Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

In sum, you provide a shaky, ad-hoc justification on why it's more difficult if the country is larger, and ignore counterexamples.

If you're goal is to get someone to "admit" that a software engineer can get paid more in San Francisco than Switzerland, I guess you've won your argument. You can still tell yourself America is the Best Country in the World™.

But as the article indicates, the net worth of the average Swiss is twice that of the average American. The Swiss have found a way to leverage a higher tax rate to less out of pocket cost for their citizens. So you get 20000$ more bucks a year as an American, and then you go ahead and spend it on health insurance or driving a car everywhere.

Could this be because theyre being subsidized by an exploited American workforce? They're certainly profiting off weaker data regulation in the USA.

Anyway, it seems trolly because it'd be like arguing "well the Egyptians have pyramids, and the non slave holding civilizations don't. Clearly they're doing SOMETHING right."

Lots of people are leaving America, as well. Most can't afford to. The ones that can afford international lifestyles aren't really burdened as much by the negative aspects of America - they can get good insurance through a company that can afford it, they can afford to Lyft everywhere to make up for the lack of public transit, they can flex during salary negotiations for longer PTO.

How many impoverished in Europe are "voting with their feet" to come to the first world country with the worst safety net out of all of them? Imagine the innovations that could come from America if it actually invested in its population.

The idea that Europe is not innovative is a bit of a myth anyway. This is a fun read: https://ec.europa.eu/growth/industry/innovation/facts-figure...

Btw, Sweden is measured as the "most innovative" country in the EU. So in a system of first world countries with socialized education and healthcare, and despite detractors on this forum of their allegedly "high cost of living" they're still standing out amongst their peers.

IMO the most valuable websites on the internet could have been created without a profit motive, like Wikipedia. If an American hadn't invented it, someone else would have, and hackers would have indexed it for a searching one way or the other.

There's little evidence that the American work culture being lambasted by social progressives actually contributes any benefits to the world.

I've lived for three years in the Bay Area and travelled to a few other US cities (LA, Seattle, Portland, Orlando, Chicago) and surprisingly, even the smaller Russian cities I've visited mostly blow the US out of the water in terms of public transit and are a lot better in other aspects too.

The city I stay in the most, where my wife is from, has a population of 110k, is absolutely not wealthy and is pretty far away from Moscow and St. Petersburg.

In terms of local transit, there are frequent and affordable minibuses (Marshrutki) with stops all over the place. They cost (in this city) 17 rubles, which at the moment is around a quarter US. My mother in law is on a teacher's salary which is quite low and has no issues with affordability. I think the longest I waited for one was ~5 minutes.

For regional transit, there are trains to and from the nearest airport and larger city, as well as the capital. From there you can take trains to Moscow and from there most of the rest of Russia. The trains are also fairly affordable, particularly if you go for the lowest class (which is admittedly something most Americans wouldn't be comfortable with).

There are of course also planes.