Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by blfr » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 6:17 PM UTC

"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).

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

#42

Post by Havoc » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 6:18 PM UTC

jkot wrote: post #27

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 compan…

>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.

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

#43

Post by alexashka » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 6:20 PM UTC

"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.

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

#44

Post by hga » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 6:20 PM UTC

benkuykendall wrote: post #24

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 co…

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....

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

#45

Post by logingone » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 6:20 PM UTC

phaemon wrote: post #2

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.

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

#46

Post by Havoc » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 6:20 PM UTC

blfr wrote: post #41

"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 al…

>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.

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

#47

Post by loblollyboy » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 6:20 PM UTC

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

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

#48

Post by seibelj » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 6:20 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #13

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…

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.

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

#49

Post by bsaul » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 6:21 PM UTC

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.

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

#50

Post by gpcz » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 6:22 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #13

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…

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?