141–150 of 186 posts
I don't want a work-life balance. Sure, the Swiss model is very attractive for a person in a certain phase of life with a certain attitude toward work --- one for whom work is something distinct from life. Me? I want the freedom to pour myself into something I love. I'd rather spend 60 hours per week using all of my faculties to produce something worthwhile than to spend 35 or 40 hours just trading my time for money,…
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.
Yeah, I hear this argument a lot - "There is a reason why FB, Twitter, etc. is not invented in EU". Well, TBH I don't give two about those companies. Also, what did average American citizen got from those companies succeeding? Probably nothing. Thanks, but no thanks. I'd rather have good work-life balance then unicorns that do not even change my life.
How did you calculate that? I wouldn't even know where to start measuring the total effects of Twitter on average Americans. I imagine they are wide reaching.
"Being rich ruined me for being poor and its lousy perks."
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…
A normal birth in the US without complications is not going to cost $30k to the family. (It might cost $30k in nameplate price, but we know that insurance companies don't actually pay that.) We had a home birth in California for $4k total, and the standard charge for Global Maternity Fee (including the birth, and all visits to the doctor throughout the pregnancy) is under $5k. Even if you add a night or two in the hospital to that, it's not going to be $30k. It can get higher with a C-Section, which are too common. All that said, the average cost to a family of a pregnancy is $3,400. That's not that different from Switzerland. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2352687/How-cost-g...
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…
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!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unlimited vacation sounds nice, but from what little I read on it, it wasn't really unlimited. Rather, it seems to be based on what's acceptable at your workplace and how much work you can get done. Hopefully someone with first-hand experience or more knowledge will elaborate a bit on this.
Yes -- unlimited vacation is a perk of flexibility rather than number of days off. Since you're responsible for getting your work done, you can take any manner of time off provided that the results hold up. This past year, I prolly tallied anywhere from 4-6 weeks off, technically speaking. Unplugged though, a handful of days at most. (Otherwise, mostly on vacay but maybe a few hrs worth of work a day sprinkled in mor…
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.
"Being rich ruined me for being poor and its lousy perks."
You say that as if the US is a poor country. It's not. There's no reason whatsoever that we couldn't have what Switzerland has, other than some assholes at the top see it as an impediment to their having all of the money.
Very nice article.I wish every country followed the swiss way of work life balance!