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Comment by Sfi81 | Hacker News Reader

Well you have to remember that the Swiss have both better income sources (assisting the world's wealthy & many corporations evade/optimize taxes for instance) and don't have military expenses and such due to neutrality.

While many problems of the US are of its own creation due to either ideology or wealth dominating politics (healthcare & education spring to mind), it is quite unfair to compare what the Swiss government provides with the US.

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It's a common meme. The entire financial industry is only about 11% of the GDP (or around 7% if you use a different statistical method). That includes insurance, pensions, etc.

The idea that Switzerland is propped up by tax evasion simply isn't true. The UK thought it was true and actually wrote proceeds from better Swiss cooperation over banking records into their budget .... then discovered there was a huge shortfall, because there was much less evasion done that way than they had imagined.

OK, but if a larger percentage of Swiss residents emigrated there for the favorable tax laws than emigrated to the US for the same reason, that could inflate Swiss GDP, i.e., make the Swiss per-capita GDP an overly optimistic measure of what life is like for Swiss residents who haven't acquired wealth outside Switzerland.

GDP is not a measure of the static wealth of the citizens of a country, it's a measure of economic activity (literally adding it all up).

OK, but if someone who made a fortune in Germany moves to Switzerland and buys a Mercedes, does that not add about $50 K to Swiss GDP? The reasons I suspect it might are (1) GDP is essentially a measure of economic activity, i.e., transactions, and (2) how all of the small tax shelters, Monaco, Lichtenstein, etc, have very high per-capita GDP.

Regarding (1), it is possible that living in a tax shelter gives residents without a fortune more opportunities to make money than living in a country like Germany or the US does, but I lean towards the possibility that per-capita GDP is simply inaccurate or flawed as measure of the economic prospects of the residents who don't have fortunes.

Also, Singapore's per-capita GDP is very high compared to the personal income of its human residents (I have read) and I figure that was because a large fraction of Singapore's businesses are owned by non-Singaporeans (which has been the case, BTW, since Singapore's founding by British trading interests).

The Swiss attitude is that many countries, including the u.s., are corrupt with corrupt governments and it is your responsibility to put your money someplace safe and out of hands of that corruption.

Not to Godwin, but, the Swiss supported plenty of money stolen by Nazi government.

Much of the money being "protected from corrupt government" was obtained through corrupt activity.

They provided a place for the jews in nazi germany to move their money outside of germany. But if I was Jewish and in Nazi Germany I would have done the same, as my Catholic great-grandparents did by moving their money from Germany to Switzerland when the Nazis came to power.

It's unfortunate that most of their Jewish customers were killed by the Nazis. They also accepted deposits from the Nazis, but I can understand their attitude of not taking sides. In the end you want a neutral party like that, no matter what side you're on.

On the contrary, IMHO, it is totally fair.

The roots of their respective prosperity and poverty come from the long-term effects of their respective ideologies. The US choses to let corporations evade taxes, and the US choses to project military might to pursue private corporate aims.

Just because a behaviour and culture is endemic and has occurred for generations now, that doesn't make it written in stone.

Actually, neutrality requires more military spending. As a NATO country, Switzerland could specialize more and better coordinate on technology and purchases. But on its own, it needs to maintain a full defense machinery without outside help.

The number one reason for Switzerland's wealth is that they were clever enough to stay out of wars as much as possible.

Other countries start from ruins and rubble periodically. Switzerland grows its prosperity incrementally, without catastrophes.

They were lucky to not get invaded by the Germans but they totally expected to be invaded and built a defense strategy based on this belief that lasted until the 1990s.

Twice the Germans started the process of putting together a Swiss invasion and gave up early because they realized they would have lost.

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