Swiss reject additional immigration curbs | Hacker News Reader

Swiss reject additional immigration curbs

bbc.com

107 pointsimmigg112 comments

Whatever one might think about the result of this "votation",I think it's great that people can make their voices heard directly.It keeps politicians in check.Sometimes the people can take bad decisions,but at least they own that decision,they are not constently delegating power to an "elite" that decides for them.

I wish more countries had this "votation" system.And that's the whole problem with the EU.Why would some folks in Germany ,for instance, decide for people living in Spain, or Greece ?it cannot work on the long run. Would americans accept Canada,or Mexico having a saying in how USA should manage its finances?its agriculture? There is a need for international agreements,of course,but USA isnt ruled by people abroad.Switzerland isnt part of the EU,that why it remains a true democracy.

> Would americans accept Canada,or Mexico having a saying in how USA should manage its finances?its agriculture?

Would Californians accept Alaskans having a saying in how they should manage their agriculture? Texas/Maine/oil?

AFAIK neither California or Alaska are countries.

They share a currency.

The US federal model is considerably more devolved than most regions in most countries. The EU nations, particularly the so-called Eurozone where currency is shared and economies are tightly bound, are closer to US states than most other independent countries are. There's a spectrum.

> They share a currency.

So do the US and Zimbabwe.

The issue is only partly economic, it's also cultural. Europe's countries are far more culturally varied than US states; different opinions, different priorities, different norms. Crimea, Basque, Scot, Northern Ireland... The economies are also sufficiently varied that one ring to rule them all is absurd, resulting in tensions between the historical cultural groups, aka countries. The UK is increasingly interesting on this matter.

They share a currency and have intertwined economies, the currency is managed for all the countries and this is nothing like the Zimbabwe situation.

> "this is nothing like the Zimbabwe situation"

Um, yeah. Think you've misunderstood.

Probably. Wouldn't be the first time, won't be the last!

What is a country?

I'll just keep on turning it around - why would some folks in New York, for instance, decide for people living in Alabama, or Wyoming?

The total population of Wyoming is of course lower than the city/county of San Francisco, which means that in reality, things are more biased towards Wyoming deciding for Californians, because they still get their two senators and one representative despite the small population.

Yet nobody in Alabama wants to secede. A significant chunk of European citizens are against the European Union.

Plus, the cultural, historic, linguistic similarities between Alamaba and Woyming are infinitely greater than between the UK and Croatia. A person visiting Alabama from Texas isn't a "stranger", and wouldn't be treated or considered as one.

> Plus, the cultural, historic, linguistic similarities between Alamaba and Woyming are infinitely greater than between the UK and Croatia. A person visiting Alabama from Texas isn't a "stranger", and wouldn't be treated or considered as one.

Move a city boy from New Jersey to Alaska or deep Lousiana and see how much of a stranger he ends up being, even if the language is technically the same.

Haha. You haven't ever been to Alabama, I take it? In 2012 they got 32000 people to sign a petition in favor of secession.

>What is a country?

Google "Westphalian Sovereignty" and go from there.

That just goes down the rabbit hole. What is a nation state? What is a nation?

Is Scotland a country? Is Wales?

Is Germany? Is the UK?

The point behind the Scotland question is if UK can have some control over Scotland with Scotland remaining a country, even without being fully sovereign from the UK, why doesn't the same apply to members of other higher-level states like EU?

One can make arguments like "why would some folks in England, for instance, decide for people living in Scotland, or Northern Ireland?" but where do you draw the line? Wales has less autonomy than Scotland but is still a "country" on Wikipedia, are they oppressed? Inverness has social policy dictated from the Lowlands, is it not a true democracy then? `davidw in the next comment thread over isn't too happy with the amount of power Wyoming has over California, can it work in the long run? Or is it only EU federation that HN will complain about?

How do you define a country? Is Scotland a country?

As we can see with Switzerland, it strenghtens extreme positions.

Let me ask you a question: why should people in Northrhine-Westphalia "decide for" people in Bavaria? Shouldn't we dissolve our federal parliament?

Having done that, why do the people living in Stuttgart "decide for" the people living in Karlsruhe? Shouldn't we dissolve the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg?

The answer is, of course, that decisions should be made at the lowest level where they are making sense. And in this regard the EU is imperfect.

But you're throwing out the baby with the bath water.

The referendum system has been in place for more than a hundred years and it's hard to argue that Switzerland has a tradition of extremism.

Far right parties are on the rise everywhere in Europe, regardless of the voting system.

Obviously you didn't understand how Swiss federalism works. We (generally) do not decide for/against other cantons or tell them how they should handle things. Unless it's something that concerns the whole country equally.

See the vote today: There was an initiative about the abolition of flat taxes for rich non-working foreigners. It was broadly rejected around the country. But if a canton still wants to abolish it, they can do that (and some of them do it already).

That it strengthens extreme positions is rubbish. And even if it does, it would have a ridiculously small effect.

Once abolition of slavery was an "extreme position", wouldn't it have been better that the US voted on it, rather than burning down the country?

California is actually a cautionary tale IMHO of the perils of a referendum or "votation" system. There's not necessarily an intrinsic problem with the system, but its effectiveness often hinges on how the questions are asked and framed.

For instance, suppose the following: a majority of voters support Project A and a majority of voters support Project B, but Projects A and B are expensive and a majority of voters would oppose spending money on both Projects A and B.

If you do separate, parallel yes-or-no referendums on both A and B (as frequently happens in California), it is likely that both would pass, resulting in a sub-optimal outcome as a sub-majority wanted both.

With a smaller group of legislators, you can do things like non-binding votes to allow proponents to assess support and modify or withdraw their proposals accordingly (if A is more popular than B, then B can withdraw in favor of A) or sequential votes (if A has already passed, then people will vote no on B). The higher number of stakeholders involved with a referendum and the general cost of running an election make this less feasible with the direct democracy system.

> If you do separate, parallel yes-or-no referendums on both A and B (as frequently happens in California), it is likely that both would pass, resulting in a sub-optimal outcome as practically no one really wanted both.

Somewhat redundant measures in California that are proposed at the same time generally are legally conflicting, which means that if both are passed, only the measure with the greatest margin actually goes into effect. I can't think of any real examples of simultaneous, partially-redundant measures that both had majority support and had no legal conflict, so that both went into effect, where you could make a plausible case that the kind of problem you describe was in play. Can you present any?

I can't remember any that actually passed (there are quite a few "we can't take this off the ballot but please vote for this other measure" changes every few years though).

On further thought, the real issue is more related to the budget ones. E.g. there is technically no conflict between "don't raise taxes" and "spend money on X". Edited accordingly.

I do seem to recall that we've had propositions in California that were conditionally tied to each other -- Prop. N specifically says it takes effect only if Prop. N - 1 fails, or something like that -- so I think this kind of problem can be addressed, if the initiative drafters do their work well.

A bigger problem, in my opinion, is that a bare majority is sufficient to amend the state Constitution. I think at least a 60% supermajority should be required.

I think a bare majority for State Constitutional amendments is fine -- but it should be a majority for the same proposal in two elections a year apart.

This is assuming the voters know enough to have a coherent volition. The clear majority of the people in the US think the government should spend less on foreign aid. If asked what percentage of government revenue should be spent on foreign aid they would name a figure much higher than we currently spend. But these aren't inconsistent, because the typical voter thinks we spend far, far more on foreign aid than we do. All this means that in terms of referendums there is no such thing as the will of the voters, there is only how you ask the question.

Now, if we could get the entire population of the US into a room to argue over the budget for a week with a vote at the end I'm sure that the result would be better than our legislators would do but of course that's logistically impossible. So barring that I'll take representative democracy over referendums any day. Legislators know that voters have a distinct tendency to vote the bums out of office if they feel things are getting worse.

>>Why would some folks in Germany ,for instance, decide for people living in Spain, or Greece ?i

Because there wouldn't, ideally, "be" German or Greek or Spanish 'folks' in any sense other than culturally; i.e. complete free trade between these united zones of economic exchange is what it would 'supposedly' be all about, in the ideal Union sense. Germans get their beach houses, Spanish get their education and whatever else they might want from the Tutonic realms, and so around it goes. Imagine if the EU really was just a mass of citizens, who suddenly realized just what they had in common. Alas, its very difficult for such enlightenment to engage in Europe, it seems ..

It saddens me that any opinion that doubts the grand federal EU is almost automatically downvoted, regardless of the nature of said opinion.

Are they? Personally, I'm wary of a federal EU as well, but I still find that a poorly argued post. You shouldn't assume you know the reasons for the downvotes.

(Not that I downvoted it, mind you)

The direct-democracy thing is unique to Switzerland. I don't know of any other country where politicians threaten each other publicly saying things like "If you continue behaving badly at XY, we're going to make a referendum, the people will decide and you'll be screwed".

Also, Swiss people tend to use "us" when they talk about their politicians whereas Germans use "they". This really shows how Swiss stand behind decision made by their government whereas Germans - in comparison - act like infants being totally at the mercy of their leaders (who are elected every four years and basically do what they want during that time).

The theoretical down-site of direct democracy is that if the population is stupid, you'll get instant stupid decisions forced onto politicians. A small, well-educated population shouldn't have this problem though.

More of my experiences within Switzerland you'll find in here: "Eight reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in IT" http://goo.gl/EIX4UX (Full disclosure: If you're from the EU and looking for a tech-job over here, I'd be happy to help out).

The theoretical down-site of direct democracy is that if the population is stupid, you'll get instant stupid decisions forced onto politicians.

A population can be educated and still pass controversial laws. Switzerland, through a referendum, voted in favour of banning the building of minarets a few years ago. It was a completely democratic decision by the populace (57% in favour of a ban). Mosques can still be built, just without minarets.

What surprised me as someone viewing this from abroad was how this could become a political issue worthy of a referendum. Even more surprising was some of the campaigning around the issue, particularly the menacing and controversial posters in favour of a ban [1]. The impression I was left with (and tell me if it's an unfair one) was that Switzerland, a thoroughly democratic country, had a rightwing and reactionary streak to it (one which it's perfectly entitled to have).

[1] http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/files/2010/11/ch-1.jpg

> Also, Swiss people tend to use "us" when they talk about their politicians whereas Germans use "they". This really shows how Swiss stand behind decision made by their government whereas Germans - in comparison - act like infants being totally at the mercy of their leaders (who are elected every four years and basically do what they want during that time).

I'm Swiss and I'm having a hard time agreeing with this sentiment.

You're right, it doesn't work at scale. California (four times more populous than Switzerland) is plagued with plebiscites on every imaginable topic. Often they get passed into law while being in direct conflict with other previous or even concurrent referenda.

California, from what I've heard, has a major issue because it doesn't effectively have a constitution or an effective legislative structure that can stand above the People's mood at the moment:

Unlike other jurisdictions, California's history has been shaped by simple-majority citizen-initiated constitutional amendment referendums, with a low threshold for getting on the ballot and precedence over any statutes passed by the legislature. These are so common and easy to sell that judges have been required to interpret the people's will when they pass conflicting referendums - and this was happening often enough that their Supreme Court felt the need to create a vote plurality standard to decide which to follow.

Conventional constitutional democracy has supermajority elements; California is one example of what might happen if they were all simple-majority and you treated the constitution as the frequently-rewritten book of laws, and the only people who could practically write this type of law given a divided legislature, were citizens.

I've heard the big problem is that a referendum can't raise taxes, but can require the state to spend money.

It would be cool if each proposal had to be financed (e.g. "sponsoring this thing will require raising state income tax by 0.024%"), though I guess that's impractical?

That's not true, a referendum can raise taxes. However on account of a previous referendum these tax-raising propositions need a 2/3rds supermajority to pass, while spending projects require only a bare majority.

That's not really an issue with scale so much as uneducated Americans being unable to function.

In the grand scheme of things, I doubt the education differential between Americans and the Swiss is enough to explain why direct democracy works in one place and not the other.

Maybe californians don't have a sense of ownership towards their state as much as swiss people have.

I don't think you can really compare between systems drawn differently. The nine-county Bay Area is as populous as Switzerland and you can bet that the Bay Area by itself would pass wildly different referenda than does the state of California as a whole. Consider what would happen if you threw together Switzerland with Austria, Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia. That would be about the same size as California and I'm sure the plebiscites would be hilarious.

Okay but why?

Good intentions? Open hearted?

Or looking for cheap labor?

(I'm actually asking, no clue about Swiss culture)

Switzerland has had a fraught relationship with immigration in recent years, check out these jaw-dropping election posters:

http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/09_01/SwissSheepL_468x...

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/images/stories/large/2009/02...

In 2009, they passed a referrendum to ban the construction of new mosques with minarets, accompanied by even scarier posters:

https://www.ithaca.edu/depts/i/SVP,_Stop._Consider_a_Minaret...

So to an outsider, this result is a pleasant surprise.

Just because some crazy people created very offensive posters, we shouldn't assume that the general swiss population is so anti-immigration (and racist).

Those posters (the first two anyway) came from the largest and most powerful swiss political party. I don't mean to say that the swiss are racist, but we can safely say that there is quite serious tension in any country whose largest party is putting out posters with white sheep kicking out black sheep.

Any swiss people reading: does the phrase "black sheep" have the same meaning in the various swiss languages as it does in english?

I remember reading from an SVP/UDC official that they picked the black sheep imagery not because it is racist, no no, how dare you, but precisely because the expression works in all national languages.

Yes, it means the same like in English.

There were people from the far left wing that tried to establish that it was meant literally, which would then become racist. But that looked so far fetched that it wasn't part of the official strategy of the far left parties.

...it's racist no matter what. It has a connotation (even if it's unintentional which I entirely doubt) of racism, and the overt message (our unifed in-group needs to expel members of this out-group from our space) is racist.

I literally do not see how you could look at this and not see racism. Is your concept of racism limited to overt statements of the form "People whose skin colours are different from mine are bad"?

Expelling criminals (which was the topic of the referendum) is racist?

I always asked myself how one can misinterpret such a widely used metaphor (except intentionally).

Because when their posters aren't urging people to say no to black sheep, they're asking them to say no to... people that have brown skin?

http://vincentarsenault.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/suisse-u... http://voixdexils.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/udc_ok2.jpg http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-44n7Zc5xJdM/TigsGejS9LI/AAAAAAAAAH...

In fairness to the UDP, they do also appear to have a poster design involving nice, happy, multi-racial Swiss people holding hands, but I bet the ones involving saying NON to scary dark foreign things (and there are a lot of designs that fit this pattern which don't involve sheep metaphors) appear on more billboards.

When even the Daily Mail - the most-widely read source of anti-immigrant rhetoric in the UK - observes that your campaigns look like they might be jumping on popular racist sentiment, they probably are http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-480493/Proposed-Swis...

The whole point of a metaphor is that it means two things at once, and each reinforces the other. Did this not come up?

(BTW if it were meant literally it would be a poster concerning the aesthetics of animal husbandry. Presumably nobody was arguing this.)

Yes for the german speaking part. I can't say for the other languages. And these posters stirred quite a controversy back when they were put up.

Edit: seeing as the first poster is in french, I'd guess it means the same there too.

No, but the party whose logo is on the posters did get voted by the general Swiss population to 54 out of 200 National Council seats...

This law was not backed by the party that usually campaigns for harsher immigration laws. The reason is that this party just recently managed to pass an immigration law so harsh it's incompatible with Switzerland's treaties with the EU. All through the campaign they said if the law would pass then we would just renegotiate the treaties. Nine months later no one knows yet how to convince the EU of accepting to change the treaties, or how to interpret that law in way the EU won't mind. And there seems to be a wide agreement that people want to keep the treaties. So we have this huge unsolved problem and on top of that we have to vote on an insanely restrictive immigration law that goes much further than the last one, and doesn't even really pretend it won't harm the economy.

When you vote you get a little brochure with the recommendations of the different parties. Here in Geneva every single party, even the most rabid racists, recommended to vote no. I think it's the first time in my life I saw this unanimity.

The EU will not change those treaties, because it has no real reason to.

And especially now: How do you refuse something to David Cameron's UK (a big member state), but hand it to Switzerland (a small non-member state)?

In the case of the UK, it would demolish the very core idea and foundation of the EU. This UK parallel makes it very, very unlikely that the EU would give anything to Switzerland that could even only hint at flexibility in this matter.

The "best" outcome Switzerland can hope for (unless they repeal that immigration reform) is a state where Switzerland is in breach of the treaties, but the EU looks the other way, either on purpose, or because the member states cannot agree on a way to handle the situation. This couldn't last forever, though.

And by the way: Trying to have a treaty re-negotiated has already worked out not so very well for Switzerland in the case of Zurich airport. ;-)

Although I have to admit, we Germans basically did the same thing to Switzerland in the case of the CDs with tax data. It is a shitty thing to do.

Heh, true, if the Swiss were to be allowed a renegotiation, all the arguments about how the UK either wouldn't be allowed to do the same, or wouldn't be allowed to leave the EU, change it's laws and occupy a common market position like Switzerland ... well they'd all look like lies!

The next few years are going to be interesting for the EU. The Brits are looking at trying to stop total free movement (or at least end social protections for those that do), the Germans have actually been looking at something similar (restrictions on access to Social Security). The UK is also currently in the grip of some sort of polarisation of politics with the right wing making gains in unexpected places (UKIP), and a serious public dialog about leaving the EU entirely. France is in the grips of a major swing to the right (The Front National would probably win a presidential election if one were held now)...

Interesting times.

And by the way, Switzerland is not part of the EU (they're part of the Schengen agreement, part of the EFTA and have some agreements with the EU)

What about "non-member state" seemed unclear to you?

Nothing, but discussing "How do you refuse something to David Cameron's UK (a big member state), but hand it to (a non member state)" is kind of obvious no?

One is a member, the other one is not.

It's obvious that it wouldn't work.

The EU cannot tell Britain that free movement of people is essential enough to see them leave the Union, but then hand it to Switzerland, just because they ask nicely.

Those bilaterals with Switzerland are not some totally unrelated treaties, they are more like "EU membership light".

Yes, the EU needs the UK and Switzerland, and they both don't want to commit fully to it in one way or another (like the UK not using the Euro - good for them btw)

True, they can't let CH slip on that, at the same time, they'll probably do come with a compromise (or look the other way in some aspects)

We kind of need Britain, although not absolutely.

Switzerland? You're joking, right? Nobody wants to hurt Switzerland, or give them a hard time, but if they turn away, the reaction will mostly be a shrug.

There has been a lot of strong anti-immigrant/foreigner sentiment floating around recently in the media. This one was actually predicted to be closer to a 50/50 vote.

Frankly the proposal was very harsh and I think a lot of people saw through the other tactics it employed to garner favour. Switzerland is a cultural melting pot and a lot of people can relate negatively to the consequences of this proposal. I believe Cheap labour was not on many minds. This proposal seems to be the result of a very vocal minority and does not address real problems of a majority.

As for why I voted against it, good intentions. Keep in mind this is a single data point from a Swiss who has lived in Japan most of their lives.

Why? Because in Switzerland almost all you need is 100'000 signatures and we have to vote. And this is the response from the voters. I know no one who even remotely considered voting yes.

We have a lot "emotionally votings" recently and it really starts to annoy me. I don't like how this anti everything is starting to grow.

edit: of course it's 100'000 and not 50'000, thank you thallian

It's 100'000 signatures in 18 months for a federal popular initiative. And I am really glad this one did not make it.

I agree. My bet is that modern communications media make things easier than before.

Studies have shown that in the UK immigrant populations pay more in taxes than they pull out in benefits, I imagine it's the same in Switzerland, despite what neo-fascists might want to believe.

Population growth in Switzerland is currently at 0.6%, so immigration can help supplement this.

Basically there's no good reason to limit immigration.

As in most Western European countries, there are some very good reasons to limit specific immigration.

Specifically the immigration of people that are hostile to the local culture, and act out that hostility through various forms of aggression.

Citing immigrant population statistics is tried and proven way to cloud the issue. In the Netherlands for instance, the largest groups of immigrants are Germans. You don't really believe the immigration debate is about them, do you?

I'm guessing a fairly large part of the UK immigrant population is Western European. Those, plus migrant workers in science, technology and finance, kind of skew the stats.

Calling everybody who points out that there's also another group of immigrants who's net contribution isn't exactly positive "neo-fascists" is extremely counterproductive.

> Citing immigrant population statistics is tried and proven way to cloud the issue. In the Netherlands for instance, the largest groups of immigrants are Germans. You don't really believe the immigration debate is about them, do you?

Amusingly, if the internet is to be believed, immigrant Germans have been somewhat of a cause for debate in Switzerland lately, e.g. http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/the-changing-face-of-german-immi...

> Studies have shown that in the UK immigrant populations pay more in taxes than they pull out in benefits, I imagine it's the same in Switzerland, despite what neo-fascists might want to believe.

It doesnt say anything about the real cost of immigration.All I know is that the british people are getting less and less benefits per people,their healthcare system is being privatized and education is getting more and more expensive,without the "neo-fascists" in power. The ruling elite is doing everything so that more and more people want to vote for what you call "neo-fascists".

And frankly there is no "neo-fascists".It's the bogeyman the elite uses in order to scare off people and make sure they vote "the right way".Fortunatly less and less people are falling for that scam.

> their healthcare system is being privatized and education is getting more and more expensive,without the "neo-fascists" in power.

Huhwhat? The recent damage to the benefit and healthcare system and the huge increase in university fees both happened under the current Conservative government, not because of immigration but because of policy. Turns out the left-right axis is real, and the far right really is further to the right (e.g. UKIP's deputy leader recently said that he couldn't see the NHS surviving in its current form because it didn't have any free-market competition).

>Fortunatly less and less people are falling for that scam.

Seems the opposite for me. Nigel Farage did pretty well last election.

The party that I think he will be referring to is UKIP, which is pretty much like the current government just with more extreme attitudes to government.

>> Studies have shown that in the UK immigrant populations pay more in taxes than they pull out in benefits, I imagine it's the same in Switzerland, despite what neo-fascists might want to believe.

It's not this clean cut.

They used some interesting methodologies to come up with a figure of 5 billion net contribution from the immigrant population.

Taken alone this does not mean "more immigrants good" as it doesn't break down that group. What does it look like if we look specifically at skilled migration from outside of the EU on Tier 2 visas etc, compared to the figures for migration from within the EU (which requires nothing more than moving)? What about the refugee populations? Their economic impact is of very little concern - we take them because they are in need - but it might at least be interesting for the sake of comparison to know how it all works out.

There are also concerns in the UK that this didn't take into account the strains on infrastructure and transport. And that wage suppression is another effect of importing vast numbers of people. This in itself may be good for business but bad for people, and may have knock-on economic effects as those who already have the least spending power find it gets even smaller.

Just saying 'immigration contributed 5 billion quid last year' doesn't actually say a lot.

Immigration lowers wages.

That's not true, population growth in Switzerland has been above 1% since 2007: http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/en/index/themen/01/02/bla...

To put it blindly immigration from western countries, asian countries and north america good, imigration from south america, the middle east and africa bad.

how about the unlimited growth ponzi scheme

I'm guessing because they rely a lot on immigration (23% of the pop. are immigrants) and it would cause problems with the EU. Could be wrong though.

They already have serious problems with the EU, because of the immigration referendum before this one, back in February, I think.

They are still scrambling to find a way to reconcile their obligations under their treaties with the EU and their obligations under that referendum. And noone has found a way, yet.

I don't think ordinary people benefit too much from cheap labor (if you can call Italians that). I would guess it's more of a cultural thing.

From the article: "Opponents said it would have been bad for the economy."

Headline is somewhat misleading. The referendum was rejected but it was a rather harsh measure. So even those wanting to slow down immigration may have voted no.

From the article: The country voted in February to re-introduce immigration quotas, in effect opting out of an EU free movement agreement.

We added "additional" to the title to try to fix that.

They also voted against increasing their gold reserves and against cutting tax privileges for millionaires. Seems that they just voted for whoever was able to put the most money behind their campaign.

Actually, the gold reserves and and immigrant thing had way bigger campaigns for them than against them. If anything, the vote was for whoever had the least money behind their campaign.

The tax thing is annoying. I would have hoped for a yes vote (and I have voted yes), but I think this is still a few years off before we'll see a change there.

I heard something on the news just today about how Geneva got rid of these tax advantages and basically half of the affected people moved out of Geneva right after. Maybe people think the same would happen on a national level?

I don't necessarily think this would be the result, but I can see a lot of people thinking that.

I think you mean Zurich, not Geneva, see http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/cantons-weigh-up-value-of-lump-s...

The article is well written but I'll pull out probably the most important stat: of the canton’s 201 former lump sum beneficiaries, 97 left, amounting to loss of CHF 12.2 million in cantonal tax receipts (avg CHF 126k per person).

What about the stat found in the next paragraph:

This left over 100 wealthy foreigners remaining in the canton. Depending on how much wealth they had and how it was distributed, 55 ended up paying more tax and 47 less. Their total cantonal tax bill of CHF13.8 million more than made up for the losses, so the canton did better than break even.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think Zurich was particularly hurting for losing the CHF 12 million in the first place. It's not that much money for a jurisdiction of rather affluent 1.4 million people. That they made more is bonus.

I assume there are real inertia issues with moving, probably where with step functions at certain levels of wealth.

Moving at all has inertia, moving to a new city in the same country has a lot more but I suspect moving internationally has the greatest. And the Swiss are a rarity in that they are one of few countries where native speakers can go to nearby countries and still be (mostly) understood.

So it's worth discounting the "if we raise taxes they will all leave" theory for my money

Rich people can often find ways to officially move for tax purposes.

What's the advantage of a ton of wealthy people moving away from Geneva?

It was Zurich, not Geneva, and the (now regular, and thus higher) taxes paid by those who stayed did compensate those who left. The advantage is that ordinary people may be more willing to pay their regular taxes if the rich are paying theirs, too.

I guess it depends on how you look at it.

Taxes levied do not always equal the complete value to the economy of a country. While they might have been paying lower taxes, who says they weren't consuming/spending more? The cars they bought, the restaurants they visited, or the expensive suits they had tailored/made - those all add to the local economy. And those 'profits' are then also taxed, either at the corporate level (i.e. the restaurant) or at the personal level (i.e. someone employed at the restaurant).

Also, this said, there is only so much one can consume. A wealthy person might have 1000 or 10,000 times more wealth than an average person, but he doesn't have 1000 cars. Or suits. I would expect it to be better to have more wealthy people in an area, rather than less, even if the tax income is the same, because as a group they consume and invest more.

> While they might have been paying lower taxes, who says they weren't consuming/spending more?

Economists do measure the "velocity of money". And it really is higher among the poor, for common-sense reasons; someone who's living paycheck to paycheck is (almost by definition) spending all of their income, putting it straight back into circulation, whereas the wealthy are more likely to save some (which yes does recirculate as investment to an extent, but the investor as rentier takes their cut, and investment income is often undertaxed), spend some abroad, or spend in less efficient industries (e.g. high-end handcrafted anything, where you're paying a master craftsman who won't actually spend a lot of their time producing things, and won't be pulling back anywhere near as much through the productive economy (e.g. buying materials) compared to the same amount of money spent on mass-produced goods).

Better parking !

The not so wealthy that stay there get to start business on a level playing field, instead of having unfair competition from the wealthy ones.

I don't think this is correct. More than 90% of the advertisements in newspapers were against, for each of the three proposals. Source: http://www.50plus1.ch/?p=547 (German, French version at bottom)

Most popular initiatives in Switzerland are rejected. It's quite easy to bring an initiative to referendum here so you get a lot of quite extreme proposals from minority segments of society. The federal government always provides a recommendation on how to vote and it of course mostly recommends voting against (if the government was for a thing, it wouldn't need to come to referendum anyway normally). And I guess here people trust the local government a lot more than in other parts of the world, so those recommendations carry a fair bit of weight.

It's not easy at all. 100'000 valid signatures might not sound that challenging – until you have to collect them yourself!

Alright, let me clarify. It's quite easy compared to most countries.

An alternative explanation is that they (or maybe 'we'..) voted to preserve the statu quo. A quick look through historical vocation results will tell you that this is as strong a predictor as it gets.

This is just a myth. Take the swiss immigration referendum from 9.2.2014. It was broadly and prominently combated. Most of the parties were against it and all economic associations threw in tons of money against it. Still, the Swiss voted for it.

Why would they want to increase Gold reserves anyway? Surely holding strategic foreign currency reserves is broadly more useful.

Because gold bugs and fiat money.

Gold bugs are kind of the more conservative variant of Bitcoin fans.

Might make the fiscal luddites shut up for a while? Not sure it'd actually be worth the cost though.

Because hoarding a nearly worthless mineral makes some people sleep better at night.

It was an initiative motivated by FUD and protectionism.

Because gold can't be printed ad infinitum like the central banks can and do with currency.

E.g If you hold Japanese yens and the Bank of Japan announces it is printing like crazy like they did recently, and the currency falls 20% in one year, you loose 20% of your reserves.

Useful for what? For Bankruptcy?

Today all central banks are printing like crazy, so it is a good idea to hold real things.

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