131–140 of 462 posts
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There are probably 10 countries whose average citizens enjoy a standard of living higher than your average American.
The tricky thing about averages is that a few high numbers can slew the average...
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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
No they don't. They have higher standards for the lower classes. America has a higher standard of living but is far more sink or swim.
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>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.
As disingenuous as comparing a small country to the US as a whole.
Why? Countries seem to scale pretty well. A social structure that works well in one city can work well in 200 cities.
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>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.
As disingenuous as comparing a small country to the US as a whole.
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Also looking at PPP per capita (59K vs 53K), it's not that much higher. Norway, I'm not sure should count given their large oil reserves which one cannot really replicate.
The oil is a curse rather than a boon.
"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-mill…
Pray tell the details.
"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…
Reading this as a European, it's fun and telling that you focused on salary differences, whereas what mattered to me were the other quality-of-life elements (I assume you're living in the US). To sum up, what matters to me, in what she described, were the consequences of the belief that one shouldn't be ashamed of having a life outside of work, and needing some time and peace of mind to actually enjoy it. More money…
"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…
In some countries you might even get worker's rights like workers councils, unions on the board, ... If you work for example for Volkswagen, every factory in the world will have strong unions, only the US factory won't.