(I assume the OP isn't fluent in German/French/Italian and isn't familar with Swiss tax practices).
Hi, thanks for the update, I did not know about this English version of the tax calculator.
Regards, David
However, we're going 'off subject' here. I've lived in Scotland for the past 14 years followed by 18 months in the U.S. (DC). We've found the prices here to be comparable - overall - with the UK. For instance, we are paying the same or less for top-of-the-line health insurance as we were for National Health contributions. Health insurance in the States was so expensive and as soon as you actually get ill even more so. I've had two family members go from rich to poor due to longterm illnesses.
Generally, we found the US to be about 1/2 the cost of the UK (except in some instances).
We are paying slightly less in rent than the US and live in a gorgeous village just outside of Vevey and have a view of the lake and the Alps. The apartment is about the same size but doesn't have its own washer-dryer (this drives me crazy) and also doesn't have a rooftop pool. Oh - and we were living in the most expensive area of Arlington, Virginia (Clarendon) for the sake of comparison. I think that what we have lost on one hand we have gained in the other.
The quality of life is much better here than the states and the great thing is that when dealing with any kind of beurocratic institution you will speak to someone with an IQ of more than 60. Having said that i haven't had to get a swiss drivers licence yet and i think that's supposed to be a nightmare. It can't possibly be worse than the DMV though, which was so bad it was comical (or suicidal depending on your state of mind).
It is difficult to compare the US and Switzerland realistically because they are so different. If you like eating out a lot and cheap clothes etc then america is obviously better, but whilst we don't eat out anywhere near as much as we did in the US the quality of food here is so good and there is no obsession with 'fine dining'. The fresh air is lovely too.
I would have said the opposite is the case and that one of the biggest problems facing Swiss universities is that they cannot pick and choose their students (except in Medicine, and even that is a relatively recent achievement).
In Switzerland, anybody who has the "Matura" can go to university and enroll in any subject of their choice.
Sure, you can eat for very little money in the US.
But in my experience, as soon as you start looking for Euro-style food in Euro-style quality you end up paying Swiss-style prices.
The same can be said of clothes, and many other products besides.
We went to Macy's New York and I bought four T-shirts, four pairs of shorts and a pair of slacks for US$170. A few months before, a single pair of shorts and two T-shirts in Coop had set me back about the same amount.
(It was also nice to be able to easily buy clothes in my size, but that's another discussion.)
There are plenty of excellent reasons to live in Switzerland, but good value for money dining out and consumer goods aren't two of them.
American style meat? Not in Switzerland but the chicken has flavor. I had a small amount of ham that brought back childhood memories recently. I have not opened a package of meat that smelled bad yet. Those plastic packed tenderloins at Cost0 always smelled terrible. The meat is fresh often local and grass fed. Once again tastes the way it did when we killed it fresh on a New England farm 40 years ago.
Quality of life here is a major positive. Children are safe on the tram going to school as young as 8 or 9. You can get by without a car. Most of what you need in the city is within a ten minute walk. You walk enough that you will not need a health club membership.
I think you need 60-70 K to get by. Pays can be high in Switzerland.
Taxes: We have looked and looked at this.
We left Metro Chicago (Obamaland) and Democrat corruption. We were paying 13000 taxes on our home 10.5% on everything we spent plus state and federal tax. Taxes in Europe were not looking bad at all when compared to Obamaland.
McCain is the one who has actually been accused of corruption:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_Five
BTW Why do you think there is so little crime in Switzerland (the reason "Children are safe on the tram going to school as young as 8 or 9")? And so much in the US? Maybe it has got something to do with the way the poor people are treated in the two countries?
How poor people are treated:
I only know what was given to me in the states. I wanted a University education. I hoed tobacco for 60 hours a week when I was 13. When I was 16 and could drive I worked 40 hours a week during the school year. I did not work during the regular school year at the University of Connecticut. I never asked for or received financial aid. I paid my way through without loans using only my savings until my last Semester when my father loaned me $500. He died shortly thereafter and I repaid my mother. That last term after my fathers death I took a job on campus as a waiter in a dorm. It was my only campus job. I worked for food. This is one poor person in America's story.
It is a story that still works. While I was working on an advanced degree in education I worked in a trade school in Wilmington Delaware. They were working on a range of certifications and those that got MS and Net plus certified had a chance to earn 25k their senior year with a job in a local bank. One of my students earning that 25k told me he did it for his mom. It was so he could get a car and she would no longer have to bring groceries home on the bus. He got the car.
My story is those who want to work at having a life will. What the states has lost is the idea of local responsibility. In the town I grew up in I knew of two mentally disadvantaged men. Neither one would really hope would be able to hold a job. One worked on my fathers farm. He always had two men on either side of him, caring for him. He lost his mind in WWII in the camps along with his family. The men who cared for him knew him from before the war and when they met him after the war promised to care for him. My father always had a job for them.
The second man I know less about. He wandered town by day and had a room on another farm in town at night. What I do know is that business people in town made sure he got lunch every day at the diner and the barber made sure his hair was cut and he was kept clean shaven. His bike was fixed by the bike shop and replaced when lost or stolen. We were brought up to take care of our own as a community. I new many small farms that had a job for the less fortunate. It was just done if you could.
I do not know what happened to this America. I think it died when Earl Butts Johnson's Secretary of Agriculture declared war on the family farm(Yes he really only declared it dead).
I totally agree with what you write (I hate corruption and over-urbanisation) but I feel you are wrong in your analysis of the causes! It is that "profit at all cost" (capitalist mentality) that is the cause of most of America's problems (typically defended by G. Bush and his friend McCain). If you analyse political life in Switzerland it is much more left-wing than political life in the US yet generally, you admit it yourself, the quality of life is much better. (You do realise that the maire of Zurich is a socialist? )
That is exactly what I dislike in the USA:
It is the "Survival of the Fittest" and anyone who can't keep up (intellectually or physically) is excluded and either becomes a tramp or has to turn to the charity of others (like in your example).
I feel that the "European System" of providing adequate social services that enable people who have been "left behind" to live decently, without having to face the humiliation of begging for charity makes for a much fairer and much less violent society. That is exactly what Obama is advocating and wants to improve in the US.
BTW I have removed my groan because you can't groan back at me but that doesn't mean I agree with what you wrote!
Elmar Ledergerber is a social democrat as far as I am aware. That's not the same thing.
http://www.sp-ps.ch/index.php?id=1&L=1
Seems like it is the same thing
Hardly just European, unless Canada recently shifted continents.
And, don't get me started on the British settlers fighting the armies of a German King ...
TBH I didn't know that Canada had a good social system. Somehow I figured it would be quite similar to the US.
But that only confirms what I was saying: In "Bowling for Columbine" Michael Moore goes over to Canada and is surprised by how much less violent Canadian society is compared to US society. IMO There is a direct correlation between a bad social system and the violence of a society.
Sorry I keep on going off-topic, I don't mean to honest
One problem in the US in my opinion is that there are too many parallel worlds. The rich and poor live in different neighbourhoods, go to differnet schools and really don't have a clue about what the other is doing. This is why the concept of poverty never really gets through to the rich, and they believe they are a bunch of lazy layabouts who have nobody but themselves to blame for their plight. Similarly, the poor may think of the rich in terms of stereotype profiteers making them fair game for criminality. Nobody sees the faces and the people behind it. Attempts to fix this by well-meant legislation and pumping money into pet projects do not solve the problem but only add to the bitterness and cause people to build the barriers even higher.
In places such as Switzerland, this barrier has never really been built. One aspect is public transport, where you can't segregate yourself to the extent you can in a car. Another is that neighbourhoods are more mixed, so there are richer and poorer patches in Zürich, but not really comparable to the USA. My neighbours are all sorts ranging from students, blue-collar workers, tram drivers to succesful self-employed IT guys and a pensioner who used to be the CEO of a mid-sized company. None of them fit into any of the stereotypes of that particular calss of people, but if you didn't know tem you wouldn't know that.
The main items of expenditure in one’s budget are insurance, such as health insurance, invalidity insurance, unemployment insurance and private insurance policies (23% of a typical household budget in 2004), accommodation and energy (17%), tax (13%) and food and clothing (11%). Other recurring monthly expenditure includes transport and fuel (12%), restaurant meals (6%), healthcare (5%) and communications (2%). In 2005, disposable income – the amount remaining after compulsory deductions (social security contributions, taxes, basic health insurance, etc.) – amounted to 72.6% of gross household income, averaging CHF 8 967.
Source: European Union
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