[adventured]

> Switzerland and Luxembourg are way WAY richer per capita than the US, and have much robust employee rights.

When you say per capita, are you referring to median or mean figures?

Hong Kong is richer per capita than Switzerland at the median and does not have nearly as robust of employee rights.

The US is richer at the median than Germany and does not have nearly the worker protections. The US also has vastly more low skill labor immigration (for 40+ years now), which persistently debases its median figures. Why are German workers so relatively poor, if the claims about worker rights is accurate? Surely the dynamo of Europe, the German economy, combined with such potent worker protections, should lead to enormous median wealth.

Luxembourg has 613,000 people. That's a pretty ridiculous comparison. You're comparing a giant country of 330 million to a modest size city like San Francisco.

[inter_netuser]

germany is only 10% or so behind the US in terms of PPP. They also have more vacation, fewer layoffs, cheaper housing, generally lower cost of living (by more than 10%), and many other things.

Perhaps they made a different trade off, more leisure, less work?

I've only brought up the two most obvious examples (there many others) that negate entirely that silly notion that somehow human rights are incompatible with technological advancement, which borders on hate speech.

I mean, should we really go back to slavery to become space-faring species? Not the kind of future I want to live in.