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Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

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Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#91

Post by jomamaxx »

a3camero wrote: post #60
tonfa wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason is simple: tax-evation and the like 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…

Here's a well-known Canadian Supreme Court case about transfer pricing that highlights the role of a Swiss subsidiary in a scheme to dramatically reduce taxes on income earned from selling pharmaceuticals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_v_GlaxoSmithKline_Inc

Transfer pricing is not 'tax evasion' - it's 'tax avoidance'.

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 :)

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#92

Post by erispoe »

tigershark wrote: post #74
erispoe wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland managed to build a highly specialized economy in several high-value sectors: pharma, banking, computer science, micro-mechanics, manufacturing machines...

ok, why all the high tech industries that come to my mind are based in SV, UK, SE Asia, Japan but I can't thing of anything in Switzerland? Honestly it is the first time in my life that I hear the association computer science - Switzerland..

Because you have no interest in micro-mechanics or manufacturing machines? ETH and EPFL are one of the best universities in the world for CS. No one else than yourself is responsible for your own biases.

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#93

Post by woah »

jomamaxx wrote: post #91
a3camero wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a well-known Canadian Supreme Court case about transfer pricing that highlights the role of a Swiss subsidiary in a scheme to dramatically reduce taxes on income earned from selling pharmaceuticals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_v_GlaxoSmithKline_Inc

Transfer pricing is not 'tax evasion' - it's 'tax avoidance'. 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 :)

What's the difference? Does 'tax evasion' involve falsehoods?

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#94

Post by guest »

Anyone got a proper map over black fibre and the national grid of Switzerland?

Could it be possible that "google" simply wants to access the data inbetween germany, france and italy (etc)? Onyx is set up on route between Zurich and those nations..?

Zürich [url]https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%BCrich#Geografi[/url] Onyx [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onyx_%28interception_system%29...

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#95

Post by pjc50 »

HSO wrote: post #2

It better be, given the cost of living and the salaries here… :-) 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, objectiv…

Well, remember that this is effectively Schwab scoring how well a country agrees with them on policy. There's quite a bit of depth to it, but it's not 'directly' measuring competitiveness. It's more like racing form vs. race results.

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.

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#96

Post by bpodgursky »

clock_tower wrote: post #87
heydenberk wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was making this point a few weeks ago and after looking into it more, I still think it's a valuable point to raise, but the truth is more nuanced than I expected. 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 Miss…

> 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, an…

> a traffic jam increases GDP

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

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#97

Post by hobo_mark »

uola wrote: post #82
HSO wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, in Google's case, there's ETH Zurich. Just today, I saw in the newspaper (WSJ university rankings[1]) that ETH was rated top of the pops globally in computer science. (On a related note, I remember vaguely that Disney built a research lab here in Zurich just because of one professor and his team.[2]) Also, in the good old times (= before the rise of right-wing populism and the referendum) Google could attract g…

While I can't find a source at the moment, the story I heard is that some early Google hire had ties to ETH. It's also that Google is in many ways not structure like an engineering company. Being closely connected to a school fits their management methodology quite well. > 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 a…

You probably mean Urs Hölzle:

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?

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#98

Post by slantedview »

davidw wrote: post #41
slantedview wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you confused my comment with someone else's. I never said it wasn't complicated, I said it's a joke, for exactly the reasons you mention among others.

It's not "a joke", though: it's a very competitive country in many ways. Facile comparisons of one or two aspects don't do the subject justice.

It only seems not to be a joke when you discount that we're taking on societal debt in the form of looming healthcare/retirement/education expenses. This will reach an end.

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#99

Post by vidarh »

tigershark wrote: post #74
erispoe wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland managed to build a highly specialized economy in several high-value sectors: pharma, banking, computer science, micro-mechanics, manufacturing machines...

ok, why all the high tech industries that come to my mind are based in SV, UK, SE Asia, Japan but I can't thing of anything in Switzerland? Honestly it is the first time in my life that I hear the association computer science - Switzerland..

> Honestly it is the first time in my life that I hear the association computer science - Switzerland..

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.

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#100

Post by vidarh »

raphaelj wrote: post #65
heydenberk wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was making this point a few weeks ago and after looking into it more, I still think it's a valuable point to raise, but the truth is more nuanced than I expected. 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 Miss…

I think you forgot to take into account the fact that that Europeans don't work as much as North Americans: https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm 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…

Indeed, working hours explain surprisingly little: France usually has a higher GDP per capita than the UK despite far shorter working hours. They also move pretty much in sync.
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