I think what people are missing here is what's left on the table, at the end of a day, for your normal, low to mid level employee, after having paid taxes, insurances and transport to and from work. Swiss pay on average around 300 USD per month for full health coverage and have an average salary of somewhere around 5800 USD, at the low end it starts around 3800 USD. Pension system is in the single digit percentages, as is the few other social insurances we have. Cars are expensive to run, around USD 10k a year. A yearly all-included general public transport subscription (public and private operators of bus, train, ships, mountain cable cars, street cars in all of Switzerland) costs around USD 3000 per year. If you live close to a city it's only around USD 700 a year. So all in all even an average worker can still feed a family of 3-4 people on a single job from 8 to 5 if he takes the public transport and lives somewhere a bit less expensive.