"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…
> Everything else is the direct result of this. Pray tell the details.
Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture
221–230 of 462 posts
Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture
#222While I agree with many of the sentiments in the article, I don't think a comparison of wages is entirely fair. Some small nations have an out-sized GDP per capita such as Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Singapore because of their large financial industries. These industries are possible because the countries attract wealth and the wealthy through very low taxes(like Singapore) or very strong banking secrecy laws. And w…
The US also has a skewed GDP per capita. Large financial industry, various economic bubbles (housing, stock market, ...), printing money, huge debt financed consumption, huge military expenses. The trillion dollar Iraq war costs are increasing the GDP.
It stole productive capital and put it toward destruction. The debt cost then goes on perpetually in the form of interest (currently at $430 billion per year), making it even worse over time. Instead of investing into factory production, business expansion, R&D, science, healthcare, infrastructure, long-term economic growth in general, you accumulate a trillion dollars in long-term veteran care costs, and perhaps destroy hundreds of billions worth of equipment, and run up the price of oil, gasoline and commodities in general by devaluing the dollar and destabilizing the middle east - for absolutely zero real benefit.
Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture
#223But, honestly, the only way that this occurs (unless born rich) is if one is smart, ambitious, hard-working, cunning, and lucky. If one is poor and doesn't have those attributes, they'll have a very hard time here. For instance, intelligence will not get one very far, alone. I grew up gifted and talented. All of my siblings were also gifted and talented. But, of my family and classmates, only 20% made it out of poverty. In that way, the U.S. is quite horrible.
Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture
#224"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…
Actually the average European enjoys a way better living standard than the average American. Just take a look at healthcare system in the US. A disease in the US could ruin a family in Europe is taken care by the state... Same goes for education, etc.
Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture
#225I 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.
Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture
#226Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
More money would make me happier. I'd give up a few Saturdays for it. One day a week is enough rest. Besides, few pleasures compare to productively working.
So now we have two pieces of anecdotal evidence, worth exactly twice as much as one (2*0)
Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sweden, Norway, and Finland did not have serfdom. If your analysis is correct, shouldn't there be a large difference in the social welfare systems between those them and the Nordic countries with serfdom-like systems; the Danish stavnsbånd, from 1733 to 1788, and the Icelandic vistarband, from 1490 until 1894?, or between the Nordic countries and, say, The Netherlands?
False. Sweden, Norway and Finland all had monarchies, a landed gentry, and a peasant class. If you'd like to make a subtle (and perhaps useful) distinction between "peasant" and "serf" then I suppose that's worth talking about, but my generalizations about Europe include the nordic countries. "The peasant proprietors, who, under the name of the "Lantmanna" party, formed a compact majority in the Second Chamber, pursu…
You therefore cannot be referring to Sweden's relatively recent and short period of absolute monarchy when you talk about 1000+ years of time. See for example https://www.quora.com/Sweden/In-Swedish-history-why-did-most... "In Swedish history, why did most of the peasants own land, and why did they ally with the king against the nobility? This is substantially different from the rest of Europe, and I wonder why it developed this way?" Quoting from it:
> The Swedes retained that almost primordial, archaic concept of individual liberties and rights when other Germanic tribes had been subsumed into other legal or property concepts, such as what happened in the Holy Roman Empire.
You second link, for Finland after it was conquered by Sweden, says:
> In contrast to serfdom in Germany and Russia, the Finnish peasant was typically a freeholder who owned and controlled his small plot of land. There was no serfdom in which peasants were permanently attached to specific lands, and were ruled by the owners of that land. In Finland (and Sweden) the peasants formed one of the four estates and were represented in the parliament.
These are not "systematically enslaved and disenfranchised" peasants who were "property".
As your third link says, the "Norwegian serfdom" social system for Norwegian lower class farmers 1) started in 1750, so well after slavery was firmly established in the American colonies, and ended in 1860, that is, before the US abolished slavery, and 2) was "not actually in serfdom by European standards". This isn't the 2000 years or even 200 years you alluded to.
Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
You completely misunderstood my statement because you have no idea what democracy is.
No I know exactly what democracy is, and told you that I did not contradict your statement. Also, obviously, you never lived in Switzerland. Chill.
Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture
#230"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…
How is this even remotely relevant to the discussion?