341–350 of 462 posts
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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.
I'm a little surprised by the negative reaction. You people don't derive pleasure from working... from the process of building things, from molding reality? I damn sure do. But then again... I'm an American.
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The oil doesnt' really make that much difference in Norway. They tend to keep most of the money in a state reserve to not create too much inflation. Subsitute Norway for non-oil Sweden, a country with huge immigration. Sure it's a small and "rich" country, but the cultural things like good work/life balance applies anyway. Edit: as was pointed out to me in another comment: this is using a loose definition of "life" w…
> this is using a loose definition of "life" which includes 23 hour nights at freezing temperatures. Not for everyone. That is when we exert our five+ weeks of vacation and travel to a warmer place...
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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.
I'd probably work Saturdays if I got paid by the hour, but at the same time, if I did and it was a decent income I'd probably opt to work less - and I don't even have a family.
"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…
"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…
It would be more meaningful to boil it down to a different ratio. Even per-capita would represent the differences better.
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Sweden seems to be replicating it pretty well, without any oil.
Sweden is also grappling with serious economic problems (as is most of Scandinavia in fact). For example, in dollar terms Sweden's economy hasn't expanded since about 2007. They have a ~7.8% unemployment rate. They have about twice the household debt to income ratio of American households, and have a present debt crisis among those households: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/09/sweden-economy-idU... http://www…
The household debt is exclusively housing, simply because interest rates have been low for many years and mortgages in Sweden were traditionally not 30 years but rather 100 or infinite (interest rate only), and interest is deductible making it even cheaper to borrow. We also didn't see the bubble burst after the 2008 crisis, unlike many other countries, so many predict a bursting bubble now. That said, the mortgage market has tightened swiftly now, down payments have gone from 0% to 15-25, mortgages are repaid 1-2% per year etc, so the market is at least better prepared for a dip now than it would have been in 2008.
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I moved out the US just for a few years. Almost a decade later I still haven't returned. And when I seriously contemplate picking my return date I see events in the news like Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Sam Dubose and think why should I move back.
Wow you cherry-picked 3 examples (see confirmation bias) and thought stuff like that happens to every single person in America pulled over by a cop (in a nation of 300M+)?
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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…
In America you can choose your job based on how you want to live. You can pursue your life and goals based on what you want out of it. Is that not true in Switzerland? I think you've bought into little more than propaganda. Americans take off weekends. And how do you judge 330 million people when it comes to burn-out, given the vast differences among them all?
So the millions of poor people having to work two or three shitty jobs just to make ends meet chose to do so and want to live like that? Bullshit. Go watch some documentaries about the subject.
"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…
Not so much disagreeing as pointing out that condensing something as complex as living standards into a league table is a somewhat absurd reduction.
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This doesn't sound hugely informed. I spent the evening discussing this yesterday with Americans in a beer garden in Munich. Actually, more than the working conditions, the Americans didn't want to go back because of the guns.
Isn't Switzerland one of the few countries with a higher proportion of adults having guns than the US ?