According to The Economist, in 2007, Zurich is the world’s sixth most expensive city to live in, and New York is the most expensive American city, coming in at 28th worldwide. San Francisco and Chicago are even further down the charts than New York, and the rest of the States are even cheaper. You can imagine, then, the sticker shock that most American expats experience when moving to Zurich. Only those of us who came from New York or London were able to look at real estate listings without gasping, and all of us were surprised at the “reverse Costco effect” when shopping – it seems like in Switzerland, you get half the quantity for twice the price.
The difference has been magnified even further in recent years because of the weak dollar. As much as I disapprove of Dubya and his foreign policy (and pretty much everything else he’s done), his ineptitude in managing the American economy has increased the relative value of my salary here, which is paid in Swiss Francs.
Mercer Consulting does an annual survey on which cities are the best to live in, and for at least the past six years, Zurich has been #1 on the list. You can check back further, if you want, but that seems to be a pretty unequivocal vote by Mercer for Zurich. The survey is based on a bunch of criteria: sanitation, disease, health care, pollution, potable water, and “the presence of harmful animal or insects,” are heavily stressed, but they also consider factors like banking, crime, political stability, education, transportation, housing, and natural disasters.
So basically, the survey is telling us that Zurich is really clean, you can drink the water and breathe the air, and you won’t be mauled by a bear or swarmed by poisonous centipedes. (Although the breathing thing is debatable, if you’ve ever been in a Swiss bar, where the smoky air probably causes lung cancer by the fourth breath).
Oh yeah, also, you won’t get carjacked during a tornado while driving your kids between your lovely home and their modern school. This all makes Zurich the best place to live on earth. Although I agree that Zurich’s a great place to live, I still think that the fact that I can’t get a really good bagel and then take the tram home at 1 a.m. should count against it, somehow.
While we’re talking about surveys, Mercer did a survey to see how much vacation time the average worker gets per year in different countries. The average American employee who has been with a company for ten years gets 25 days per year (including fifteen vacation days and ten paid holidays) – but we all know that the average American employee has not been with his or her current company for ten years, and many American workers (my dad, for example) don’t actually take all of their vacation, anyway.
In Finland, on the other hand, employers are legally required to give all employees at least 30 vacation days per year, plus about fourteen paid holidays. That’s two months off every year! When I thought about it, though, they probably need it up there. The winters are long and dark, and if you won’t see the sun for a few months, you’re going to want to go somewhere else for a while.
But still, two months. Wow, that’s some potential quality of life. I wonder if they often get swarmed by poisonous centipedes up there.
The difference has been magnified even further in recent years because of the weak dollar. As much as I disapprove of Dubya and his foreign policy (and pretty much everything else he’s done), his ineptitude in managing the American economy has increased the relative value of my salary here, which is paid in Swiss Francs.
Mercer Consulting does an annual survey on which cities are the best to live in, and for at least the past six years, Zurich has been #1 on the list. You can check back further, if you want, but that seems to be a pretty unequivocal vote by Mercer for Zurich. The survey is based on a bunch of criteria: sanitation, disease, health care, pollution, potable water, and “the presence of harmful animal or insects,” are heavily stressed, but they also consider factors like banking, crime, political stability, education, transportation, housing, and natural disasters.
So basically, the survey is telling us that Zurich is really clean, you can drink the water and breathe the air, and you won’t be mauled by a bear or swarmed by poisonous centipedes. (Although the breathing thing is debatable, if you’ve ever been in a Swiss bar, where the smoky air probably causes lung cancer by the fourth breath).
Oh yeah, also, you won’t get carjacked during a tornado while driving your kids between your lovely home and their modern school. This all makes Zurich the best place to live on earth. Although I agree that Zurich’s a great place to live, I still think that the fact that I can’t get a really good bagel and then take the tram home at 1 a.m. should count against it, somehow.
While we’re talking about surveys, Mercer did a survey to see how much vacation time the average worker gets per year in different countries. The average American employee who has been with a company for ten years gets 25 days per year (including fifteen vacation days and ten paid holidays) – but we all know that the average American employee has not been with his or her current company for ten years, and many American workers (my dad, for example) don’t actually take all of their vacation, anyway.
In Finland, on the other hand, employers are legally required to give all employees at least 30 vacation days per year, plus about fourteen paid holidays. That’s two months off every year! When I thought about it, though, they probably need it up there. The winters are long and dark, and if you won’t see the sun for a few months, you’re going to want to go somewhere else for a while.
But still, two months. Wow, that’s some potential quality of life. I wonder if they often get swarmed by poisonous centipedes up there.
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