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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)

#131

Post by always_good »

dgfgfdagasdfgfa wrote: post #115
lacampbell wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and many Swiss I talk to dislike the idea of refugees coming to Switzerland and choosing not to work I'm sorry, but who actually likes that idea?

I mean, it's kind of weird to feel anything about what others do with their time.

In a capitalist dystopia, I'd agree with you. But everywhere else, you cannot live without impacting the lives of other people.

For example, let's say you choose to eat unhealthy food, become obese, and land in the hospital. You might say "who cares what other people eat" while you are using a limited, shared resource.

If you're able to not work indefinitely because you're consuming a limited, shared resource like the money of other people that live in a country, why should they think that's fair if it's supposed to be a safety net?

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

#132

Post by coldtea »

drdeca wrote: post #65
ci5er wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Swiss model does seem to scale. The population has scaled from 6.2 million in 1970 to about 8.2 million today. GDP per capita also went up significantly during this time, and outpaced GDP per capita growth in the USA. While that is certainly adorable (and, seriously, good for them!), "scale" in GP is referring to: "Will it work for 450M people at the same time?" -- or in China's case: "Will it work for 1.3B peo…

> adorable Do you mean admirable? I have a hard time thinking of an economy as being adorable, except maybe if the whole thing is very physically small (like, a city of miniscule people, or something like that)

Adorable is used to belittle things -- it's even a meme:

“That’s Cute” (otherwise known as “That’s Adorable”) is a sarcastic expression used to patronize or dismiss someone’s self-complacency or boastful statement, similar to the phrase “bitch, please.” It is typically used to juxtapose the capabilities or accomplishments of two comparable subjects

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

#133

Post by _nalply »

marktucker wrote: post #96
santaclaus wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also a fair amount of xenophobia inherent in the Swiss national identity. I know Germans who have lived there for 10+ years and are still considered outsiders.

In my experience, all you have to do is (passably) speak swiss german to be accepted by the locals. A lot of Germans live here 10+ years without speaking swiss german and I notice some distaste from the Swiss since a Swiss guy will feel like it's rude if he doesn't speak high german with a German, and many really don't like speaking high german. There's definitely other forms of xenophobia here, though. There are a l…

I second that. A Czech child minder told me that she only really connected to the mothers when she switched to Swiss German.

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

#134

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

Strom wrote: post #64
zigzigzag wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if the export markets were as rich as Switzerland, they would buy even more luxury watches. So I don't see how your point makes sense. The Swiss model does seem to scale. The population has scaled from 6.2 million in 1970 to about 8.2 million today. GDP per capita also went up significantly during this time, and outpaced GDP per capita growth in the USA. You can find a lot of people who write off the Swiss exampl…

Before anyone thinks Switzerland is some bastion of democracy, I'd like to point out that they've been very conservative in some areas. Women didn't have federal voting rights until 1971, and received nation-wide local voting rights fairly recently in 1991. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage_in_Switzerlan...

But thats kind of the point isn't it? Some Kanton decides by popular vote to be conservative, and they can do so. They are not forced to follow some politically progressive agenda, and so the people are not alienated as in other democracies.

The downside is that progress is slower, but the upside is that the system remains stable and there are no backlashes against a perceived "liberal hivemind" or whatnot.

Democracy does not mean that sensible things happen, it means the people govern themselves, for good or for worse.

Switzerland has found a feedback cycle that works exceptionally well. So you voted to spend lots of money on a football stadium? Well sorry, we can't afford free kindergarten anymore. People learn from this and retain identification with the political system.

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

#135

Post by st3v3r »

dennisnedry wrote: post #24
deedubaya wrote: post #21

I used to work for the US HQ for a Swiss owned company. I worked in both offices on occasion with close interaction with both Swiss and American employees (I'm American). This article is very spot on. What it doesn't mention much of, however, is the difference in what happens during working time. In a typical US office setting, water cooler talk, filing meaningless reports, etc is common. You'll probably have a guy w…

This is true for large corporations, but smaller startups that is not the case. Smaller companies have everybody wearing multiple hats. Nobody sits around, and if they do, it's time to ask them to leave.

Not really. Startups can have people coasting along as well.

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

#136

Post by personlurking »

cven714 wrote: post #8

Slightly off topic, but the beauty of Switzerland was such a stark contrast to where I grew up in New Jersey that it almost made me angry. All these people, going about their daily lives in Switzerland seemingly oblivious to the fairy-tale landscape around them!

I think the same about Brazil. Endless amounts of natural beauty and it often seems to go unnoticed (or merely noticed but not fully appreciated).

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

#137

Post by gregmac »

sleavey wrote: post #47
robertk wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doesn't it come down to the argument about whether a private company can run a service (on behalf of society) more efficiently than the government itself? The article makes this pretty clear - $3,000 for giving birth in a Swiss hospital plus much better care, or $30,000 for bare minimum care in the US. I very much doubt it costs more to run hospitals in the US - even with the liberal lawsuit culture. It's more likely…

> $3,000 for giving birth in a Swiss hospital plus much better care, or $30,000 for bare minimum care in the US

I still find both of these numbers insane. In Canada, I paid $40 to upgrade to a private room because we had to stay overnight. To be fair though, my benefits from work already paid $60 to go from the free 'ward' (4 people) room to semi-private (2 people).

Had we not stayed it would have cost $0 -- that includes a private delivery room, delivery by a midwife we had been seeing for a few months, the midwife coming to our house at 4am before we went to the hospital, any emergency intervention by nurses/doctors (if needed, thankfully we didn't), plus the midwife coming to our house a few times for follow-ups for the first few weeks.

It's the same cost ($0) to get a OB/GYN except delivery is by whoever is on call (not necessarily your doctor), and early pregnancy and follow-up care is by your regular family doctor at their office.

Oh yeah I also had to pay for parking, that was like $30.

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

#138

Post by Chyzwar »

valuearb wrote: post #88
JackFr wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sympathetic to your point, in general, but Switzerland is hardly a good example: > when America develops drugs for them, "Switzerland is home to many pharmaceutical companies, including very large groups, such as Novartis and Hoffmann-La Roche. In 2013, 41 life science companies had their international headquarters (and 29 more their regional headquarters) in Switzerland. The pharmaceutical industry in Switzerlan…

Those drugs were developed with stolen money, their banking system is the worlds harbor for frauds, thieves and dictators funds, and gets to lend all that money out at cheap rates. Mining tunnels is cheap compared to a real military. Pax Americana means they, like all european countries, don't spend a fraction of what we spend on defense.

Pax Americana means that when US mess-up Middle East then EU will pick up refuges?

Pax Americana mean than US organise coups in democratically elected governments Iran 53, Chile 73, Paname support dictatorships: Hussein, Mubarak, Pinochet sponsor terrorists: Contras and start wars: Vietnam, Iraq, Afganistan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

Your military spending for 1.5 trillion dollars on F35 is truly admirable, but this fighter is still not ready. In many cases NATO countries are forced to buy US produced weapons because of "compatibility".

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

#139

Post by rarec »

dingo_bat wrote: post #2

Lousy work culture that produces the best output in the world. If it is so bad why don't you stay in Switzerland and give up your American passport? Something must be making up for the competitive work culture. I wonder what that is.

>Lousy work culture that produces the best output in the world.

I mean, look at the Great Wall of China. It's a wonder what you can get done when you start to treat your people as tools and nothing more.

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

#140

Post by [deleted] »

sleavey wrote: post #25
csomar wrote: 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…

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