Vox ran an interesting piece yesterday on how much nicer it is to work in Switzerland than the US:

And then it hit me: Either I had become a completely privileged jerk or my own country was not as amazing as I had once thought it to be. This wasn’t an unusually bad offer: It was just American Reality.

What struck me most about the article was how none of the author’s points seemed that extreme – instead they sounded like common-sense ways to take care of your employees.

Unfortunately, that sort of attitude is not the current reality in the US.

Before anyone thinks that the kind of systems the article describes aren’t affordable here, keep in mind that Switzerland beats the US in per-capita GDP corrected for Purchasing Power Parity – basically a way of leveling the cost-of-living playing field. Switzerland also has a substantially lower public debt to GDP ratio.