[saiya-jin]

It might surprise you (or not), but Swiss have it. Yearly wealth tax, differently calculated in every canton, based on global assets. Doesn't hurt regular Joe, doesn't bleed the ultra rich enough to leave the safe and luxury lifestyle, but balances the scales a bit.

Possibly largely unrelated solely to this, Switzerland is amazing on another thing - very strong middle class that is not dwindling, unlike most of the western world.

Yeah, expats often complain to no end that services and food are expensive compared to where they came from, but thanks to that tons of folks are not desperate, we don't have slums of poor serving the rest, and you know that even person filling the shelves in supermarket is getting decent wage.

Low criminality, high education, generally very smart general population (which allows to have frequent public votes on important things without shooting one's foot like some other places), tons of personal freedom that average US person can only envy, EU is even worse. It all ties together, and middle class is one of the pillars of this.

[Pokepokalypse]

what's funny is most land-locked countries in the world are desperately poor. With Switzerland, the opposite is true.

[SV_BubbleTime]

Do you think any of that would have scaling issues if the country wasn’t 1/2 the population of New Jersey over twice the area?

[seanmcdirmid]

> tons of personal freedom that average US person can only envy, EU is even worse

Are we talking about the same Switzerland I lived in for two years? Not being able to do laundry on Sunday was actually a big hit to my personal liberty. There are also a lot of little rules that sneak up on you, all perfectly fine if you are willing to conform to basically being Swiss, but if you aren’t it can get uncomfortable.

[saiya-jin]

That is untrue for any of the 5 accommodations I lived in since coming here 11 years ago. Sure you can cherry-pick something that happened to you arbitrarily, project it to whole country and have a stereotype (untrue in this case).

But what we do have is general respect for everybody else living here (unlike f*k the rest like in many other places) - which means we for example don't run wash machine during late evening/night in our apartment, within building having some 50+ apartments.

There is also shared wash machine area in the basement, with dedicated time slots for each family if they want, and there are plenty of slots for Sunday, just like any other day. So much for the restriction you faced.

Some might find some restrictions annoying and infringing on their basic human rights, but the general Swiss logic is more about 'your rights end where other's rights begin'. As a parent of a newborn I definitely like this approach.

[seanmcdirmid]

There is no huge secret about the no laundry on sunday rule, I didn't just make this up:

* https://cowbellsandchocolate.com/sundays-and-quiet-rules/

* https://www.reddit.com/r/askswitzerland/comments/asqw9o/law_...

* https://www.englishforum.ch/other-general/22277-really-forbi...

* https://www.newlyswissed.com/sydney-international-food-festi...

Now, almost every rule/law in Switzerland is local, so it is definitely possible that you lived in a canton or commune without such rules on the book. I most definitely lived in places where that was the rule.

[memonkey]

> Not being able to do laundry on Sunday was actually a big hit to my personal liberty

this is actually hilarious. thank you for sharing.

[MandieD]

Oh, that’s why my sister-in-law, otherwise a thrifty German who moved to Switzerland in part to earn and save more money, pays a cleaning lady to come twice a week and named laundry as one of her duties.

[hattmall]

What's personal freedom if you can't afford to do anything other than have a basic existence. You talk about how expats complain but the average American would feel entirely subjugated if they had to live like the swiss.