What it's like to work in Svalbard, a visa-free zone by the North Pole

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What it's like to work in Svalbard, a group of Arctic islands where anyone can live visa-free — as long as you don't run out of money and abide by its unique set of rules

toward the country's national insurance program . As a result, there are no retirement homes, public transport, homeless shelters, unemployment benefits, or really any social safety net you can think of.

"At that point, I didn't have a whole lot of money and it was a big scramble every month to scrounge up stuff," he said."I was begging, borrowing — not stealing, but pretty close." "It's a very fair system. Your taxes are incredibly low, but the trade off is you get no social support," he continued."If you're not paying for that system, why should you benefit from it?"

"If the coffee machine breaks, no one here can fix it and it would take weeks for us to get another one," he said, adding that"there's one guy in town who knows how to fix an industrial dishwasher."

 

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