It's interesting when someone from Switzerland claims the moral high ground about a country's past wrongs. Switzerland has a colorful history of Nazi collaboration and laundering of stolen treasure by the 3rd Reich.
Is that an unfair characterization of you as a modern Swiss person? Yes.
Just like comparing 1960s America to the present day. The U.S. may not live up to the ideals that are plastered over it's monuments, but it's certainly not contributing to your demise (whatever that means).
> Just leave. Go to ...
Spoken like a true Swiss. No, we all don't have the spare funds or network of employers to travel to a different country at will. Not to mention, SV is the epicenter of venture capital in software, not Zurich. Who are the VCs who would fund a startup's relocation to Zurich?
> contributing to a government
You can be forgiven for this, but U.S. citizens are perpetually bound to pay taxes even when residing abroad. The first $90k is forgiven, but the next must be taxed. Oh, and the state (e.g. California) doesn't play by these rules; it takes the full amount.
The Swiss provided a service to the Jews in Germany and helped hide their money from the nazis. Unfortunately most of their customers were killed... If I lived in a country with a corrupt or evil government I would try to move my money to Switzerland too, but the u.s. Is making it increasingly difficult to conduct finance anonymously.
Based on your other comments... I'm not sure if you're aware of the rest of the world. ETH is on par with MIT and EPFL is high up there as well. There is a good start up community here in Zurich, but it's true that VC isn't as advanced here - it's still mostly angel investors. Google has a big office here and it seems to be adding to the enovironment.
But I'm not sure if Silicon Valley is a good goal. I've live and worked there for startups and two big mainstream companies and have no desire to go back that desperate life.
Oh lordy, that is the understatement of year!
"Documents recently uncovered in former East German archives suggest that in 1944, SS Chief and German Interior Minister Heinrich Himmler sent a special train loaded with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of gold, jewelry and art objects to Switzerland for deposit in the vaults of Swiss banks."[1]
[1]http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/nazis/readings...
Why, they even cunningly tricked the Nazis into taking the Jews' money and delivering it to the Swiss for them!
That sounds like a reflection of you and not the bay area.
California is crazy in how they handle overseas expats.
Germany and London pay much less though but experienced developers can get decent wages.
Edit: also, when I lived in the u.s. and ma"de significantly more than 100K I still felt like I was scraping by. Taxes in the u.s., especially California, are high, expenses are high, and plus I had no time to spend my money anyway. If take a couple weeks off to travel every now and then but would have to at least answer emails while traveling. No more of that.
1) American workers don't work 60+ hours to earn 50% less than what people in Switzerland do.
2) The median income in the US is barely below that of Switzerland.
3) The average American worker does not work more than 45 hours per week for the median income.
4) If you compare people of a similar qualification + education + demographic, Americans earn more than people in Switzerland per hour worked, and have more disposable income thanks to a lower cost of living and lower taxes. The US has a very real poverty problem that is especially bad in the black community, and it substantially alters the stats on incomes / standard of living. The asian median household income for example is 100% higher than the median black household income.
I don't want this to get sidetracked to be a conversation about Switzerland though. In general life is better in Europe than the u.s. - less desperate. At least you have obamacare now.
Spain has 30% real unemployment. France's economy hasn't grown in ten years in inflation adjusted terms, and is suffering hyper stagnation; it has averaged sub 1% nominal GDP growth for that time. Italy is on its third recession in seven years. Portugal is so relatively poor their middle class would barely qualify as poor in the US. Greece is a total economic disaster still.
The Netherlands, Ireland, and Denmark are the three most indebted countries on earth per capita compared to income. Lavish spending today to fake prosperity, to be paid for tomorrow with lowered standards of living. The US has done plenty of that too, but it can more easily manage its debts than European nations can.
The total GDP of Europe is still below 2007 levels, and looks set to remain below that level for another ten years inflation adjusted. Pegging the European economy in effectively a 20 year depression.
Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Russia, Romania, Ukraine, Macedonia, Kosovo, Bulgaria, Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Czech, Slovakia - you're telling me life is more desperate in the US, than in these countries? That's blatantly false.
France just saw its unemployment rate hit new highs. The US unemployment rate is now almost half that of France.
In fact, the US unemployment rate is chasing back down toward that of Germany, and the US economy is growing faster than Germany's. And that's with a labor force participation rate higher than nearly all of Europe; ~7 points higher than France, ~3 points higher than Germany, ~10 points higher than Belgium etc.
With available labor being substantially reduced, wages are likely to begin climbing again in the US soon - you aren't going to see that in most of the countries of Europe, because their economies are not growing.
The private plans for the self-employed/underemployed do suck though. Eventually the country needs to dump the foolishness of employer-based private insurance into some more mature, rational, and responsible approach to universal healthcare, but for now it's sadly the best we could manage.
I'm not sure how other parts of Europe compare.
Many, many places that "starting salary" is more like $50-60k.
BTW, it's a mindset that is often mocked by Europeans when it comes to subjects like health care, vacation, taxes, guns, etc. But the reasons for it seem obvious now, don't they?
The idea that the U.K., German, or Swiss governments are less authoritarian than the U.S. is laughable to U.S. citizens. You can't see it because you trust those governments; but most Americans got over that a long time ago.
Considering that the UK will throw people in jail for expressing their right to freedom of speech is a slight counter to your argument.
The US then and now was totalitarian and authoritarian. Some of you, especially here on hn, may not fall into those mind-sets but it doesn't matter - you've lost - you're barely scraping by, working 60 to 80 hours a week and you have no time to change your environment. Meanwhile the political class is able to work full-time on perpetuating their power while taking away yours. You have no power, no rights, because they have been chiseled away the last 30 years by the authoritarians.
I've said this before and I'm always downvoted but I don't care. Just leave. Go to Berlin, or London (not much better though), Switzerland, or anywhere else. Even if you go to someplace like the UK that isn't much better than the u.s. you will at least no longer be contributing to a government spending 10X to 100X of any other country on arguably evil pursuits. Take your wealth-creation skills to somewhere else where you won't be contributing to your our demise.
I know that many of you will discount this one event as a one-off - MLK was certainly special. But it's only a one-off because it was the start of this sort of campaign against someone that can bring change.