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See the example I added above. This has nothing to do with high taxes but rather with Switzerland catering for luxury export stuff (medicines, watches, banking etc..) that relies on a huge external economy.
I understand what you mean, however I don't really see medicines and banking (in general) as luxury products.
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The rest of the world can do a lot of things when America develops drugs for them, protects them from harm, and designs new technology so humanity can progress. The peace that America has wrought across the world is unprecedented and, in doing so, she has made the world a safer place to trade than ever before. And trade greatly benefits nations like Switzerland. I'm not claiming they're freeloaders. This benefits us…
Can you provide any empirical evidence for this claim?
As for the Pax Americana thesis, that is harder to get empirical evidence for [5], but some evidence for this thesis is that the NATO alliance explicitly has 1% GDP military expenditure minimums, which the non-US NATO allies have been shirking on for some while now[2]. So at least the underlying agreements that make up the international system do, on some level, endorse the "collective action" thesis of enforcing the pax.
[1]: Asymmetric Growth and Institutions in an Interdependent World, http://economics.mit.edu/files/11377
[2]: Please do not misconstrue this statement to be some kind of endorsement of the current administration's dislike of NATO; I mean no such thing. President Obama acknowledged this, and lobbied multiple NATO members to increase their spending to meet the minimum, and he was no enemy of NATO.
[3]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-10-09/americans... and here:
[4]: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2012/09/wil...
[5]: While this article by Dan Drenzer is overall skeptical of the thesis from the perspective of this being a good deal for America, it does provide a lot of citations to articles that claim that this is a good deal for the rest of the world, and is a great start to examine the related work in this area: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/ISEC_a_00124...
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I think it would if we didn't spend so much money in military and defense. Edit: My reasoning is the result of seeing this type of information everywhere, I could be wrong: http://dy00k1db5oznd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/...
The rest of the world can do a lot of things when America develops drugs for them, protects them from harm, and designs new technology so humanity can progress. The peace that America has wrought across the world is unprecedented and, in doing so, she has made the world a safer place to trade than ever before. And trade greatly benefits nations like Switzerland. I'm not claiming they're freeloaders. This benefits us…
In my opinion this is missing an important thing: Does the Swiss model scale? For example, the Singapore model can't scale. It's based on rich people and corporations arbitraging the international fiscal system. You can't have another Singapore without having another East Asia and West with it. Swiss is definitively a privileged place that is benefiting from the overall wealth of Europe and many other countries. We c…
But if the export markets were as rich as Switzerland, they would buy even more luxury watches. So I don't see how your point makes sense. The Swiss model does seem to scale. The population has scaled from 6.2 million in 1970 to about 8.2 million today. GDP per capita also went up significantly during this time, and outpaced GDP per capita growth in the USA. You can find a lot of people who write off the Swiss exampl…
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage_in_Switzerlan...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But if the export markets were as rich as Switzerland, they would buy even more luxury watches. So I don't see how your point makes sense. The Swiss model does seem to scale. The population has scaled from 6.2 million in 1970 to about 8.2 million today. GDP per capita also went up significantly during this time, and outpaced GDP per capita growth in the USA. You can find a lot of people who write off the Swiss exampl…
> The Swiss model does seem to scale. The population has scaled from 6.2 million in 1970 to about 8.2 million today. GDP per capita also went up significantly during this time, and outpaced GDP per capita growth in the USA. While that is certainly adorable (and, seriously, good for them!), "scale" in GP is referring to: "Will it work for 450M people at the same time?" -- or in China's case: "Will it work for 1.3B peo…
Do you mean admirable?
I have a hard time thinking of an economy as being adorable, except maybe if the whole thing is very physically small (like, a city of miniscule people, or something like that)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The rest of the world can do a lot of things when America develops drugs for them, protects them from harm, and designs new technology so humanity can progress. The peace that America has wrought across the world is unprecedented and, in doing so, she has made the world a safer place to trade than ever before. And trade greatly benefits nations like Switzerland. I'm not claiming they're freeloaders. This benefits us…
Can you provide any empirical evidence for this claim?
In my opinion this is missing an important thing: Does the Swiss model scale? For example, the Singapore model can't scale. It's based on rich people and corporations arbitraging the international fiscal system. You can't have another Singapore without having another East Asia and West with it. Swiss is definitively a privileged place that is benefiting from the overall wealth of Europe and many other countries. We c…
Is it scalable? I'm not sure if this is the properly framed question. It implies that other nations are not predestined to be like Switzerland. I think the more appropriate question is: what policies should we implement to be like Switzerland?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it would if we didn't spend so much money in military and defense. Edit: My reasoning is the result of seeing this type of information everywhere, I could be wrong: http://dy00k1db5oznd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/...
Per capita the US spends roughly 2x as much as Switzerland on defence.
You may have a better reference than Wikipedia, though - thoughts?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...
The U.S. is very behind many European countries in the work-life balance department. It's kinda surprising that America – with its liberal policies for private companies – is so backwards when it comes to caring about their employees. The points in the article could apply to policies/norms in Sweden as well. Here, we get at least 4 weeks of paid vacation per year, as well as some insurances and a very generous parent…
> The points in the article could apply to policies/norms in Sweden as well. Here, we get at least 4 weeks of paid vacation per year No, mandatory EU minimums enforce at least 5 weeks of vacation.
In my opinion this is missing an important thing: Does the Swiss model scale? For example, the Singapore model can't scale. It's based on rich people and corporations arbitraging the international fiscal system. You can't have another Singapore without having another East Asia and West with it. Swiss is definitively a privileged place that is benefiting from the overall wealth of Europe and many other countries. We c…
Fees don't even reach $2k/year to study at undergraduate/graduate level and children are encouraged to think vocationally from a young age.
Also, teachers are very well paid (my partner is a high school teacher and starting salaries are $6-8k/month) and have to undergo 5 years of training (to teach a subject at high school level you need a master in the subject).