Here's an article from Swiss from March last year - talking to the one of the members of the governing board of the SNB (Swiss National Bank) about Switzerland's poor growth record and whether or not it really is poor growth, and if the economy is somehow special. The link can be found
here. Interesting read.
Some quotes:
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| If the OECD is to be believed, Ireland has overtaken Switzerland in terms of economic "wealth" – pushing the once-mighty Swiss into fifth place worldwide.
Kohli conceded that growth was still sluggish, but said: "It is probably only half as bad as it looks."
While high Swiss prices partly reflect the high wages – and productivity – of its workers, they are also partly the result of "lack of competition, rigidities, administrative hurdles and inefficiencies".
And the SNB economist concludes: "If current trends persist, Ireland will eventually pass us." | |
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I also liked this quote about a website:
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| Kohli commented: "Irish people themselves do not feel that they live in a low-price country, as the mere existence of the popular Internet site www.ripoffireland.org suggests." | |
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I wonder if englishforum.ch will ever get a mention in the press like that?
But the quote that astounded me the most was this one:
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| However, other studies show that Switzerland also had the second lowest per capita average growth rate of 12 European countries from 1880 through to 1995.
As Kohli remarks, this is a puzzle: "19th century Switzerland was poor by European standards – [so] how has it managed to become one of the continent’s richest countries?" | |
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Right - so we were poor, then all of a sudden we were rich - and we did this all without economic growth, so maybe this whole growth thing is garbage?
"Don't mention the war" as Basil Faulty used to say.