Read this in the paper today, Switzerland now has the most competitive economy in the world according to the World Economic Forum.
http://www.weforum.org/en/initiative...port/index.htm
and all this without Sunday shopping how can it be possible!

Nick

Good question. I guess I'll try a few stabs at it: A gold reserve with high levels of mercury from melted down tooth fillings? 3rd World loot? Drug money? Nazi gold?

Seriously, what does "Most Competitive Economy" mean in real terms? A trophy?

I do not think these awards mean anything but world politics.

SO WHAT if CH is best in competitiveness. Can you tell that to the unemployed, the disabled, or the mentally ill?
SO WHAT if CH wins this awards, tops US, so what?
Or any other country for that matter?

So what does it mean for the average person? Working or not working?

Sorry I really don't know.

Well my thinking is along the lines of “well if we have the most competitive economy in the world why should we change anything” They will continue to blow their trumpet and think all is well.

Originally Posted by HAT
SO WHAT if CH is best in competitiveness. Can you tell that to the unemployed, the disabled, or the mentally ill?
SO WHAT if CH wins this awards, tops US, so what?
Or any other country for that matter?

So what does it mean for the average person? Working or not working?

What it might mean to the average person is that things won’t change in a hurry if CH continues to be recognised as having an efficient and competitive economy.
Say what you want about awards, but it is usually the losers who winge about merits of these things, everyone (especially politicians) love to win things.

It does seem a rather unscientific surveybased on:

a combination of publicly available hard data and the results of the Executive Opinion Survey, of over 11,000 business leaders were polled in a record 125 economies worldwide.

But presumably all countries were subject to the same criteria. So Switzerland won, why complain? Seems to me posters here are becoming more Swiss than the the Swiss themselves and are jumping on the Switzerland-doesn't-deserve-it-and-it's-all-going-to-end-in-tears-very-soon bandwagon...

I've no problem with them having this award, i just don't understand how. I'm constantly amazed at the inefficiencies and protectionism i see in everyday life here (i can elaborate, but it's been discussed before)

There are some important points to bear in mind here. Yes, I can fully understand that those of us who live here and know that it is not competitive sit open-jawed as we read that Switzerland has the world's most competitive economy. After all, we know that we often struggle to find a decent range of products on the supermarket shelves (compared to what we are used to).

To help understand this issue it is necessary to understand that there are actually two sides to the Swiss economy. One is the domestic side (which we all live in and experience day to day), and the other is the international one which deals in export, services, banking and all the rest.

The domestic one (unfortunately for us) isn't that crash hot when it comes to issues like competition, but the one that everyone else sees is a totally different story.

To illustrate, allow me to present two article from Swissinfo posted within a couple of weeks of each other:

Competition watchdog hounded over interests - here [swissinfo.ch]


Swiss top global competitiveness rankings - here [swissinfo.ch]

Those of you who follow Swissinfo will have also noticed from time to time that there are many articles about the lack of competition inside Switzerland, need for structural reforms, lowering of tariffs, etc.

So in summary - remember that the ability of a country to compete with others globally is not always exactly the same thing as the ability of that country to have a competitive domestic market.

This report says Switzerland only came 18th in the 'macroeconomy' category. How does 'macroeconomy' differ from the economy as a whole then (which is what i assume the report was supposed to represent)?

The difference is that Switzerland as a country topped this report, not the Swiss economy. Economic considerations formed part of the criteria, but other factors such as infrastructure, and health and primary edication (wher they ranked 29) also came into play. There's a 2 page PDF with graphs and stuff here [weforum.org] which should shed some more light on it. They didn't score number 1 on any of the individual criteria, so I'm guessing that those countries that did score number 1 got dragged down in other areas.

Haha.. Perhaps the Swiss know something the rest of us don't!

Hopp Schwiiz! Hopp Schwiiz!

One might also enjoy the irony of scrolling down to the bottom of this page and checking "Related Threads". These are assigned by the system, not by me

So the computer reckons Comedy Night has had a positive impact on the economy. Nice

Okay, Fine. Then I will gladly accept this award on behalf of Switzerland.

But for whatever this economic prosperity is suppose to mean, see if you can buy a genuine smile or a good healthy laugh in the dead of Winter in Zurich for less than 100CHF. A brighter smile is available in most parts of the world for less than 1 CHF.

Thanks for the award. Now get a life!

Switzerland didn't ask for this recognition, so why get upset at them? It's possible to get a smile from a Swiss: You just have to appeal to them.

Kind of agree with chrisch - this is kind of a dry subject, not really much room "on-topic" for smiles or lack of smiles. Phos - we have plenty of other topics where such comments might fit better. But cheer up dude! Please!

You mean like after kissing their butts? Would they really? Do ya think?

To go from a population of potato farmers to a modern industrial economy in 50 years. Isn't that a hurry?

Considering what's taken place here in the last 10 years, or even the last 5 years, it would be very naive to think this place witll be staying the same in the next 2.5 years.

No, I get a smile when I treat them with respect. Try it sometime.

As I work on the Banking IT side I can see slowly that before Banks were very strong here but due to all these dam new laws the EU are brining out it makes investing in CH harder to do.
Slowly Banking in Switzerland is not as competive as is was for a few years.
But I notice most Bankers still believe that they are better than other conuntries "Dream world".

Legal & Compliance are taking on a role that they work for the Swiss govement than for the banks they work for...

Overall Banking in general is declining as their are better deals you can make outside this country.

Plus as people have commented unemployment is slowly rising, large companies that need basic labour are moving the main companies outside of switzerland but leaving the head office still here.

You can see slowly a trend that in a few years will effect this country badly.

We have no minerals or fuels deposits in Switzerland
We dont mass produce any large amount of products for sale anywhere.
Its not profitable to build anything in switzerland for export to Eu due to the border cost we need to add on to our products that we would build...

So in the long run it should be interesting here.


Sauron

I've always felt the competition/protectionism here meant that the current "relative" high standard was unsustainable. But to be clearer, i don't think things will decline here. Just that the rest of the world will catch up.

Switzerland was the 5th wealthiest country in the world in 1900. Potato farming must have paid really well.