A large part of the world population is poor, and they do not have the same level of health problems, nor are they similarly obese. Not purely diet related, but a huge part of it for sure.
It would be great to see some comparisons. I'm not claiming that "poor" is the singular indicator so it's obviously going to come down to which countries you're referring to. I'm also not claiming that diet isn't a part of it, not even close.
I don't understand this data at all. All of the rich Western European countries has over 200h required work per month, but I don't know of anyone in my country (high or low income) working more than roughly 40h per week.
On “average” wages: The chart uses a typical/median (net) hourly wage, not the mean. Means are pulled up by high earners, and many HN readers sit above the median. so your personal “hours to basics” will look lower than the chart. Using the mean would systematically understate hours for the typical worker, especially in unequal countries. Also note: the index assumes a single renter; couples/roommates or employer subsidies will reduce hours per person.
The wage structure is very flat in my country, the average wage is only around 15% higher than the median. The median wage is very livable on. For essential or basic needs I would estimate you would only need ~70% of the median wage.
I appreciate that I could be biased, and my guesses could be off, but we're talking about almost a factor two here. If the numbers would be correct the average person does not even have enough money for the minimum essentials every month, which is extremely far from what I see and hear.
You’re right to sanity-check. Our number is hours of pay needed for a single renter on a new lease, not hours actually worked.
Using your own anchors: if essentials ≈ 70% of median net pay and an effective month is ~140 paid hours (vacation/holidays), then
hours = 0.7 × 140 ≈ 98h — nowhere near 200h.
So why would our Nordic rows show >200h? Likely method artifacts:
Rent input: we used current market 1-BR rents (upper bound). Many people have in-place/regulated rents, own, or share, which slashes hours per person.
Hour divisor: some wage series forced monthly ÷ 160–168h instead of ~140 effective hours → inflates the ratio ~10–20%.
Geography mix: capital-city prices vs national wages can overstate costs.
You have 190 hours for Switzerland. The average full time job here is 42 hours a week at most. 4x42 = 168. Not a single person living here is working 190 hours to cover their basic needs. Sorry but your numbers are complete bullshit. No idea why this is on the front page.
Author here. you’re right to flag Switzerland. Our metric is hours of pay for a single new-lease renter, not hours actually worked. But 190 h for Switzerland still looks too high given official anchors.
Quick back-of-envelope with public data:
Typical pay: Median gross ≈ CHF 6,788/mo (FSO). OECD shows the net take-home for an average single worker is ~82% of gross; using actual hours worked ~1,529/yr ⇒ ~CHF 44 net/hour.
Starter basket (monthly): national rent avg ≈ CHF 1,451 (all dwellings; new leases in Zurich can be ~1,7–2,1k), utilities ~CHF 220, basic groceries ~CHF 500–700, Zurich monthly pass CHF 89. That totals roughly CHF 2.3–2.9k.
Hours of pay needed = basket ÷ net hourly ≈ 50–70 h, not ~190 h. (E.g., CHF 2,600 ÷ CHF 44 ≈ 59 h.)
Using a flat 2,080 h/year to derive hourly pay (instead of actual ~1,529) depresses hourly pay and pushes hours up, which likely inflated our Switzerland row.
Mixing capital-city pricing with national wages can also bias upward.
We’ll correct the Switzerland entry and add a footnote showing the actual-hours denominator we used. Appreciate the nudge.
There is no electronic lock as far as I know, as many people seem to assume. It's a mechanical notch that you have to physically pull the switch past to operate it. The lock failures described in the air worthiness directive was about this mechanical stop or notch not being installed.
That’s an interesting perspective, and it makes sense it works. Thankfulness is known to provide a lot of psychological benefits, such as greater appreciation of the thing you are thankful for.
Where it goes wrong though is if we take it too far and start connecting this to some non-existent deity, which in turn makes us construct an incorrect model of the world (such as if we’re not thankful for the food, then next year there will be a drought as a punishment).
I suppose codifying beneficial practices into religion or spiritual beliefs is just part of being human.
Same experience, putting everything related to tech (printers, programming, Wifi, email) into the "IT department", which is seen as a support service to the core business of banking, instead of seeing automation as business critical in reducing overhead and managing risk.
This is why fintech (although a very overused word by now) is such a breath of fresh air in the banking industry, and desperately needed.
This is what I think a lot people don't understand when it comes to unruly IT systems in large organizations. Deutsche Bank does not have an IT or software engineering problem, they have a culture and corporate politics problem. Even if you have the world's best engineered systems, as soon as you have 30 different systems you'll have a giant mess, and the reason you have 30 different systems is because you have groups of people with different incentives not interested in using someone else's system.
That's a mind-boggling theory actually, that some general survival skills are encoded in the parent-child relationship. Basically you have to become a parent to level-up your survival skills.
I wouldn't put it past evolution to encode useful information wherever possible, but it would be hard to prove that theory.
I think it's more an indication of higher expectations in child-rearing. If you're struggling daily for survival and 7/10 of your children will die before age 6 I don't think can afford to spend hours every day experimenting which method will get your child to fall asleep without crying.
Except children in traditional societies demonstrably cry less and are happier (both parents and children). Anybody who has spent time living in traditional societies vs living in the West see the differences - chiefly, the sheer anxiety that western children are introduced to from the first day they step foot in the world.
Doesn't surprise me that people in a society that values individual liberty develop more anxiety as they are expected to take responsibility for their own decisions,
as opposed to a society where traditional authority commands you exactly what to do and you'll obey or else.
Yes, if unions exist at the company (which they did at Klarna), a company is required by law to negotiate with ALL employee organisations present at the company. This is one of the reasons large companies adopt kollektivavtal, it allows them to only have to negotiate with one union for employment changes.
> If the employer is not bound by any collective agreement at all, the employer is obliged to negotiate in accordance with § 11 with all relevant employee organizations in matters relating to dismissal due to a lack of work [...]
In Sweden the Unions actually makes it easier for both the workers and the company. This is a big surprise for most foreign leaders coming in unprepared for swedish culture :-)
On average over a longer period variable rates will always be lower, since the risk premium due to future rate uncertainty will be lower. If that period is a 100 years it won't help lenders much though.
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