Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)
I&#x27;ve experienced a lot of these things since leaving the bay area and moving to Australia. The thing that surprised me most was similar to point #3 - in Australia the less fortunate are taken care of. One big mental drain I had in America was when my friends were sick but could do nothing about it. I had a roommate in Seattle who had severe dental problems and chronic tooth pain, but could do nothing about it because he simply couldn&#x27;t afford it. I had another friend who had an oblique fracture in their arm, but <i>set it themselves and never went to the doctor</i>. All because healthcare was not only expensive, but <i>randomly expensive</i>. You never knew if you&#x27;d be leaving the hospital with a $100 medical bill or a $10,000 medical bill. I had great healthcare for all of my working career, but my friends often didn&#x27;t, and it ate at me mentally. In Australia that&#x27;s never been a point of stress. If you have a cold, you go to the doctor, and you always knew it&#x27;d be less than $200ish. There were no orders of magnitude more expensive surprises.<p>The rest of the points resonated highly with me as well, as aside from the maternity leave I&#x27;ve experienced them all. I have to move back to the Bay soon and I&#x27;m not looking forward to it. Every time I visit there&#x27;s more homeless who&#x27;ve been pushed to the streets because the system in place simply doesn&#x27;t work - Nordic countries, Switzerland, and Australia are simply better in so many aspects. There&#x27;s a reason why the USA has fallen to #13 in HDI[1] and continues to fall.<p>The people of the USA have too much pride to change - we&#x27;ve been on top for so long that we often think we can&#x27;t learn from other countries, and that we have everything figured out. The intro speech Jeff Daniels did in Newsroom [2] resonates here. It&#x27;s time we looked at what policies actually work for the best of the populous.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...</a>
[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=RyzDRc34l2g" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=RyzDRc34l2g</a>