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0 pointsacabal15y ago0 comments

From what I understand, wages and jobs are about even, given that Germans, Kiwis, English, and Australian pay much more tax than we do. Kiwis and Aussies do get more time off, but only a few weeks more than us; many take a year off to travel anyway. Come to England or Germany and talk to the locals who feel that outsourcing and foreigners are taking their jobs away; I met a Swedish person just yesterday who was talking about how it would take at least 2 months for him to secure a new job as a seasoned mechanical engineer, because since it's so hard to fire people there, it's super hard to get hired. We have it amazingly good here in America, for a lot of things.

Travel is surprisingly cheap, provided you don't spend your time in 5-star hotels. This month in Belgium will cost me about 850 euros including food and rent, which isn't too far off from living with a roommate in Los Angeles, my previous home. Go to Vietnam and you'll live like a king on $500/month. Oftentimes the most expensive part of the trip is the plane ticket. Of course still not everyone can afford to do this; but if you can, then you'll find that doing so will be a landmark in your life, even if it seemed very scary at first.

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loewenskind15y ago

>given that Germans, Kiwis, English, and Australian pay much more tax than we do

They pay more taxes but get more for their taxes (free health care, education, more unemployment protection, etc.).

>who was talking about how it would take at least 2 months for him to secure a new job as a seasoned mechanical engineer, because since it's so hard to fire people there, it's super hard to get hired.

But being unemployed in Sweden for two months is a completely different world to being unemployed in the US. Further, if he's working then he'll have a 2 month notice period anyway, so he probably wont have any time off at all.

One thing is not fundamentally better than the other. They are just trade offs. Personally I find the Swedish one a hell of a lot less stressful in bad times.

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