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

Post by rhino369 » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 6:30 PM UTC

cjsthompson wrote: post #61

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…

France and Germany have a higher standard of living than the U.S. In fact except Greece, Italy and Spain all European countries have a higher standard of living than the U.S.. Face it you are the third world compared to Europe. Ooooh, those poor little jingoistic feewings are butthurt... :D

Post by sampo » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 6:31 PM UTC

hga wrote: post #44

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....

Post by mirimir » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 6:32 PM UTC

mercurialshark wrote: post #11

asdfologist wrote: post #4

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

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.

Post by peterjancelis » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 6:32 PM UTC

chaostheory wrote: post #40

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…

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?

Post by letitgo12345 » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 6:33 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…