If more people knew they could live a better life outside of the USA and the immigration policies were more open outside of America, the USA would experience mass emigration.<p>The corporate-controlled media avoids comparing or discussing US employment laws to other developed countries specifically for this reason. The puritan work ethic is partially to blame as well.<p>People in Europe know how to live their lives in balance between play and work. Americans were never conditioned to live this way in public schools or by their parents.<p>In America, all that matters is profit and the almighty dollar, and be damned with making the country a better place to live and work.
All those averages say very little about the situation. The country has a very stable middle class, salted with high-skilled and/or high net-worth German immigrants, while the US has super rich people, very poor people and everything in between. So the average does say very little about a college educated white-collar worker.<p>Switzerland is also a tiny country that would be a tiny state in the US but is still segmented in kantons that each have their own tax system and negotiate individual tax deals with super rich immigrants.<p>I am not an expert on the Swiss tax system, but based upon my anecdotal knowledge about these individual tax-deals I doubt that these numbers are universal. They each apply only to a small number of people, remember Switzerland is tiny and you compare a subset of it with all of the US.<p>To make this comment a bit less negative: Everything else aside from the numbers and about the cultural differences in working environments is quite interesting. I enjoy to read outside views about your own culture or even other cultures.
Let's not limit this to Switzerland or even Europe. Many of these same work laws, health care benefits, and actual working public transport, exist in Australia. And I would assume many other countries that decided that Socialism, and some regulation of business, does not lead to a some kind of Communist revolt.<p>Health Insurance companies, Auto companies, and other big business industries managed to squeeze concessions out of the U.S. that would cause huge protests if they tried to pass them in many other countries around the world. And Americans are so inward looking that they don't even notice the differences.
American work culture is lousy, but I'm not sure we can all copy Switzerland. There are only so many favorite countries for criminals to hide their money. Switzerland is rich.