4 ms·

What would the Swiss do without the shady business brought by corrupt foreigners? The extremely high standard of living is directly related to money laundering

• mike_hearn 11y ago
  They would do fine. The idea that Switzerland is only successful because of banking privacy is a common myth. The entire financial sector including things like pensions, insurance and corporate banking is only somewhere between 6-10% of the Swiss GDP, depending on how you precisely account for the risk premium. The construction industry alone is about 6% of the GDP. Switzerland does a lot of things beyond finance. Also, though Switzerland has a big financial sector it's not massively larger than other countries. If you use the "output method" then 10% of the Swiss GDP is finance. The next biggest is Ireland with 7%. So that's a 3% difference, yet I don't see anyone claiming that Ireland would be hosed without finance. If you actually spend any time in Switzerland you'll rapidly figure out why it does well - things are just remarkably well run there, and Swiss people are rather industrious and skilled. Their government stays out of expensive foreign wars and other boondoggles. Unemployment is extremely low. The regions compete on tax rates, which keeps them low, and that in turn attracts wealthy people (who are then taxed on their global wealth, not just assets in Switzerland). It's very democratic.