
Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy - baazaar
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/wef-report_switzerland-is-the-world-s-most-competitive-economy-/42478248
======
HSO
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, objective, or not, I honestly have no
opinion. Just providing some context.

~~~
jahnu
Is the cost of living proportional to competitiveness?

Anyway, it seems like a mystery to me why tech firms like Google set up shop
in small expensive Zurich instead of say cheaper, bigger Barcelona or Vienna,
for example. I'd love to know what the incentives are for them.

~~~
HSO
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 good people from all over Europe here because
in terms of living standard and salary, it could be considered a step up from
almost anywhere else in Europe.

Plus the central location and the infrastructure.

I think in the grand scheme of things, Zurich/Switzerland has a lot to offer.
I've always felt that people who argue against Switzerland only on the basis
of the high salaries and cost of living are a bit like people who argue
against Apple on the basis of "speeds and feeds". There's a lot more to being
business-friendly than being cheap.

But yeah, who knows, all this may change now, as indeed the report warns.
Openness is a pretty big deal for a small, open economy like Switzerland.

______________

[1] EDIT: Just checked again, it was the Times Higher Education World
University Ranking, as _reported_ in the WSJ today. Direct link to table here:
[https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-
rankin...](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-
rankings/2017/subject-ranking/computer-
science#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank_label/sort_order/asc/cols/rank_only)

[2] EDIT: Got curious from writing this and landed on their homepage. Their
first sentence starts with: _" Our lab in Zürich is perfectly placed for easy
access to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETH)…"_ That kind
of drives the point home, doesn't it? ;-) Source:
[https://www.disneyresearch.com/research-labs/disney-
research...](https://www.disneyresearch.com/research-labs/disney-research-
zurich/)

~~~
pjmlp
ETH was also the home of Niklaus Wirth and all his research in safe systems
programming languages with Modula-2(Lillith), Oberon(Native Oberon, EthOS),
Active Oberon (BlueOS) and the commercial descendent Component Pascal.

~~~
gtirloni
In the 2.4kbps times (.br speeds at the time) I'd print the Modula-3 manuals
and have fun at home. And then I discovered I was late to the party and things
were slowing down for those languages.

I wish m3 had caught on. Really liked it.

~~~
pjmlp
I was lucky to still be part of the party and enjoy systems programming with
Turbo Pascal (5.5, 6.0, 7), before I was introduced to C.

If you still would like to find Modula-3 related stuff, check
[http://apotheca.hpl.hp.com/ftp/pub/DEC/SRC/](http://apotheca.hpl.hp.com/ftp/pub/DEC/SRC/)
.

------
sambe
Could easily be true in some areas of the economy, because professionalism
seems really strong there and core technology infrastructure is often ahead of
surrounding areas.

However, my experience of living and working there suggests that it is very
much not true in the areas I encountered: businesses cling to tradition and
people prefer everything to be managed (contracts should be given to the
"right" people, rules should be organised around what traditional groups
want). By traditional I mean book sellers, grocers etc. You often get the
feeling there is not much logic/forward thinking - only maintain what people
are used to. Of course, that is a decision you are free to make, but not one
that seems to tally with this article.

Designated innovation area seemed pretty dead. As a consumer the low quality
of many companies' websites and ability to automate was quite surprising.

On the other hand, salaries are high almost all office jobs (debatable whether
this makes sense for lower skill-sets, but nice if you live there) and it
seems fairly easy to get a new job as long as you "fit" in the culture.

I can imagine that some of the big industrial tech and pharma companies are
run a bit more aggressively. Finance didn't seem to be.

~~~
lordnacho
My experience of Switzerland is similar.

Things are very much done according to a formula. If you're an enterprise
looking for a Java developer, only a guy whose CV says "Java" will do. C# is
some other planet. I think it's a Germanic thing, they expect very specific
qualifications. I remember meeting a guy who had a degree as a food chemist. I
asked him what jobs he was after, and he said ... food chemist.

There is a startup scene in Zurich though. The tax rate is low, and people
seem to have enough savings to give it a go, at least some of the young ones.
It's not a huge number of people, but the Swiss are going about it in their
own way, with a number "technoparks" and such. It's somewhat cosmopolitan in
its outlook; people compare themselves to other startups around the world.
Reasonable pay for such small firms, too. Came across more than one 6 figure
job.

Salaries are high, but stuff is expensive, too. Daycare for a kid, at a public
nursery, is CHF30K a year (USD is in the ballpark of CHF). I've met a number
of Swiss people who'd like to have more kids, but it's just a lot of money to
pay. A quite ordinary family meal at a restaurant can be 100. Buying the food
from a supermarket ain't cheap, either.

I sometimes wonder whether GDP measurement is problematic. Quality of life
doesn't feel like it's all that different between various industrialized
countries, but the figures suggest they are. If stuff is expensive, that makes
GDP higher. So a guy eating a $1 potato is enjoying a lower quality of life
than a guy who paid $2 for his. This has implications for wastage,
particularly when it has to do with large organisations such as government.
Burn more money, get higher GDP. Tax rate also has implications. There's
probably more black market business going on in certain countries, which also
contributes to general welfare. But of course that doesn't go into official
accounts, or at least it's quite hard to guess how much it is. Low tax places
like Switzerland are more likely to have more stuff going through official
accounts.

~~~
mike_hearn
Salaries are high and daycare is expensive deliberately, or so I've heard.
It's a cultural decision - they want women to stay at home with the children
and raise them, so the salaries are calibrated to be high enough for a nuclear
family. That's why you get things like schools sending children home at
lunchtime or on Wednesday afternoons: the school schedules are deliberately
set up to be incompatible with working hours, in order to reinforce
traditional family setups.

Food is expensive in Switzerland partly because it imports a lot and the
surrounding countries know that the Swiss are rich and thus not very price
sensitive. I read somewhere that exactly the same kilo of parma ham that costs
10 EUR in Italy can cost 50 EUR in Switzerland simply due to being charged
different amounts by the supplier. This is not helped by the fact that the
domestic supermarkets have what amounts to a duopoly between Co-op and Migros,
with other brands like Denner being owned by one of the big two. There's
little price competition.

GDP is a disastrous statistic almost everywhere, not just in Switzerland.
Politicians single minded focus on it is a classic case of "what you can't
measure you can't manage" being harmful. The biggest problem is that GDP is
trivially pumped by government borrowing and spending, hence the endless
circular arguments in Europe about austerity and whether governments should
try to spend their way to growth. It doesn't work - governments ideas for
productive investments rarely go beyond roads and railways - but it can appear
to work in the short run as spending splurges feed directly into the GDP.

~~~
lukego
> That's why you get things like schools sending children home at lunchtime or
> on Wednesday afternoons: the school schedules are deliberately set up to be
> incompatible with working hours, in order to reinforce traditional family
> setups.

Just an anecdote: We are (expat) remote workers raising kids on the Swiss
countryside. Our fellows haven't started school yet but we are really looking
forward to having them come home for lunch. The motivation for the system may
well be to suit traditional family setups, and make it hard for both parents
to work in an office, but it also seems tailor made for self-employed people
who work from home with a flexible schedule and want to spend time together as
a family. (ask me again in a few years.)

~~~
ccozan
Last time I tried to get a gig in Switzerland as a freelancer, they told me
there is no such thing as a freelancer there, every one must be hired.

State mandates that. However, the tax is so low, that is doesn't really
matter.

On the other side, the cost of living is so high (Zuerich area) so that it
really worth it if you plan to _move_ there for the rest of your live.

~~~
shin_lao
_Last time I tried to get a gig in Switzerland as a freelancer, they told me
there is no such thing as a freelancer there, every one must be hired._

That's absolutely wrong, you've been lied to. Which part of Switzerland was
it?

~~~
ccozan
That was Zuerich.

They told me, there is no such thing a service contract between an individual
and a company. I must be either hired or I need to have my own company.

I am not inventing this, simply repeating what the companies said, and they
really meant it.

~~~
lordnacho
That's totally wrong.

You can be a sole proprietor for basically nothing. There's also two forms of
limited companies requiring 20K/100K of capital. The 100 is actually 50K
because you only have to pay up half of it upfront.

I found quite often when the Swiss explain something, they explain it with a
degree of confidence that is not merited by the actual facts. They cut a few
corners here and there to make it easy to explain.

------
noobermin
I always feel like it is unfair how we place different European nations in
same category as the US in these rankings or whatever, and for the US, we
average over all the states in the US. As homogenous the US is, different
states have different economies, different laws, in some cases, some slight
but important cultural differences. Is it really fair to say have the US
compete on terms of "competitiveness" or in other cases, happiness, education
standards, with Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, or is it more fair to have
them compete with California, Texas, New York, etc.

~~~
heydenberk
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 Mississippi, the poorest US state, is wealthier than the EU
average (€28K, about $31K)! Only the wealthiest EU countries are wealthier
than Mississippi: Luxembourg, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands, United
Kingdom, Austria, Finland, German, Belgium, France. And of those, only
Luxembourg and Ireland have a higher GDP per capita than the US average.

So the EU member states vary economically far more than the states in the US
do, and the US is more easily characterized as a uniformly "high income"
region than the EU is.

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.

~~~
clock_tower
> 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, and if anything tends to lower it.
There's a lot of bad GDP and not much capital accumulation in the US...

Climate also doesn't show up in GDP, now that I think of it, and I think that
has a lot to do with the Mississippi situation. Who wants to live in hundred-
degree heat with hundred-percent humidity?

~~~
luispedrocoelho
"Accumulated capital (like Notre Dame and the Louvre) doesn't show up in GDP
either, and if anything tends to lower it."

Notre Dame and the Louvre are a couple of the things that make Paris the
single biggest tourist destination in the world, from which it derives a huge
amount of GDP. The French tourist officials make sure to monetize the Louvre
for all they can.

*

"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."

No, it isn't, because people wouldn't love to move to France/Italy/Spain, they
don't even want to. People say they'd love to live in Spain/Italy/France, but
the fact that they don't reveals it's mostly cheap talk.

There are some exceptions in professions that make well above the average for
these countries (also retirees, students). Europe is really very nice if you
make well above the average, but this is not (by definition) the typical life
in those countries. Very few Americans are excited by a 24k take home salary
in a mid-sized French town, or 15k in an Italian formerly wealthy industrial
city.

The vast majority of migration flows are up the GDP gradient.

~~~
Rasco
"The French tourist officials make sure to monetize the Louvre for all they
can."

The access to the Louvre (permanent collection) is free for :

everyone under 18 years old whatever the nationality,

every resident of the European Economic Area (31 countries) under 25 years
old,

everyone under 26 years old whatever the nationality the Friday from 6 p.m. to
9:45 p.m.,

everyone the first sunday of each month between october and march and on july
14th,

other specific groups of people,

And it is 15€ for everyone else for a day. Not what I would call particularly
excessive.

[http://www.louvre.fr/en/hours-
admission/admission](http://www.louvre.fr/en/hours-admission/admission)

The Louvre still relies mainly on public subvention (102 M€ in 2015) tickets
bring ~65M€, private subventions ~12M€. But yes it surely brings people and
has a good impact on the local economy.

~~~
luispedrocoelho
The benefits to French GDP are not mainly from the tickets, but from the
tourism-related revenue (hotel stays, restaurants, flights, &c).

The official Paris tourist office has a picture of the Louvre on the top of
its front page.

Let me put it this way: if I say that google monetizes its search engine as
much as it can, I don't mean it charges you to search.

~~~
Rasco
"The benefits to French GDP are not mainly from the tickets, but from the
tourism-related revenue (hotel stays, restaurants, flights, &c)." yes, you can
infer that from the last sentence in my previous comment, but still, they do
not monetize it as much as they can because they could have decided not to
make the entrance free for the youngsters and they would make more money even
if the number of young visitors decreases.

The difference with the google search engine is if you are not willing to pay
and so do not use the search engine then google won't make money at all from
you whereas few people will decide no to go to Paris just because the Louvre
entrance is not free.

------
davidw
Not ranked so highly here:
[http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings](http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings)

They get big dings for 'starting a business' and 'protecting minority
shareholders'.

------
faebi
Nobody mentioned yet the swiss apprenticeship system. Most young people make
one and I think it is a main factor. The thing is the economy nearly always
educates as much people as it needs. Within a 10 year range there should be
always as much people as needed. So if one sector grows there are usually more
available apprenticeships in that sector so that withing 10 years this hole
should get fixed. Also I should mention that this is mostly good for the
median person not for the top 1%.

~~~
wrong_variable
what is good for the median person is also good for the 1%

------
squigs25
Keep in mind, we have a company called "swissinfo" declaring that Switzerland
has the most competitive economy.

Bias much?

~~~
mtmail
You can argue against the WEF who created the study. But the newspaper itself
is not declaring anything more than the study presents.

"Switzerland achieved its highest score of 5.8 out of 7 in the WEF Global
Competitiveness Report 2016/2017"

------
_nalply
A Swiss speaking up here. Switzerland economy is competitive because economy
is very tough here due to the high Swiss Franc. Even local businesses compete
with abroad. In Basel for example there's a tramway which crosses the border
to Germany. Just behind the border there's a row of malls. It's crazy.

In other words, companies need to be exceedingly efficient, i. e. competitive,
to survive.

This has been this way as long as I remember, that means for at least thirty
years. And the hostile environment has only exacerbated massively in the last
five years.

------
Iv
And everyday I hear people saying that direct democracy can't work

------
tn13
I will not be surprised. Switz is also easily among the top 10 most
economically free countries in the world. Economic freedom, competitiveness
and foreign direct investments are so well correlated with economic freedom.

Australia's ranking seems extremely puzzling though. The general perception is
that it is very very competitive economy.

~~~
wycx
It is not that puzzling if you live in Australia and pay attention to the
economy.

We have a residential real estate bubble that is worse than that of the US in
2006. Median house price to median income ratios in Sydney are worse than
almost anywhere but Hong Kong. We have the highest per capita private mortgage
debt of any country. This represents a massive unproductive overhead on the
Australian economy, as the elevated cost of shelter flows into all other
costs. Tax arrangements in Australia make leveraged real estate speculation
more favourable than any other kind of investment, especially productive
investment with any sort of risk attached. More than 50% of the existing
mortgage debt is owed overseas via the big 4 Australian banks, so we are
constantly exporting what wealth we have overseas as interest, so we can sell
shitty houses built in the 1960s to each other for AUD1.2 million.

Many sectors of the Australian economy are filled by a limited number of
participants (e.g. banking, supermarkets, hardware, telecommunications,
petrol) who are most interested in rent seeking, and not interested in
competing with each other.

The Australian economy has been a net importer of capital every year since the
early 1970s, an almost ever year since post WW2. If you run a current account
deficit so egregiously, the result is you sell off all your productive assets
to stay solvent. This also means the pool of Australian capital available to
invest in Australia itself is very limited. Australia has some of the highest
immigration intake in the developed world, but no long term infrastructure
planning to account for such population growth. Since most immigration
increases the population of the large cities, the lack of investment in
transport infrastructure is most apparent. We grow the economy by increasing
the captias. Per capital net disposable income has been static or falling for
the last 5 years.

Politically, Australia has been without vision for real economic development
outside rewarding entrenched rent seekers for the last 20 years. We have not
seen any significant increases in productivity over that period.

~~~
tn13
Yeah most of my friends in Australia barely afford the basic things that we
take for granted in USA and that surprised me because their job seems to be
almost identical to my.

------
rdl
If this were true I'd expect them to have less generally mediocre datacenters
and network carriers. They are markedly inferior to the US and most European
countries, including much less wealthy countries.

------
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]](https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%BCrich#Geografi\[/url\])
Onyx
[url][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onyx_%28interception_system%29...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onyx_%28interception_system%29#Active_sites\[/url\])

------
thinkMOAR
Am i the only one slightly concerned by the fact it is SWISS info dot ch
reporting about swiss itself?

If DPRKinfo.kr would write DPRK is the best, we all laugh?

~~~
madshiva
we all know that this report is a joke.

------
abysmallyideal
By competitive they must surely mean expensive and selective. Hahahahaaa

------
known
Rest of the world can learn from
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland)

------
icantdrive55
I have a few questions for Swiss expats.

Could you tell me about the Swiss culture--at bit? I know it's a huge topic.
Just some of the differences you see between the Swiss, and say Americans.

I mainly interested in the Millenials.

What do they think of Americans?

Do they basically have the same hobbies?

Are their any stark differences in what they value?

Do they view Americans as spoiled?

Do they fear us?

This next question is very specific, and probally weird. I heard teens love
50's Cadilliacs. I love them too, but I heard they are more desired there,
than in America? What is it about older Caddys?

Are their fashion differences? Here we have kids spending hundred of dollars
on tennis shoes, specifically Nikes. Has that fad hit Switzerland?

Are women more, or less fashion conscience than Americans?

Just any insider observation?

I've been interested in Switzerland since I began Watch Repair a decade ago.

~~~
mike_hearn
This is a weird list of questions. I am a migrant to Switzerland (trying not
to use the word expat anymore).

Swiss people are not very different to Americans in what they value, what
hobbies they have, etc. They are much less outgoing, however. In America you
can walk into a bar anywhere, at any time, sit down and have a spontaneous
conversation with the barman or strangers sitting at the bar. This _never_
happens in Switzerland. Do not expect it even if you speak good German. People
in Switzerland keep to themselves. Because this makes it very hard to make
friends there are a lot of "expat" events for immigrants to meet each other,
and at these events you can go to a bar and start chatting to people of a
similar age and background to yourself and make friends. This is how I made
most of my friends: I have a few good Swiss friends, but overall most of my
friends throughout my time in Switzerland were other foreigners.

Swiss people do not "fear" Americans, why would you have that idea? They do
not spend a whole lot of time thinking about Americans in particular. The vast
majority of people who live in the cities (and you want to be in the cities),
and especially teenagers, do not own cars at all. Not only is there no need
(public transport and taxis can get you everywhere) but there isn't usually
enough parking and it's very expensive. People generally only buy a car once
they settle down and move out of the cities.

People on the street in Switzerland tend to be well dressed and fashionable,
and the women especially so. The high streets are dominated by fashion brands
and shops. I can't compare this to the USA because I've only been to a few
places there, but it's definitely a brand and fashion conscious place.

------
zxcvvcxz
Interesting, can somebody remind me of these Swiss-based world changing
startups that I somehow can't recall?

~~~
threesixandnine
Startups are only a small part of the economy and majority of world changing
stuff happens outside shiny startup world.

------
NN88
for a nation of 8 million...

------
arbuge
To mean, this sounds pretty meaningless. If true, I would take it to mean that
if you start a successful business in, say, the USA, you are likely to face
your most dangerous competition from Switzerland. Hardly likely unless you're
working on something like watches or private banking...

------
guest
Anyway, it seems like a mystery to me why tech firms like Google set up shop
in small expensive Zurich instead of say cheaper, bigger Barcelona or Vienna,
for example.

The reason is simple: tax-evation and the like.

~~~
cloudjacker
Thats a funny conclusion about Vienna because Austrian banks are great for tax
evasion and pretty much reporting of anything.

Some jurisdictions market slight nuances in their laws to foreigners as a
perk, and other jurisdictions simply have, and if you can read you can avoid
the stereotypes.

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
FWIW you are an idiot if you use Austrian banks for tax evasion.

~~~
cloudjacker
Now, yes

------
s3nnyy
I live in Zurich. Due to the high-living standard, salaries, size, central
location in Europe, Switzerland is probably the only country, where I'd like
to live longterm. Yes things are expensive here but Swiss food is the cheapest
in Europe, if you adjust for the average salary. I am trying to say: Buying
power is huge. I am however unsure how long the Swiss can hold this high
living standard.

You can read more in my blogpost "8 reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work
in IT": [https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-
moved-t...](https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-to-
switzerland-to-work-in-it-c7ac18af4f90#.978whnqsz)

Full disclosure: I am a part-time tech recruiter and well-connected in the
tech-scene in Zurich and if you're thinking of moving here and getting a job
in tech, feel free to contact me - you find my email address in my HN profile.

