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The happiest country in Europe revealed
(www.independent.co.uk)
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this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023
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how bad is it there? I’d imagine lots of European countries are doing worse
It's actually quite okay. Inflation is just high (above average), the prices of everyday life have been skyrocketing for months. Buying real estate has become impossible for most people. Our far-right party has been at the top of the polls for almost exactly a year. Nevertheless, it has to be said that the common Austrian is doing quite well. Public transport is relatively good (at least in the cities) an annual ticket for the whole of Austria costs only €1095 (price for a single state starts at €365). Nature is beautiful, food is good, education is free, social system works. So, could be worse.
How much for rent a simple apartment?
Depends on the size and your patience. A single room apartment can be had for <€400 if you get lucky.
And if you have enough patience to get into the government housing program, you pay next to nothing. Buildings older than 1955 are also regulated and quite cheap.
You can also get cooperative housing flats (and even houses) with quite a low rent. We pay <€800 for about 80m².
But we did have some 10% increase over the last year.
And for all of these cheap options you need a lot of patience (between half a year and 5 years). If you need a flat right now, you can easily pay double of that on the free market.
(All these numbers are for the capital city Vienna. Prices in other places can be much lower. There are dieing villages in many rural areas, where houses are pretty affordable, because nobody wants them.)
And the income for one? I'd imagine the taxes would tend to flat out a lot of differences, but I know it's gonna depend on so many things that's it's best to omit it.
The median income before tax is €55 731 per year and after tax and mandatory health insurance €38 623 per year. That's per full-time worker, not per household.
Wikipedia tells me the per-person median income in the USA is $56 287.
Thanks for the numbers! Seems pretty comfy, especially compared to a less developed country with greater disparity.
How's your political climate these days? I know Germany is seeing AfD getting higher ratings for various reasons, but somehow never thought about its German-speaking neighbors.
We are sadly ahead of Germany by 10-15 years. Our right wing equivalent (FPÖ) has been around since the country was re-founded after WW2.
They had their ultra-radical time about 25-30 years ago. Since then they have been in government (I think) three times as a minor partner. Every time there was some big corruption/financial scandal that kicked them back out of government and reduced their election result massively. But time and time again, people keep forgetting and they rise again. Currently they lead again in the polls.
Luckily, due to their incompetence, they never managed to do much harm, and due to the fact that they actually want to get into government, they are not as crazy radical as the AFD.
So, it's not good, but it's not as bad as Germany, Hungary or Italy.
There's no talk about exiting the EU since Brexit, they don't have the power to get rid of asylum (though they diverted funds from asylum-related issues), and by now they actually argue for "qualified, legal migrants".
Other than that, the conservatives have been in government for ~20 years or so, with changing partners. That's not exactly good, since they do have had a few scandals where they pushed a fair bit of money to the super rich in the country.
The social democrats elected a marxist as a leader, and since then they managed to overtake the conservatives in the polls.
The neoliberals get ~9% in the polls and they effectively never managed to do anything with that.
The greens are jumping rather wildly in the polls, and even though they only get 8-15% they currently hold the President and are in government.
For people in cities yes.
I dont know of which standards we are comparing us with, but the current trend goes into a bad direction. Education is free and you get what you pay for.
And the thing about the social system is also a matter of time if the polls turn reality.
I disagree. Take the technical university of Graz for instance. The work they accomplish regarding Cyber Security is quite amazing. Remember Meltdown and Spectre? Scientists from Graz were in key positions. Æpic Leak and SQUIP too.
What about Ferenc Krausz? He studied at the technical university in Vienna, and the team did some work in Vienna and they got the Nobel Prize this year.
Sure we have some smart people. Also Zeilinger from last year.
But first, will we be able to fill our programs with austrian smart people or are we more and more dependent on foreign students (I am not against foreign students, but I have experiences were 98% of program participants are foreign students)
Second, single geniuses will hardly be kept in austria. What matters for a nation is a broad distribution of (high) knowledge. Elementary and high schools are given more and more limited resources.
University is the same trend. Uni budgets are hardly pushing the inflation driven cost increas.