Reuters best and worst places to live. Can you guess which two cities got the top spots?

[Alphachris]

You have to pay approx. 17% of your income for social insurance. This amount is not to be considered as a tax because you earn some rights depending on your income. This social insurance is mandatory and you can't choose your insurance company. Your employer have to pay an additional 21% into the social system.

With this health insurance (approx. 4%) you get an "e-card" that gives you access to the public health system. You only have to pay a minimum patient's contribution for medication, for residential treatment in hospitals (a few Euro/day) as long as your doctor can attest medical reasons. There is no connection between how much insurance you pay and how much costs are covered. As long as you have insurance all necessary costs are covered.

Unemployment insurance (3%) gives you access to 6 months of unemployment benefit (only 5 months if you quit). The amount depends of your income. So the more insurance you pay, the more you get out.

Pension insurance amounts to 10 %. Thats the main reason why the labour costs in europe are higher than in the rest of the world. Our pension system is deeply rooted in the workforce. But this mandatory public pension ensures that everyone who worked throughout his life has access to an pension. So in Austria and many european countries we do not have to earn our pensions on the stock exchange. We are somehow forced to pay 10 % of our income in a public pension insurance company.

I don't know the UK/US system well but I think our system is very different from yours. Since we have a strong social system even poor people have a certain living standard and the crime rate is not very high. It is often very interesting to talk to exchange students or tourists about how they think about the situation in Austria.

A friend of mine works with Red Bull near Salzburg. They often have conferences there lasting late into the night. He told me that once a conference lasted almost until midnight and when they went to the carpark a guy from Brazil was really shocked because they dared to walk into the dark at night without the fear of being robbed/kidnapped. That is somehow funny... but that should also be a warning that we Austrians should be careful when going abroad since we should not think that every country is as safe as ours.