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Landlocked and not in the EU; though friendly of course. Switzerland's wealth comes from a number of causes; like a high quality education for example. You mig

Landlocked and not in the EU; though friendly of course. Switzerland's wealth comes from a number of causes; like a high quality education for example. You might call this the 'developed' world or the 'high income' world. But there are many countries with similar high quality education systems. The actual reason why they are doing better than those is actually narrow. https://tradingeconomics.com/switzerland/government-debt-to-gdp https://tradingeconomics.com/switzerland/government-debt-to-... The one key thing they do better than the others is balancing their budget. You can have your welfare state, but someone has to pay for it. If you have high taxes, people and businesses leave only when the value for your taxation doesnt meet expectations. Switzerland has high taxation; personal income tax of 40% means you work for the government 40% of the year. Did the government really provide you that much value? That's a personal decision. What Switzerland is doing better than the others is balancing that. Ensuring value vs taxation ratio is correct. By keeping the debt low, your debt servicing it low and you provide more value per $. How do you get here? They have a literal balanced budget amendment but how to get there? Their consensus government and the lack of us vs them is just so much better.

panick21_ 1y ago
> personal income tax of 40% means you work for the government 40% of the year In Switzerland government directly spends about 32.0% of GDP. That is well below OECD avg. In how we got there. Basically the government was naturally pretty conservative in spending terms for a long term. In the 90s all of a sudden debt shot up, going from 10% of GDP to 30% of GDP in 10 years (that federal only, its more if you take all the rest). This was something that wasn't popular, and we voted on it. https://www.bk.admin.ch/ch/d/pore/va/20011202/index.html https://www.bk.admin.ch/ch/d/pore/va/20011202/index.html 84.7% of people voted to adopt the "debt break". Since then debt as % of GDP has been going down or remained flat. We did take on extra debt for Covid, but this by law has to be paid back by 2035.
- laurencerowe 1y ago
  Much of this is a result of the way health insurance and spending is classified, with only 35% paid for by government in Switzerland rather than 80% in most other EU countries and 55% in the US. Adjust for that and government spending would be around 39%, still low for a rich European country, but not so far off of somewhere like the Netherlands or UK (about 44%).
  - panick21_ 1y ago
    Sure, but there are private aspects to the system and if we are going to list everything that is strongly regulated by the government you likely get to a higher number. The Dutch, as far as I know, but not sure, also have some kind of private insurance system, so might get hard to compare.
    - laurencerowe 1y ago
      Healthcare is such a large part of national expenditure that I think it is worth adjusting for it when comparing government expenditure shares of GDP. It is around 12% in Switzerland. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.GD.ZS?locations=CH-NL-DE-GB https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.GD.ZS?locat... Many countries organise healthcare largely through non-government health insurers, but those still get counted as part of government expenditure in both Netherlands (69%) and Germany (80%), not much less than the UK's (83%) with a National Health Service. Switzerland on 35% is a huge outlier here. In terms of administration the Swiss system seems not completely dissimilar to the German system in that coverage is mandatory and there are a range of non-profit providers to choose between. But the Swiss scheme is classified as private expenditure because its mandatory payments are made directly with income based subsidies rather than equivalent amounts being paid through the tax system. That one simple accounting change lowers the government share of GDP by 5.4%. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.GHED.CH.ZS?locations=CH-NL-GB-DE https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.GHED.CH.ZS?locat...
ahtihn 1y ago
> Switzerland has high taxation; It certainly does not. It's among the lowest in Europe. Significantly lower than surrounding countries.
- ExpertAdvisor01 1y ago
  Heavily depends on the Canton, but yes Switzerlands is one of the lower tax countries.
- incomingpain 1y ago
  >It certainly does not. It's among the lowest in Europe. Significantly lower than surrounding countries. In europe But the middle east is low taxation, high wealth for example.

panick21_ 1y ago

> personal income tax of 40% means you work for the government 40% of the year In Switzerland government directly spends about 32.0% of GDP. That is well below OECD avg. In how we got there. Basically the government was naturally pretty conservative in spending terms for a long term. In the 90s all of a sudden debt shot up, going from 10% of GDP to 30% of GDP in 10 years (that federal only, its more if you take all the rest). This was something that wasn't popular, and we voted on it. https://www.bk.admin.ch/ch/d/pore/va/20011202/index.html https://www.bk.admin.ch/ch/d/pore/va/20011202/index.html 84.7% of people voted to adopt the "debt break". Since then debt as % of GDP has been going down or remained flat. We did take on extra debt for Covid, but this by law has to be paid back by 2035.

laurencerowe 1y ago
Much of this is a result of the way health insurance and spending is classified, with only 35% paid for by government in Switzerland rather than 80% in most other EU countries and 55% in the US. Adjust for that and government spending would be around 39%, still low for a rich European country, but not so far off of somewhere like the Netherlands or UK (about 44%).
- panick21_ 1y ago
  Sure, but there are private aspects to the system and if we are going to list everything that is strongly regulated by the government you likely get to a higher number. The Dutch, as far as I know, but not sure, also have some kind of private insurance system, so might get hard to compare.
  - laurencerowe 1y ago
    Healthcare is such a large part of national expenditure that I think it is worth adjusting for it when comparing government expenditure shares of GDP. It is around 12% in Switzerland. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.GD.ZS?locations=CH-NL-DE-GB https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.GD.ZS?locat... Many countries organise healthcare largely through non-government health insurers, but those still get counted as part of government expenditure in both Netherlands (69%) and Germany (80%), not much less than the UK's (83%) with a National Health Service. Switzerland on 35% is a huge outlier here. In terms of administration the Swiss system seems not completely dissimilar to the German system in that coverage is mandatory and there are a range of non-profit providers to choose between. But the Swiss scheme is classified as private expenditure because its mandatory payments are made directly with income based subsidies rather than equivalent amounts being paid through the tax system. That one simple accounting change lowers the government share of GDP by 5.4%. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.GHED.CH.ZS?locations=CH-NL-GB-DE https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.GHED.CH.ZS?locat...

ahtihn 1y ago

> Switzerland has high taxation; It certainly does not. It's among the lowest in Europe. Significantly lower than surrounding countries.

ExpertAdvisor01 1y ago
Heavily depends on the Canton, but yes Switzerlands is one of the lower tax countries.
incomingpain 1y ago
>It certainly does not. It's among the lowest in Europe. Significantly lower than surrounding countries. In europe But the middle east is low taxation, high wealth for example.