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Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

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Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#31
Comparisons between the US and European countries are often useless. Either they pick a rich European country that has restricted immigration for a long time, or they say "Western Europe" while ignoring many of the countries in Western Europe that have some real challenges (like unemployment).

Germany or the UK might be reasonable comparison points. Not perfect, of course (still huge differences), but it's much more likely that there is a real lesson somewhere.

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#32

While this sounds lovely, can anyone with experience speak to the difficulty of finding sponsored work in Switzerland? For instance, my wife is a social worker in the U.S. and speaks conversational German - but this is not likely to be considered a "high need" type of job for which a company would hire a foreign worker.

As a non-EU/Swiss citizen you can only be employed in Switzerland if the company can demonstrate that no suitable EU/Swiss candidates could be found for the job role.

Exactly how this works I am not too sure, but anecdotally it is very difficult unless you are in top-management or a highly specialised field.

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#33
post #16

But in Switzerland, my husband's company gave employees six weeks of vacation a year. And yet, I find people get used to it and consider it normal rather than a great thing. I give my employees 36 days of paid vacation per year (7.2 weeks) and, yep, got complaints the other day when I suggested making December 22nd a mandatory holiday day(!) :-)

I think the complaint here (if I understand you correctly) is that you are giving a vacation day and then making a certain day mandatory to use it. This practice is common among companies and extremely infuriating and in my opinion should be illegal. Better to have 35 days paid and make december 22nd a company holiday.

It's not that uncommon to include "company holidays" in "paid days off". Denmark has that as well, I get 5 weeks of vacation, and 5 days of vacation/days-off. My employer is free to "spend" the 5 days for me.

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#34
post #29
post #18

In my opinion this is missing an important thing: Does the Swiss model scale? For example, the Singapore model can't scale. It's based on rich people and corporations arbitraging the international fiscal system. You can't have another Singapore without having another East Asia and West with it. Swiss is definitively a privileged place that is benefiting from the overall wealth of Europe and many other countries. We c…

Can you explain more what do you mean by the word "scale" here?

I think the parent means : Would a Switzerland with the same ratio of different job be able to survive if the Switzerland population was let's say 2 billion people. (or are they relying on France, Germany and other neighbors to sustain their current model for instance)

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#35
post #18

In my opinion this is missing an important thing: Does the Swiss model scale? For example, the Singapore model can't scale. It's based on rich people and corporations arbitraging the international fiscal system. You can't have another Singapore without having another East Asia and West with it. Swiss is definitively a privileged place that is benefiting from the overall wealth of Europe and many other countries. We c…

I think it would if we didn't spend so much money in military and defense.

Edit: My reasoning is the result of seeing this type of information everywhere, I could be wrong: http://dy00k1db5oznd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/...

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#36
post #25
post #18

In my opinion this is missing an important thing: Does the Swiss model scale? For example, the Singapore model can't scale. It's based on rich people and corporations arbitraging the international fiscal system. You can't have another Singapore without having another East Asia and West with it. Swiss is definitively a privileged place that is benefiting from the overall wealth of Europe and many other countries. We c…

There's no reason why it can't scale, but one problem in implementing this kind of system is convincing the population to accept higher taxes (and Swiss taxes are, overall, still significantly higher than the US despite what the article seems to make out). It is, ultimately a case of the government taking more of your personal wealth to provide services to society as a whole, which flies in stark contrast to the trad…

Can you explain? Why higher taxes? Can't it be a mixture of private enterprises replacing some equivalent public institutions from the Swiss setup? Even non-profits if you can reach critical mass on tithes, cf effective altruism.

Seems doable if you have good rhetoric and get a movement going.

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#38
post #19

The U.S. is very behind many European countries in the work-life balance department. It's kinda surprising that America – with its liberal policies for private companies – is so backwards when it comes to caring about their employees. The points in the article could apply to policies/norms in Sweden as well. Here, we get at least 4 weeks of paid vacation per year, as well as some insurances and a very generous parent…

"Liberal policies for private companies" really means that companies have less regulation and red tape, and therefore have a less liberated workforce. One of the points the article makes is that the Swiss government have legal mandates on workplace benefits such as time off and maternity leave, which is the opposite of what some refer to as liberal, at least when talking about businesses as opposed to individuals.

In the US yes not in europe. Liberal means something different in europe

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#39
post #25
post #18

In my opinion this is missing an important thing: Does the Swiss model scale? For example, the Singapore model can't scale. It's based on rich people and corporations arbitraging the international fiscal system. You can't have another Singapore without having another East Asia and West with it. Swiss is definitively a privileged place that is benefiting from the overall wealth of Europe and many other countries. We c…

There's no reason why it can't scale, but one problem in implementing this kind of system is convincing the population to accept higher taxes (and Swiss taxes are, overall, still significantly higher than the US despite what the article seems to make out). It is, ultimately a case of the government taking more of your personal wealth to provide services to society as a whole, which flies in stark contrast to the trad…

See the example I added above. This has nothing to do with high taxes but rather with Switzerland catering for luxury export stuff (medicines, watches, banking etc..) that relies on a huge external economy.

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#40
post #35
post #18

In my opinion this is missing an important thing: Does the Swiss model scale? For example, the Singapore model can't scale. It's based on rich people and corporations arbitraging the international fiscal system. You can't have another Singapore without having another East Asia and West with it. Swiss is definitively a privileged place that is benefiting from the overall wealth of Europe and many other countries. We c…

I think it would if we didn't spend so much money in military and defense. Edit: My reasoning is the result of seeing this type of information everywhere, I could be wrong: http://dy00k1db5oznd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/...

The rest of the world can do a lot of things when America develops drugs for them, protects them from harm, and designs new technology so humanity can progress. The peace that America has wrought across the world is unprecedented and, in doing so, she has made the world a safer place to trade than ever before. And trade greatly benefits nations like Switzerland.

I'm not claiming they're freeloaders. This benefits us all. But it's not an obvious claim that America would be better off if there were less discretionary spending on the military.

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