On a more serious note, although I have no idea how this report was produced, one might note that it was produced by the WEF (a business-friendly Swiss organisation) and that it may well be part of the ongoing political debate in Switzerland on how to implement the referendum result on restricting immigration.

I'm not saying it's right, wrong, objective, or not, I honestly have no opinion. Just providing some context.

Anyway, it seems like a mystery to me why tech firms like Google set up shop in small expensive Zurich instead of say cheaper, bigger Barcelona or Vienna, for example. I'd love to know what the incentives are for them.

Also, in the good old times (= before the rise of right-wing populism and the referendum) Google could attract good people from all over Europe here because in terms of living standard and salary, it could be considered a step up from almost anywhere else in Europe.

Plus the central location and the infrastructure.

I think in the grand scheme of things, Zurich/Switzerland has a lot to offer. I've always felt that people who argue against Switzerland only on the basis of the high salaries and cost of living are a bit like people who argue against Apple on the basis of "speeds and feeds". There's a lot more to being business-friendly than being cheap.

But yeah, who knows, all this may change now, as indeed the report warns. Openness is a pretty big deal for a small, open economy like Switzerland.

______________

[1] EDIT: Just checked again, it was the Times Higher Education World University Ranking, as reported in the WSJ today. Direct link to table here: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankin...

[2] EDIT: Got curious from writing this and landed on their homepage. Their first sentence starts with: "Our lab in Zürich is perfectly placed for easy access to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETH)…" That kind of drives the point home, doesn't it? ;-) Source: https://www.disneyresearch.com/research-labs/disney-research...

I wish m3 had caught on. Really liked it.

If you still would like to find Modula-3 related stuff, check http://apotheca.hpl.hp.com/ftp/pub/DEC/SRC/ .

> I think in the grand scheme of things, Zurich/Switzerland has a lot to offer.

Actually no and this is the problem. If you can either stand being an expat or manage to conform to a fairly inflexible Swiss life style then it has a lot to offer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urs_H%C3%B6lzle

ps: expats usually remain expats almost everywhere (as they tend to stick together), what's so inflexible about .ch in particular?

Well, I remember when arriving for work in Geneva a few years ago, a French colleague informed me (quite seriously :) that one can not urinate in the street. The American colleague mentioned "oh, and quiet hours after 10 pm". And you are not supposed to hunt the swans swimming in the lake. (& My youngish Swiss friends all complain about how "boring" it is.)

I think Switzerland is one of those love it or hate it things. I loved it.

never heard of such a law. If anything there's maybe one in certain cities. I know this is just an example, but I wonder why you'd bring this example up as an example about inflexibility?

> oh, and quiet hours after 10 pm

yep, that's fact.

> And you are not supposed to hunt the swans swimming in the lake.

Again, why would you bring that up as an example? I'm not sure whether you're joking or not.

I'm Swiss and indeed some things are quite different than in other countries, what you posted as an example I don't consider relevant at all.

What my non-swiss friends complain about, is usually how hard it is to get to know Swiss people well. Swiss take a long time to call someone a friend.

She was walking home one day and saw a couple watching television in the house wearing headphones, presumably so as not to disturb / annoy the neighbours!

It's more a case of treat others how you want to be treated - I hate being on the receiving end of neighbour noise so I take care not to be the cause of it myself.

The average base salary seems to be CHF 136,344 (USD 140,000) per year.

They do amazing work, actually. Some seriously good CG researches in Zurich.

The interesting thing - from what I hear from people working at Google Zürich - is less than 10% of those working there are Swiss.

The location seems to be more about having a place to attract bright minds from Eastern Europe and even Israel that's still close enough so they can fly home easily for a weekend. So quota restrictions probably would really hurt here.

With respect to the office being located there in the first place, the story I heard was that it was basically a combination of Urs and ETH. The office was never intended to be huge, but it was successful in attracting candidates at a much higher rate than other European offices and thus quickly became the largest, making it the de-facto European engineering HQ. And yes this was very expensive for the company indeed, but luckily Google prints money so it wasn't a big issue. Other less fortunate companies would have had to impose hiring caps or quotas I think, to avoid Swiss salaries becoming dominant.

I don't think unlimited or limited EU immigration has made a huge difference. It's always been true that most employees in the Swiss office are not Swiss. When I joined Switzerland required visas for EU citizens as well, I had to prove I had a job and a degree to get in, and the Swiss office is full of Americans, Russians, etc. Local kantonal control is very strong in Switzerland and Kanton Zürich very much likes having a local employer with bottomless hiring needs and a bottomless bank to pay them with. I guess Google Zürich is closing in on employing 1% of the cities population, so they can usually get the visas they need.

Full disclosure: I'm certainly biased since I'm both Swiss and a recent graduate from EPFL.

EPFL or ETH are definitely not something I'd consider as just "Swiss education system". These schools are what Stanford or Berkeley are in their region, and are highly international.

But even if there were, it wouldn't matter to Google. There are no major network effects or cross-pollination with the ecosystem. Practically everyone who goes to work at that office is relocating from elsewhere. And if people leave, it's rarely to work at some other company in Zurich, but usually to move to another country.

I'm not saying that ETHZ and EPFL aren't great universities. I just don't see any reason to believe they are a major factor in this particular case, directly or indirectly.

(Just to give an idea of where my comments are coming from, I worked at Google Zurich for 4 years, and then another 4 doing a Zurich-based startup).

ETH Zürich is among the top ten computer science schools in the world, that's what.

Zürich was and is a glamorous place to live, au pair with New York, Tokyo or Milano, and after the "Brexit", Zürich is the new London now. Financial industry is withdrawing from the island and going home. Those things create incentives and an upward spiral for Zürich.

And also bear in mind that Confoederatio Helvetica has some of the lowest taxes in the world; it's every American republican's wet dream in terms of that.

I'm a Brit who lives in Zürich. I would not describe Zürich as being anywhere near as glamorous as New York nor as being the "new London". It's a lovely city to live in, but it's tiny - the entire population of Switzerland is smaller than the population of London and that reflects in the variety of things to do, things to see, services available and so on. My brother lives in London Zone 1 and I am often envious of the fantastic things that city has to offer.

The Brexit vote was three months ago. So far nothing has changed, and the financial industry is certainly not moving to Switzerland - which is also not in the EU! Moreover, the Swiss voted against freedom of movement as well in 2014 and the implementation deadline is in February. The Swiss Parliament are busy demonstrating exactly how compatible the EU and democracy are (not at all) by attempting to push through local hiring preference laws when the referendum, which is constitutionally binding, stated explicitly that it was a vote on imposing quotas. The SVP is not happy and a fight is looming. Quite possibly the Swiss will chicken out given how evenly divided society is on the topic of immigration, but if attitudes have hardened since 2014 or if the SVP is able to turn this into a fight on the topic of democracy itself, Switzerland may find itself on the same side as the UK very quickly indeed.

I don't actually want the Swiss to impose immigration quotas on people like me, that can only make life more complicated, but Swiss direct democracy is an admirable thing and I am 100% convinced it's a part of the reason Switzerland is so successful. Watching the EU systematically tell voters in the most successful European countries to bend the knee is not impressing me one bit.

Much.

The Brexit vote was three months ago. So far nothing has changed,

Except that the UK economy took a severe hit and the British Pound Sterling has been pounded into the ground - lowest that it has ever been in over 50 years. And that's been going on for exactly three months. I take it you don't shop on UK Amazon much?

Switzerland may find itself on the same side as the UK very quickly indeed.

One minor difference: Switzerland doesn't need or want the EU, but EU always wanted to have a grab at all the cash and Gold stored in Switzerland. Switzerland has been designed, implemented and tuned from the ground up to be a self-sufficient island, and it is this very idea that has made investors storm the Swiss national bank to dump their U.S. dollars and Euros and get the Swiss francs - stability and self-sufficiency, a safe haven. At the height of the USD / EUR dumping craze, the SNB was swimming in 480 billion CHF worth of surplus in foreign currency, until the Swiss national bank said stop, and lifted the currency peg:

(time point 13:08 in the video)

http://containersummit.io/events/sf-2015/videos/wolf-of-what...

My brother lives in London Zone 1 and I am often envious of the fantastic things that city has to offer.

Paul Graham summed it up pretty well in one of his essays:

Nerds don't care about glamour, so to them the appeal of New York is a mystery. People who like New York will pay a fortune for a small, dark, noisy apartment in order to live in a town where the cool people are really cool. A nerd looks at that deal and sees only: pay a fortune for a small, dark, noisy apartment.

http://paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html

My mistake is that I should not have compared Zürich to those cities, because I've actually done a disservice to Zürich. It sounds like you really like London, and if you like it so much, perhaps you're in the wrong city, and going back home might be a worthwhile consideration, if you think London is so much better.

But back to Zürich: I'd like to know what Zürich doesn't have or offer?

but Swiss direct democracy is an admirable thing and I am 100% convinced it's a part of the reason Switzerland is so successful. Watching the EU systematically tell voters in the most successful European countries to bend the knee is not impressing me one bit.

Here, Sir, we are in agreement.

You're kidding right? Zurich is a glamorous village, it's the worst of both worlds. It's expensive and posh like a big city, but doesn't have the verity range or range of quality. Incidentally this is what PG has to say about Switzerland:

For example, many startups in America begin in places where it's not really legal to run a business. Hewlett-Packard, Apple, and Google were all run out of garages. Many more startups, including ours, were initially run out of apartments. If the laws against such things were actually enforced, most startups wouldn't happen.

That could be a problem in fussier countries. If Hewlett and Packard tried running an electronics company out of their garage in Switzerland, the old lady next door would report them to the municipal authorities.

But the worst problem in other countries is probably the effort required just to start a company. A friend of mine started a company in Germany in the early 90s, and was shocked to discover, among many other regulations, that you needed $20,000 in capital to incorporate. That's one reason I'm not typing this on an Apfel laptop.

http://paulgraham.com/america.html

I plain and simple disagree, and further, I think that is insane. I can't even begin to imagine what that statement could possibly be based on. For example, Pittsburgh, PA is a collection of villages, and there is just no way Zürich is anywhere close to that, in fact it's light years above and beyond. Compare New York and Zürich for instance: New York is an overcrowded, ugly, filthy dump of concrete and asphalt, and then compare Zürich, it's clean and green and elegant, and I can't think of anything it doesn't have. Have you actually lived in both?

That could be a problem in fussier countries. If Hewlett and Packard tried running an electronics company out of their garage in Switzerland, the old lady next door would report them to the municipal authorities.

That is just not true for Switzerland: you can run a single person company or even a GmbH out of your bedroom or garage and nobody will say a peep, especially not the municipality, whose tax commission will be more than happy that you started one, because you'll be paying them nominal tax no-matter-what. Have you actually tried it? Almost every village in Switzerland has more than one such company in a residential building.

I really don't know where you get the idea that the UK is somehow totally dependent on the EU in ways Switzerland isn't. Switzerland is far from an island. It has massive trade with both the EU and the rest of the world. That's why the Swiss Parliament is desperately trying to ignore the vote - they know Brussels will happily wreck the Swiss economy if it doesn't get its way, even if that also damages Germany (German devotion to the EU is perceived as bottomless in Brussels, it seems). Switzerland would absolutely suffer if its deals with the EU were terminated, and it's laughably far from self sufficient.

WRT what Zürich lacks, just compare the wealth of cultural events, museums and shows in London to what's available in Zürich! Don't get me wrong, for its size it does pretty well, and there are many other things London can't match (like the lake life) ... but you can't seriously claim a city more than 10x bigger provides literally nothing more.

Regarding your first question... Its not the same to work in the field and sell tomatoes to sell ponzi tiered insurances or do business holding the money of the biggest "rich families" from europe.

Have you seen where Google HQ is located in the US? Same story. And it's not about tax avoidance: California is not a low-tax state.

Most people don't see payroll taxes, only income taxes.

Having a large percentage of foreigners and English-speakers also contributes to that, as well as the clustering effect (IBM Research has a lab in Zurich since 1956).

The main difference is in healthcare, which in Switzerland is entirely private, post-payroll, and can easily amount to $500/month, whereas in France it's part public (payroll) part private. And the private part is usually paid on payroll too.

Health insurance is mandatory in Switzerland, so it really is not disposable income, even if you have provider choice.

And you're not taking in account the payroll taxes. France has a combined payroll taxes of almost 40%, while Switzerland is <15%.

So not only Swiss workers make more money, but they also cost less than French workers.

Source: OECD, http://taxfoundation.org/article/comparison-tax-burden-labor...

You can reduce that if you opt for less choice (e.g. you can only use particular doctors) to around CHF 235/month.

Maybe it's the city you live in. I'm in Munich and have TK, and about the only thing I've paid out of pocket for is 25 euro for some blood work, and of course some small fees for prescriptions such as antibiotics.

Source? Switzerland is famous for its private banking sector and it used to be easy to hide assets for individuals (with FACTA and tax data sharing, I don't think it's as popular now, or at least the minimum amount required is way higher since banks don't want the risk). Unlike Ireland, I'm not aware of Switzerland being commonly used to reduce corporate tax (at least in IT).

To be clear, 'tax evasion' is illegal.

Most companies do what they can to avoid paying taxes, which is rational in some ways, but they usually don't do anything illegal.

It's important that we don't mix the two :)

If you have $1M in a Swiss bank account earning capital gains, and don't declare it to the IRS - that's 'tax evasion'.

If you have a company in Switzerland generating revenue, and decide not to bring back your profits to America to get hit with another tax, and just let it sit in Switzlerland - that's a 'tax avoidance' strategy.

'Tax evasion' = illegal.

'Tax avoidance' = doing everything you can within the boundaries of the law to not pay taxes. There are some wierd loopholes due to the way taxation works across borders.

Where it gets prickly is when companies game the system and find ways to reduce tax that the sovereign clearly would outlaw, but cannot for structural or political reasons. Still not illegal, but not exactly awesome either.

Tax avoidance does not. It involves complete honesty with the tax authorities, who then charge you less tax, as the rules state they should. The definition of "avoidance" is therefore intensely political - avoidance tends to be defined as lawful behaviour by other people the speaker would prefer paying for government instead of them!

The distinction matters to: decision-makers at the firm in question, shareholders of the firm in question, the sovereign collecting the taxes[1]. And given the the dispute resolution with large corps' tax issues rarely involves people going to jail or even admissions of fault, I'm not sure why anyone outside of that group should care about the (extremely blurry) legality boundaries.

Bottom line: most of the rest of us have no obligation to care about their word-choice sensitivities and are free to use language for our own ends.

[1] Possibly noninclusive list.

Important to lawful civilizations.

If you think that there should be better regulations around setting transfer pricing, then vote for it.

Unless companies are breaking the law, then there is a very profound 'distinction'.

Some tax issues are easily resolved, or at least, easily improved. 'Transfer pricing' is not one of them. It's very thorny.

I for one think that Apple's argument of 'the innovation and design is done in California - not Ireland' - is pretty reasonable.

Im fact - the US government should be reaping most of the tax dollars that Apple generates, not Ireland.

That said - if they have operations in Ireland they should be paying taxes there.

I think that a company should pay it's 'primary corporate tax' in the place where it is incorporated and has it's major operations.

And then ancilliary countries like Ireland can tax them at a corporate rate, but discounted for what they payed in America. Ireland's biggest tax receipts from Apple should come from VAT - which is the fairest tax of them all, because it's applied to each iPhone sale in Ireland, not France or wherever.

Currently - it's upside down: if a Canadian company has a subsidiary in France, they pay their corp tax rate in France for sales there - and then only a 4% remittance fee to Canada. To me that's backwards.

The American system is the worst: American companies pay full tax overseas - and then full tax back in America. Plus American corporate taxes are high.

You seem to have misread. I was arguing about word choice about tax policy, not tax policy. I choose to recognize a range of behavior as "evasion". That's what we're talking about. None of your post is relevant to what I wrote.

So - it's not up to you to decide what is 'tax evasion'.

You can commandeer the term if you want, but you'd have to be very clear that you are doing that.

This is a continuum that stretches from clearly illegal schemes through hazy waters, into calm water like deducting salaries and cost of goods sold from revenue and paying tax on the balance. For individuals "tax avoidance" includes deducting charity contributions and taking advantage of things like deductions for dependents. If that is not "unethical" to you then you need to make a distinction between tax avoidance and tax evasion.

Many people believe "is it legal" is a good line to use. You may differ on that, but you can't escape the dichotomy.

Some names you might recognize:

* Niklaus Wirth (Pascal, Modula-II, Oberon etc.; retired professor at ETHZ)

* Jurg Gutknecht (Oberon; EHTZ)

* Erich Gamma (one of the "Gang of Four" behind the Design Patterns book; co-wrote JUnit; studied at University of Zurich)

* Urs Hölzle (Google SVP of Technical Infrastructure at Google; studied at ETHZ)

A lot of people can also be traced back to Wirth. E.g. Andreas Gal that did his thesis on trace trees for JIT compilation is German, and did his thesis at UC Irvine, but his advisor was professor Michael Franz who did his thesis on runtime code generation before Java was released under Niklaus Wirth.

Martin Odersky, the creator of Scala and javac, was born in Germany but received his PhD in Zurich, at EHTZ, under Wirth's supervision[1]. Odersky is now a professor in Lausanne at EPFL [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Odersky

[2] https://people.epfl.ch/martin.odersky/bio?lang=en&cvlang=en

In terms of companies, here's a few of the best known I'm aware of:

An old infamous one:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG

And a couple of major international ones:

* Logitech (founded in Apples, Vaud)

* STMicroelectronics (headquartered in Geneva; though it was a merger of a French and an Italian company)

And a new but still quite well known security hardware one:

* Silent Circle (security hardened smartphones)

But as other have pointed out, in software/hardware Switzerland is doing best in R&D, not least because of the high salaries, and a lot of CS grads will also end up going into jobs in companies that are not necessarily hardware/software companies but that need a lot of CS talent (e.g. banks, high tech manufacturing).

Also Switzerland strengths, like Germany, is not rooted by the big companies. The small to medium sized companies are the backbone of the success. And naturally those are not as known as an Apple or Samsung.

That's a great deal compared to most any other European country. In neighboring Germany for instance, if you earn €55k, your tax rate is about 44% (including solidarity surcharge). In Zurich it's about 11% (canton plus federal tax). The top rates are 47% and 16%, respectively.

So it's not much surprise that people want to live there, despite the high cost of living.

That is a lot below any other European country. Maybe you included VAT to come up with your 40% marginal tax rate? But then you should count VAT for other countries as well when you are comparing them. And apart from that, the VAT in Switzerland is also very low.

I'm happy to live in a country with high taxes and a good level of services for every one. To be in San Francisco, for example, was a sad experience. There was so much money and good people, but still you could see so much homeless people in the streets.

Try applying for a job in Switzerland and you will get so much pre-canned refusal correspondence that your head will spin. The country is overcrowded and the Swiss are not thrilled about having foreigners in their country, unless they absolutely have no choice, and even then they secretly hate it. As far as they're concerned, if you're very rich you're welcome to buy property or drop your money into Switzerland, and you're very welcome to come visit as a tourist, but everyone should stay where they come from, no-matter-what.

I also wonder if the very high value of the Swiss Franc artificially inflates the number, but I wasn't able to figure this out from a cursory reading.

Also it's based on a survey responses from corporate executives. A mean name for it might be "the country popularity contest as judged by corporate fat cats". Though the survey questions do obviously direct it towards objective pastures.

Hah! The example question presented in the PR material is "In your country, to what extent is intellectual property protected?" - a poster child of where corporate executives might have a diametrically opposite view from the real makers re. what's good for the country's competitiveness.

However, my experience of living and working there suggests that it is very much not true in the areas I encountered: businesses cling to tradition and people prefer everything to be managed (contracts should be given to the "right" people, rules should be organised around what traditional groups want). By traditional I mean book sellers, grocers etc. You often get the feeling there is not much logic/forward thinking - only maintain what people are used to. Of course, that is a decision you are free to make, but not one that seems to tally with this article.

Designated innovation area seemed pretty dead. As a consumer the low quality of many companies' websites and ability to automate was quite surprising.

On the other hand, salaries are high almost all office jobs (debatable whether this makes sense for lower skill-sets, but nice if you live there) and it seems fairly easy to get a new job as long as you "fit" in the culture.

I can imagine that some of the big industrial tech and pharma companies are run a bit more aggressively. Finance didn't seem to be.

Things are very much done according to a formula. If you're an enterprise looking for a Java developer, only a guy whose CV says "Java" will do. C# is some other planet. I think it's a Germanic thing, they expect very specific qualifications. I remember meeting a guy who had a degree as a food chemist. I asked him what jobs he was after, and he said ... food chemist.

There is a startup scene in Zurich though. The tax rate is low, and people seem to have enough savings to give it a go, at least some of the young ones. It's not a huge number of people, but the Swiss are going about it in their own way, with a number "technoparks" and such. It's somewhat cosmopolitan in its outlook; people compare themselves to other startups around the world. Reasonable pay for such small firms, too. Came across more than one 6 figure job.

Salaries are high, but stuff is expensive, too. Daycare for a kid, at a public nursery, is CHF30K a year (USD is in the ballpark of CHF). I've met a number of Swiss people who'd like to have more kids, but it's just a lot of money to pay. A quite ordinary family meal at a restaurant can be 100. Buying the food from a supermarket ain't cheap, either.

I sometimes wonder whether GDP measurement is problematic. Quality of life doesn't feel like it's all that different between various industrialized countries, but the figures suggest they are. If stuff is expensive, that makes GDP higher. So a guy eating a $1 potato is enjoying a lower quality of life than a guy who paid $2 for his. This has implications for wastage, particularly when it has to do with large organisations such as government. Burn more money, get higher GDP. Tax rate also has implications. There's probably more black market business going on in certain countries, which also contributes to general welfare. But of course that doesn't go into official accounts, or at least it's quite hard to guess how much it is. Low tax places like Switzerland are more likely to have more stuff going through official accounts.

Food is expensive in Switzerland partly because it imports a lot and the surrounding countries know that the Swiss are rich and thus not very price sensitive. I read somewhere that exactly the same kilo of parma ham that costs 10 EUR in Italy can cost 50 EUR in Switzerland simply due to being charged different amounts by the supplier. This is not helped by the fact that the domestic supermarkets have what amounts to a duopoly between Co-op and Migros, with other brands like Denner being owned by one of the big two. There's little price competition.

GDP is a disastrous statistic almost everywhere, not just in Switzerland. Politicians single minded focus on it is a classic case of "what you can't measure you can't manage" being harmful. The biggest problem is that GDP is trivially pumped by government borrowing and spending, hence the endless circular arguments in Europe about austerity and whether governments should try to spend their way to growth. It doesn't work - governments ideas for productive investments rarely go beyond roads and railways - but it can appear to work in the short run as spending splurges feed directly into the GDP.

Just an anecdote: We are (expat) remote workers raising kids on the Swiss countryside. Our fellows haven't started school yet but we are really looking forward to having them come home for lunch. The motivation for the system may well be to suit traditional family setups, and make it hard for both parents to work in an office, but it also seems tailor made for self-employed people who work from home with a flexible schedule and want to spend time together as a family. (ask me again in a few years.)

That's about as traditional as family setups get, isn't it? Except you're not working on your farm.

I also suspect that having both of us parents at home during the day will make it much easier to manage the disruption of kids coming home in the afternoon, etc, which could be hard for one person to juggle with a career.

State mandates that. However, the tax is so low, that is doesn't really matter.

On the other side, the cost of living is so high (Zuerich area) so that it really worth it if you plan to _move_ there for the rest of your live.

That's absolutely wrong, you've been lied to. Which part of Switzerland was it?

If you are German then no one should have told you there's no possibility of freelancing, but it might make more sense to first take on enough Swiss customers freelancing from Germany, or as a commuter to Basel, etc. I would just recommend being conservative about maintaining a reasonable/stable salary sourced from Switzerland when renewing a residence permit.

If you really mean contractor gigs from abroad, everyone I met doing that actually works permanently for a placement agency, and most of them are not very nice. IMO it is just as easy (or hard) to find a job directly and better.

I tried directly and also over an agency, but in both cases the requirement was to hire me, with the previous mentioned "limitation". Since I had no clear source of information, I gave them credit and didn't pursue the matter. Even if the money was really really good ( 10k+ euro monthly ).

They told me, there is no such thing a service contract between an individual and a company. I must be either hired or I need to have my own company.

I am not inventing this, simply repeating what the companies said, and they really meant it.

You can be a sole proprietor for basically nothing. There's also two forms of limited companies requiring 20K/100K of capital. The 100 is actually 50K because you only have to pay up half of it upfront.

I found quite often when the Swiss explain something, they explain it with a degree of confidence that is not merited by the actual facts. They cut a few corners here and there to make it easy to explain.

Switzerland is topographically not really great for farming (high mountains, no big flat areas, not enough warmth), so they have some disadvantages there. All countries surrounding Switzerland are part of the EU, so there are cheap farming products in the shops.

I am living on the border to Switzerland and it is crazy what meat costs in Switzerland compared to Austria. You are not allowed to import much meat, so you have to buy it in Switzerland if you live there.

"The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) is a regional trade organisation and free trade area consisting of four European states: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland.[1] The organisation operates in parallel with the European Union (EU), and all four member states participate in the EU's single market.[2] ... It allows the EFTA-EEA states to participate in the EU's Internal Market without being members of the EU. They adopt almost all EU legislation related to the single market, except laws on agriculture and fisheries. "

Austria 5€

Switzerland 9.5 CHF (8.73€)

Or "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" aka Goodhart's law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

Could someone explain this to me? Like I assume lordnacho had expected that guy to apply for a wider category of jobs, but which jobs? And what is the advantage of that broadness?

I think you could do a whole range of things. Anything from quantitative trading to traffic management. Or something that doesn't even require math, like project management.

The advantage of broadness is you have a wider choice about what you do. If one kind of work turns out not to appeal to you, you aren't stuck. That has some economic value as well. If you have the watch industry collapse, you don't have a bunch of watchmakers sitting around on benefits who could be doing something different.

1: Plenty of vocational training takes place at universities and have degree-titles attached to them. That doesn't make them academic pursuits. I say this as a polytech-rebranded-as-"university"-trained engineer and I firmly believe that I shouldn't hold a degree that implies that I have an academic education.

States in the US vary in nominal GSP per capita by only 2x — from Mississippi at $35K to Delaware at $70K. In the EU, it ranges from Bulgaria at €6K to Ireland at €55K. (This excludes DC and Luxembourg, which are outliers in many ways.)

In fact, even Mississippi, the poorest US state, is wealthier than the EU average (€28K, about $31K)! Only the wealthiest EU countries are wealthier than Mississippi: Luxembourg, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Austria, Finland, German, Belgium, France. And of those, only Luxembourg and Ireland have a higher GDP per capita than the US average.

So the EU member states vary economically far more than the states in the US do, and the US is more easily characterized as a uniformly "high income" region than the EU is.

Mississippi's GDP per capita being similar to that of France, Italy or Spain is really hard to reconcile with the fact that many of us would love to live in the latter countries and couldn't be paid to move to Mississippi.

Remember good GDP versus bad GDP; a traffic jam increases GDP, but isn't anything particularly worth buying. Accumulated capital (like Notre Dame and the Louvre) doesn't show up in GDP either, and if anything tends to lower it. There's a lot of bad GDP and not much capital accumulation in the US...

Climate also doesn't show up in GDP, now that I think of it, and I think that has a lot to do with the Mississippi situation. Who wants to live in hundred-degree heat with hundred-percent humidity?

Notre Dame and the Louvre are a couple of the things that make Paris the single biggest tourist destination in the world, from which it derives a huge amount of GDP. The French tourist officials make sure to monetize the Louvre for all they can.

*

"Mississippi's GDP per capita being similar to that of France, Italy or Spain is really hard to reconcile with the fact that many of us would love to live in the latter countries and couldn't be paid to move to Mississippi."

No, it isn't, because people wouldn't love to move to France/Italy/Spain, they don't even want to. People say they'd love to live in Spain/Italy/France, but the fact that they don't reveals it's mostly cheap talk.

There are some exceptions in professions that make well above the average for these countries (also retirees, students). Europe is really very nice if you make well above the average, but this is not (by definition) the typical life in those countries. Very few Americans are excited by a 24k take home salary in a mid-sized French town, or 15k in an Italian formerly wealthy industrial city.

The vast majority of migration flows are up the GDP gradient.

The access to the Louvre (permanent collection) is free for :

everyone under 18 years old whatever the nationality,

every resident of the European Economic Area (31 countries) under 25 years old,

everyone under 26 years old whatever the nationality the Friday from 6 p.m. to 9:45 p.m.,

everyone the first sunday of each month between october and march and on july 14th,

other specific groups of people,

And it is 15€ for everyone else for a day. Not what I would call particularly excessive.

http://www.louvre.fr/en/hours-admission/admission

The Louvre still relies mainly on public subvention (102 M€ in 2015) tickets bring ~65M€, private subventions ~12M€. But yes it surely brings people and has a good impact on the local economy.

The official Paris tourist office has a picture of the Louvre on the top of its front page.

Let me put it this way: if I say that google monetizes its search engine as much as it can, I don't mean it charges you to search.

The difference with the google search engine is if you are not willing to pay and so do not use the search engine then google won't make money at all from you whereas few people will decide no to go to Paris just because the Louvre entrance is not free.

I can't comment on the rest of the US, but I'm seriously considering emigrating to Europe at some point, for the sake of long-term stability. The US might be in a very bad situation 300 years from now; I doubt that France, Germany, or the northern parts of Spain and Italy will.

What? No, it doesn't, in any possible measure. Those are lost hours of productivity.

You are right though, it isn't a good example. Here is a better one: Someone getting cancer increases GDP significantly due to health care costs.

And that's why GDP per capita is so useless.

You have a few multi billionaires running your country, and you have tens of millions of people in abject poverty, tens of millions with no health insurance, etc.

Don't look at GDP per capita, it tells you noting about life for the average person.

Mississippi's median household income is $36,919. This compares to the UK's median household income of $31,617.

Note, of course, that this doesn't count social benefits. The UK's household income is lower, but they also get the NHS, better unemployment insurance, and so on.

We do have about 25 million people with no health insurance.

It seems to me that there are many people who say things like that about most of the less-populated states.

To be honest, I'm glad. After moving to SF from a small Midwestern city, I've realized that I couldn't be paid to live here. Even if we don't mention the extremely high cost of living in San Francisco, if we just consider the negative externalities:

- Garbage everywhere

- Constant noise

- Unbelievable homeless problem

- High crime rates

- Extreme clash of culture (I see anti-tech graffiti on my way to work every day; I regularly overhear pretentious "how could you not be in tech?" conversations)

- Infinite suburbia

- High rates of mental illness (not that mental illness is a bad thing, but I think it is at least somewhat telling about the environment)

I'd still rather live back home in the Midwest, even if we didn't talk about explicitly quantifiable costs of living. There is an entire America out there between the coasts that has absolutely none of the things I just listed.

I'd say that mental illness doesn't make one a bad person, (just like having pneumonia isn't a punishment for your sins), but mental illness is a bad thing---it should be avoided, mitigated where it exists, and if possible cured.

I'm guessing you might have meant something similar?

That doesn't entirely explain why revenues in the US are that much higher than revenues in Europe however. The fact that the current trade value of the € against the $ is significantly lower to what it was ten years ago (European debt crisis) also partially explain the different revenues between the two continents.

You might as well compare California to Mexico because they share a physical border. You'll find similar disparities in income.

It would be more unfair to compare separate US states with European countries. While US states share a common fate, the same can't be said about say Germany and Greece even though they are both in the EU.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?

Individual US states are pretty close to sovereign. Other than ability to tax and a few other things, the US federal government doesn't have much power.

But the idea of the geographical transfer of resources is there. While Texas may not want to refinance american banks, the FED doesn't care. Germany may not want to refinance Greece, and the European Central Bank can't enforce it. [0]

>> While US states share a common fate

> Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?

It's a great question. You can get the best answer from the following article: https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100510_europe_nationalism_...

[0]: https://geopoliticalfutures.com/lehman-brothers-and-germany-...

The shared taxes that you mention are also huge: how different would Europe be if Germans were really on the hook for Greek budgetary issues?

Look at this in practical terms: if the US states really resembled sovereigns, you'd have far wider differences in economic performance. Outcomes would diverge more widely if states were really doing things that were really all that different. We'd see incredibly different unemployment rates too. But in the US that can't really happen, because ultimately the federal government has everyone's back, and you don't see big, country threatening arguments about how California federal taxes are spent in other states: Those situations were possible back when the federal government was really weak, but the aftermath of the civil war took care of all of that.

Along with the legislative differences, there's also a far more unified culture across states, if just for the shared language, and thus media. I can move from Missouri to California pretty easily: Better weather, higher taxes, but most of the rest stays about the same. Moving from an EU country to another is far more traumatic in comparison, which also makes each country be far more unique than US states.

At this point US states are mostly satrapies of the federal government, since the feds can withhold block grants to the states who don't fall in line.

From whose perspective? A us state, Spain, or a third party?

Source: http://www.lavanguardia.com/vangdata/20150520/54431341415/ra...

Eh, not really. Central bank-controlled states are a reasonable grouping measure, which is why it's the US, EU, Switzerland, the UK, etc. that people compare (even though the UK is part of the EU, and Switzerland has signed on to most economic measures the EU mandates).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Texas

Maybe 'central bank control' is a reasonable grouping measure, but 'size of economy' is also reasonable. There is certainly more nuance than a simple ranking can model.

And the 'central bank' argument is muddied by the existence of the Euro and the particular economic struggles of countries like Greece.

I'm sure some folks in Texas are itching to secede, but until that happens, we compare other countries with the US, not California, Texas, or New York.

Like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_between_U.S._states... for instance.

Your phrasing is as if the popularity of the per country comparison makes it impossible to discuss any other comparison. But that's not the case.

It seems crazy to lump Mississippi and North Dakota in the same basket as NYC

Every countries has regions which are less well off. But most comparisons lump everything up. Otherwise madness ensues trying to create "proper" economic divisions...

There's a reason North Korea locks its citizens in and doesn't allow them access to any information about the outside world.

NYC itself has got to have a pretty high value given DC is 160,563.

I think its a bit problematic for a very different reason, North Dakota is mostly exporting raw materials (crops and oil) where NYC is services. I'm not sure people really get how the system fits together. To me, the friction points (borders, regulations, shipping, etc.) are the dividers. Not sure how one weighs how much those add to get regions.

Yes, there are slightly different laws and politicians, but also different infrastructure in different districts.

The are multiple political, cultural and so on levels. Countries and states inside countries often don't work the same and the hierarchical structures might be different.

Taking only EU and US already shows the huge difference. Take really banal things. The countries in the EU are also all part of the Council of Europe, which doesn't have a lot to do with the EU other than the geographic location. But they create certain rules, such as a common view against capital punishment (they actually caused that in some countries). On the other hand in the US you have very different views.

It's not easy to compare complex political, cultural structures and economic competitiveness in itself is kind of a weird thing to measure, cause there are so many layers of that term itself. Now while it is clear that this isn't meant think about all kinds of movements, be it for money less societies, be it people that want gold or resources. Describing economies can include only the monetary part, but might include goods, infrastructure, even health. And for such a report one can come up with kind of arbitrary ways of measuring things, giving them a value.

Now, I think many here know how hard it can be to measure non-complex things, how hard it can be to get the KPIs right and for how a startup those can be different and how those KPIs can change from one day to another (and that might or might not make sense).

Now comparing countries and economies is a wholly different thing.

Also I am not saying that what was done is bad or whatever. It certainly is not. I just think that people often interpret too much in those things. Taking different, equally qualified people to create such a report could result in rather big differences, because what makes sense to put in there is rather subjective and for example influenced by culture.

You shouldn't feel competitive (pun intended) about this kind of lists anyway, it's just a score on criteria some organization called "WEF" values for reasons that are their own. You don't have to 'win' every ranking, if you "win" one, you're going to lose another that uses different criteria.

Not really. "It's complicated" and there are many aspects to it.

US health care is terrible, for instance, in terms of costs/benefits. The startup I worked for in Italy dedicated all of 0 person-hours to health care or health insurance stuff because it's none of their business. Big advantage.

OTOH, the public pension system in Italy is pretty creaky and I would not trust it a lot. There are a bunch of people who got to retire at like 55 or 60, which is pretty early for a country where many people live quite long lives, and are no longer doing hard manual labor.

"At will" employment in the US is way, way more flexible than the kind of system they have in Italy where you'd pretty much have to murder someone while on the clock to get fired. Definitely a win for business.

There are all kinds of things to compare countries on, and it's not simple.

I agree, it could be a win for employees as well if we changed some of the social norms. One example, change "2 weeks notice" to "give as much notice as they would pay if they laid you off" (In the majority of jobs currently, none) and employers would start offering severance packages again.

My own view is that making employers directly responsible for 'social welfare', rather than simply taxing them and providing money for the unemployed through the government, or some such, is suboptimal. If I'm not mistaken, places like Denmark take the latter approach: easy hiring/firing, high taxes, and a lot of benefits. Not everyone might like it, but it seems more efficient than making it impossible to fire people who are not really contributing much.

By "our economy", do you mean private persons? The whole country?

Regardless, coming from one of those magic fairylands of modern Europe - health care and retirement costs are a massive drag on our economy as well, they're just not as easily seen by general people (you certainly don't see it on your pay slip).

I think there is probably room to compare economies in different ways. It's certainly notable that California has roughly the same size economy as France, but it isn't the only comparison you would want to make when trying to compare the economic situation in the US to the economic situation elsewhere. But if you were considering the availability of opportunities, you might start with the few US states with the largest economies just like you might start with the few EU countries with larger economies.

But I'm afraid I have no retort to the Olympic question other than that is it a completely different ranking of the best of each population rather than the average, so different rules apply? I'm not sure that is a good argument against your sentiment, though.

You might find http://www.medalspercapita.com/ interesting.

Individual banks have branches all over the country. It's one currency. There's one federal set of trade laws with minor state limits on some goods. Shipping goods across state lines or selling digital wares across state lines are covered mostly by federal law. Contracts may or may not, by their own language, invoke state laws in interstate sales with few exceptions (some states don't allow a seller to waive certain of a buyer's rights in a standard sales contract).

There's no government interference moving from one state to another for work (unless you're a felon or a sex offender or some other special case). There's one set of immigration laws. There's one set of passport requirements.

Yes, you could say each state is its own market. But then you could say the same about each city and town. For some people individual cities in the US compete directly against one another more than state vs. state. Am I likely to find work in my field in any little farm town in northern California, upstate New York, rural Georgia, Texas hill country or scrub desert, or in downstate Illinois? Not at all. In San Francisco and the Valley? In NYC? In Chicago? Houston? Dallas? Austin? LA? Atlanta? Sure.

Isn't success at international competition largely a factor of financial investment into a particular sport? Arguably the US being the world's biggest economy, would also give them the world's best trained athletes, the best trainers, the best training facilities and so on.

Many (most?) sports have specific checks and guards in place to minimize the effect of money on team success, but that only goes so far.

The point of keeping the US as a single nation is to further the interests of those who are aligned with FEDGOV, not for the education or happiness or prosperity of ordinary people.

If anything, the Federal government is overly distracted bringing the slow parts of the country kicking and screaming into the 21st century and by those same parts randomly derailing it.

But anyone ever want to secede again, I won't object.

As to not complaining about a possible future secession... You also think it's a federal obligation to bring the "slow parts" of the country "into the 21st century". I'll venture that anyone who makes that sort of mental investment in pharisaic priggishness has more to lose, ego-wise, if the "slow parts" do better outside the union than inside.

In fact, I'd be willing to pay for them to leave. Even willing to fund a wall on the Mason-Dixon line if they wanted one when the got independence.

And the first world part of the country wouldn't have to do such 'priggish' things as ending Jim Crow or endlessly fighting disenfranchisement. And those who feel oppressed by such outrageous intrusions as teaching evolution in schools, would have their own country to move to. Why they could have their war with Iran and a president who's testosterone levels are announced on the Dr Oz show while the rest of the country could move on. Everyone wins!

They get big dings for 'starting a business' and 'protecting minority shareholders'.

Bias much?

"Switzerland achieved its highest score of 5.8 out of 7 in the WEF Global Competitiveness Report 2016/2017"

In other words, companies need to be exceedingly efficient, i. e. competitive, to survive.

This has been this way as long as I remember, that means for at least thirty years. And the hostile environment has only exacerbated massively in the last five years.

Australia's ranking seems extremely puzzling though. The general perception is that it is very very competitive economy.

We have a residential real estate bubble that is worse than that of the US in 2006. Median house price to median income ratios in Sydney are worse than almost anywhere but Hong Kong. We have the highest per capita private mortgage debt of any country. This represents a massive unproductive overhead on the Australian economy, as the elevated cost of shelter flows into all other costs. Tax arrangements in Australia make leveraged real estate speculation more favourable than any other kind of investment, especially productive investment with any sort of risk attached. More than 50% of the existing mortgage debt is owed overseas via the big 4 Australian banks, so we are constantly exporting what wealth we have overseas as interest, so we can sell shitty houses built in the 1960s to each other for AUD1.2 million.

Many sectors of the Australian economy are filled by a limited number of participants (e.g. banking, supermarkets, hardware, telecommunications, petrol) who are most interested in rent seeking, and not interested in competing with each other.

The Australian economy has been a net importer of capital every year since the early 1970s, an almost ever year since post WW2. If you run a current account deficit so egregiously, the result is you sell off all your productive assets to stay solvent. This also means the pool of Australian capital available to invest in Australia itself is very limited. Australia has some of the highest immigration intake in the developed world, but no long term infrastructure planning to account for such population growth. Since most immigration increases the population of the large cities, the lack of investment in transport infrastructure is most apparent. We grow the economy by increasing the captias. Per capital net disposable income has been static or falling for the last 5 years.

Politically, Australia has been without vision for real economic development outside rewarding entrenched rent seekers for the last 20 years. We have not seen any significant increases in productivity over that period.

If DPRKinfo.kr would write DPRK is the best, we all laugh?

Could you tell me about the Swiss culture--at bit? I know it's a huge topic. Just some of the differences you see between the Swiss, and say Americans.

I mainly interested in the Millenials.

What do they think of Americans?

Do they basically have the same hobbies?

Are their any stark differences in what they value?

Do they view Americans as spoiled?

Do they fear us?

This next question is very specific, and probally weird. I heard teens love 50's Cadilliacs. I love them too, but I heard they are more desired there, than in America? What is it about older Caddys?

Are their fashion differences? Here we have kids spending hundred of dollars on tennis shoes, specifically Nikes. Has that fad hit Switzerland?

Are women more, or less fashion conscience than Americans?

Just any insider observation?

I've been interested in Switzerland since I began Watch Repair a decade ago.

Swiss people are not very different to Americans in what they value, what hobbies they have, etc. They are much less outgoing, however. In America you can walk into a bar anywhere, at any time, sit down and have a spontaneous conversation with the barman or strangers sitting at the bar. This never happens in Switzerland. Do not expect it even if you speak good German. People in Switzerland keep to themselves. Because this makes it very hard to make friends there are a lot of "expat" events for immigrants to meet each other, and at these events you can go to a bar and start chatting to people of a similar age and background to yourself and make friends. This is how I made most of my friends: I have a few good Swiss friends, but overall most of my friends throughout my time in Switzerland were other foreigners.

Swiss people do not "fear" Americans, why would you have that idea? They do not spend a whole lot of time thinking about Americans in particular. The vast majority of people who live in the cities (and you want to be in the cities), and especially teenagers, do not own cars at all. Not only is there no need (public transport and taxis can get you everywhere) but there isn't usually enough parking and it's very expensive. People generally only buy a car once they settle down and move out of the cities.

People on the street in Switzerland tend to be well dressed and fashionable, and the women especially so. The high streets are dominated by fashion brands and shops. I can't compare this to the USA because I've only been to a few places there, but it's definitely a brand and fashion conscious place.

Its from a comedy show which do shorts like this on all sorts of stereotypes, however this was the one of the most controversial ones. The US embassy even got involved in the end.

Some jurisdictions market slight nuances in their laws to foreigners as a perk, and other jurisdictions simply have, and if you can read you can avoid the stereotypes.

You can read more in my blogpost "8 reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in IT": https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t...

Full disclosure: I am a part-time tech recruiter and well-connected in the tech-scene in Zurich and if you're thinking of moving here and getting a job in tech, feel free to contact me - you find my email address in my HN profile.