or you get feelings of disgust when you see rubbish on the ground (Zurich). The actual biggest downside is as mentioned in the article - it spoils you for other countries.

No, actually it's the only place that's somewhat democratic.

Make an image search for "swiss political billboards"

And what do you expect I should learn from this?

Nothing contradicting with your statement, Just gave some example of bullshit their cute democracy produces.

For one, you might find the bill boards from the SVP, that shows minarets (the tall part of a mosque) depicted as rockets, or the one where they show white sheep kicking a black sheep out of Switzerland. I think it is a good example of how 'direct' Switzerland can be if you are a foreigner there. (I still love the country though)

Well I agree that patriarcal culture (of which veils and minarets are symbols) has nothing to do in central/northern europe. I don't care about freedom of religion, I care about being freed from religion. And it sounds like the swiss do too. So if that was suposed to make me think that democracy as opposed to parliamentary regimes is a bad thing, think again.

Sorry, but the people opposed to the veils and the minarets are not opposed to them because they represent patriarcal culture, they're opposed to them because they're foreign.

In fact, patriarcal is more likely a good adjective to describe the anti-foreigner areas. For instance, one of the highest votes for a recent anti-immigration referendum[1] was in Appenzell Innerrhoden. That same (half)-canton only gave women the vote in 1990, and only because they were forced to by the Swiss Federal Court [2].

[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initiative_populaire_«_Contre_... (in French, but look for AI under "Par canton") [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_Switzerl...

> that patriarcal culture

Funny. Do you know anything at all about Switzerland? (hint: it's a very patriarchal society)

It's too expensive.

In regards of programming jobs, sometimes it's like living 40 years ago.

Racism is annoying, but normal here. And you must be proud of being Swiss.

Switzerland is tiny. Finding (and keeping) friends here can be hard, because if you even dare to fart, the whole village knows about it within seconds.

And you shouldn't use your brain too much, so you can keep up with the others. But I'm pretty sure that doesn't only apply to Switzerland, so you may safely ignore this one.

It's too expensive.

So's SF.

In regards of programming jobs, sometimes it's like living 40 years ago.

You program with punch cards? 40 years ago was 1975.

Racism is annoying, but normal here. And you must be proud of being Swiss.

You say that like it's a bad thing, but it's a big reason I like Switzerland. Life's too short to be ashamed of who you are.

Switzerland is tiny. Finding (and keeping) friends here can be hard, because if you even dare to fart, the whole village knows about it within seconds.

Same with any small town in the world. You say that like you're afraid of being drug out into the street and shot.

And you shouldn't use your brain too much, so you can keep up with the others. But I'm pretty sure that doesn't only apply to Switzerland, so you may safely ignore this one.

I don't think you'll have any problem with that one.

Dont act like SF is the average place to live in the US

... most people do consider racism a bad thing.

Citation needed.

Ah, you're trolling. My bad.

I'm not trolling. This is one of those "nobody I know voted for Bush" situations.

> You say that like it's a bad thing, but it's a big reason I like Switzerland. Life's too short to be ashamed of who you are.

Really man? So people like you do exist in 2015?

More and more with each passing year, thanks to the overuse of the term and the shifting of its definition. I don't hate people of other races. That used to be good enough. Now, I have to ignore the race of the men who raped my sister. I have to ignore the race of the men who beat my uncle until he slipped into a coma. I can't point out that black on white violent crime is several orders of magnitude larger than white on black violent crime.

And since I can't do any of that without being called a racist anyway, there's very little reason for me not to embrace the term with which I was branded.

Xenophobia. Cultural intolerance. Very 'always know best'-oriented culture.

It's expensive.

$20 for a chicken expensive. $50-70 for a mid-week not-so-fancy dinner for two w/o wine expensive. Basically, you go grocery shopping and you'll pay about 40-60% more than you'd pay for the same across the border in France.

English is not commonly spoken at all, not in the French part at least. In fact, if you ask if they speak English, you'd get a surprised Non. Just as if you asked if they spoke Mongolian. In retail there'll be always someone who speaks English though, but he'll be there because people like you exist between customers and not because he is a natural occurence.

Residence permits are a bitch if you are not a EU citizen. It's twice the pain if you are trying to run your own company there as you'd be expected to hire locals in droves, who (as you have just read) tend to cost an arm and a leg and come with very high expectations.

Otherwise it's a superb country. High quality food, excellent roads, tons of places to visit and very close to everything in Europe (3 hours by TGV train to Paris).

You can't enslave workers with a minimum wage of $7.5/hr.

Harry Lime: Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly.

Cuckoo clock is southern germany, not switzerland. Common misconception.

Apart form the bit where for long periods swiss mercenaries where feared and much more prone to war crimes than the Italian condotta

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.

So which country do you prefer?

"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.

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.

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.

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.

Irrelevant and historically dubious.

Without a strong common culture that solves the prisoners dilemma of social safety-nets, they will collapse. If you want Switzerland, you need Swiss.

The "prisoners dilemma" arises from politicians & the people in power playing society for their benefits. Homogeneity is not a necessary condition.

Historically incorrect. Thanks for playing, kid.

I note that large social safety nets exist in extremly heterogenous societies like Switzerland, Canada, and Australia.

And among middle-of-the-road diversity nations it seems to be aminly the anglosphere that feels it is difficult.

On the flip side, living in China for nine years made me appreciate many of the good things in the US.

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.

Can you tell us more about that?

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.

> 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".

It's a human thing, not a Swiss thing. Which is why homogenous countries have more sane political systems.

> 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/... (in German)

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.

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.

Article taken down to DMCA. Heres a mirror link: https://web.archive.org/web/20150801183904/https://ukiahcomm...

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.

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.

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.

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_empl...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave#Americas

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_leave

- 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...), 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.

And I think that's where we differ. Your focus is on the people 'right at the bottom', as is the focus of many who engage in this kind of debate. I tend to look at the whole picture: Those at the bottom, working class salarymen and women in the middle, innovators at the top, middle-class employees who want to become entrepreneurs and job creators and those at the bottom who want to do the same.

I'm a South African immigrant to the United States. I've lived in the UK and worked there for 5 years. I've also lived in France for a year, spent 8 months in Brazil and have family there, lived in the US for over a decade and been an employee, startup founder and now executive. I've traveled extensively. My first real job was scraping a harbor crane boom down to the metal and painting it while covered in metal dust, paint and solvent - and for a wage that makes minimum wage in the USA look like a kings ransom.

So I have been at the bottom, I've been a low level techie in a laser printer repair company, I've been a top tier developer and I've starved while starting a company. I've also created a company that creates jobs for others and that is continuing to do so.

I think you and I and the rest of the readers see that click-baity blog post for what it is. At least I hope you do. It's a sample of one and is rather opinionated.

The Swiss have their issues too - I've already mentioned xenophobia - add to that harboring tax evaders, banning the building of mosques (minaret controversy), banning asylum seekers from entering public places in certain towns, and a long complicated history of putting money before morals. But the Swiss and their country are not what I take issue with.

My issue is that I'm tired of the constant whining drum beat that the USA is so bloody awful and we should look at place X, Y or Z as a shining light of how amazing things could be.

I'm 41 and I've been around the World and around the block a few times. Trust me when I tell you that the difference between developing countries and the USA is staggering in terms of personal security, quality of life, healthcare (Yup. Just look at the number of CT/PET scan machines and speed of diagnosis of fast moving diseases like cancer) and opportunity. What this means is that the USA is doing a hell of a lot better at creating an awesome quality of life than most of the rest of the World. So cherry picking a prosperous country and suggesting that the USA is a disaster is absurd.

Sure, you want cake instead of bread, but both do a really great job of feeding you and most of your brethren around the World have neither. So lets cut the debate, enjoy your bread, open a bakery, employ your brothers and sisters and then do it all over again.

This country really is the land of the free because we get to publicly and loudly speak our minds and explore new ideas without persecution. [I grew up under horrible censorship during Apartheid]. It's the land of the brave because it's filled with innovators who go broke multiple times (like I did) before they earn the privilege of creating jobs, paying more tax and creating useful things. And believe it or not, many of the 1% that are so hated by such a small but very vocal minority in the USA take huge risks with their own money to help fund other entrepreneurs who want to bet everything on creating a business. And those investors do it with incredible empathy and generosity in my experience.

So I say again: I'm tired of these vitriolic attacks on this country, the so called 'one percent' and on businesses who are run by real human beings. Damn right we're far from perfect and there is a lot we can improve upon. But framing this country as a disaster and using that as a departure point for discussing how to improve things is getting really old.

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-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.

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.

I can't imagine what it's like in the US if she thinks Switzerland is good for parental leave.

No paid maternal leave beyond the employer's discretion with the only exceptions of New Jersey, Rhode Island and California.

RE: car parking story, I see you have not been to Sweden before, we have mastered the art of passive-aggressive notes here.

I'm not surprised. The Germanic countries have the weirdest people in terms of social awkwardness. And I grew up in one.

I think average wage is a bad metric.

I can't find any source ATM but I think the median salary is around $75k.

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.

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/Forei...

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.

technically she was right though about his tax rate, it was low because most of his income came from long term cap gains investments

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)

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.

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.

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).

$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.

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).

I am not American nor Swiss but have lived for multiple years in both countries and can echo your sentiment.

> The poster mentions the low rate of federal tax on the average wage. This is only part of the story.

In my experience, when considering EVERYTHING (e.g. remaining net monthly salary) the overall tax rate in the US (California) and Switzerland ended up being similar and around 30%. However, in the surrounding countries from the Eurozone, tax rates for similar income brackets tend to be significantly higher.

To be honest, I did like living in Switzerland, but my feeling is that a lot of the benefits they enjoy arise from arbitrage situations with neighboring countries. Taking your example from shopping at Marktkauf [1] (right across the German border in Basel), people living in Switzerland massively go there for multiple reasons:

   1) prices are generally much cheaper, and on top of it 
   2) being from outside the EU you can get the 18% tax rate back, so essentially you can shop tax free and bring it over the border for no fees up to 300 chf/day.

Similarly, there's a tonne of P.O. box services in the same town allowing you to buy stuff from EU Amazon sites at lower prices and ship it to the P.O. box address in Germany, pick it up and take it over the border.

In general, probably Switzerland has opened up in the last few years, but it still feels like a very traditional (even old-fashioned) country deeply rooted in its own ways of doing things, in spite of a very large foreign population, e.g. around 23% of its population (from [2] and [3]) are foreign residents, who live there but have NO right to vote.

[1]: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Marktkauf/@47.5901807,7.59...

[2]: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL

[3]: http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/en/index/themen/01/07/bla...

Oh, poor you....You should come work in Romania (where i am ) and see how it is.

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?

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?

It also appears that this $90k+ is less than GDP per capita - https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&... which is really weird.

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.

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.

The reason American's benefits are so stingy is because of racism. White people do not want any benefits going to blacks.

How is all of that sustainable? Are us Americans just being massively lied to?

Not necessarily. The United States just harbors an enormous amount of path dependence.

Size matters. Switzerland shall be compared to Singapore etc instead of US.

This was just painful to read about how little the author understands about basic economics and the privileges afforded to that ONE tiny nation.

What is that lack of understanding?

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?

i pay 45% tax in the usa. time to move ;)

Moving won't help you if you are a US citizen.

im not, thats part of why i pay 45%.

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%

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%.

exactly. 45% is actually pretty near the maximum :/

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.

> 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.

The explanation is simply that you're using the wrong data. Kind of embarrassing for someone who is complaining about how nobody else understands the importance of numbers and spreadsheets.

The number you've marked as "national debt" is actually "external debt", which is a totally irrelevant statistic. It's the amount of debt owed to entities in different countries by business, invididuals and the the government. It's particularly meaningless because it's only looking at debts rather than both debts and credits. Switzerland is in fact a net international creditor.

The number you should be using is the government debt. Unfortunately it's going to be pretty bad for your incredibly insulting "People's Republic of Switzerland" narrative. That'd be 34% of GDP for CH, 102% for USA.

The statistics came from a European government website where they listed US and European nation government debt. Since the US number was right I had no reason to doubt the veracity of the other numbers.

The greater point here isn't the accuracy of numbers I quickly pulled out of a few websites. I simply wanted to point out that saying "I lived in <insert country> for <years> and <this other country> is lousy" is nonsense without engaging a serious study of the numbers.

I wasn't about to spend a whole day writing a research paper because, well, I am not the one making the claim that Switzerland's shit don't stink.

Is the US perfect? Nope. We are as fucked as can be. And, at the same time, we still remain the land of opportunity and the place from where vast amounts of innovation continue to come from. A simply comparison of the tech startup ecosystem alone shows there are huge differences that need to be evaluated and accounted for.

In other words, if the utopia of Switzerland is so remarkably better than the crap we have here in the US, why is it that Silicon Valley hasn't migrated to Switzerland or that most of the major science and tech companies aren't founded and based out of Switzerland?

To me Switzerland is an aberration. Either it is a house of cards or it is the luckiest 8 million people on the planet. Time will tell.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nope, about 160years.

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.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com