Switzerland has an artificially inflated GDP by the allocation of profits not really earned there: this is data distortion
This may also be a factor in HK and Singapore too. Compare with GNP in these cases or better GVA
Switzerland GNI: places it fourth, either at nominal or PPP rates.
GNP it appears to be third.
And of course we can’t use GVA because, by definition, we calculate that for less than national economies (because we can only measure taxes and subsidies at the national economy level).
I think we’ll claim that as another victory for Ritchie’s deep and sophisticated knowledge of economics, shall we?
He really doesn’t *get* Switzerland, does he?
It’s like it’s a mountaintop that’s covered in brass plates for banks and foreign companies or something.
He doesn’t ‘get’ the UK, so what chance does he have with Switzerland?
None whatsoever.
CH isn’t even the best place from a financial perspective to park brass plates, make royalty payments and so on. What it *does* offer is a lower tax environment, and regulatory stability. With the way the system works here, there is no risk that a Millimong-type government could be elected and start whacking businesses. And thus no risk that someone like the LHTD could be within a rifle shot of the levers of power.
Even the extreme-left referenda that we have almost on a yearly basis fall flat on their arses with enormous majorities against (sometimes as high as 90% NEIN).
Switzerland offers a centuries-long record of trust and discretion. No wonder he doesn’t understand it.
Referenda are kryptonite to the Left. Nothing massacres your loony ideas like submitting them to a population of sturdy sensible people.
Much better to agitate for state action, then capture the State.
I’d say his ideas on Honk Kong are even more crazy than those on Switzerland – at least as his defender Howard Reed points out ‘he has a deep and complex understanding of economics, I suppose’….