Tag Archives: switzerland
OECD Study Admits Income Taxes Penalize Growth, Acknowledges that Tax Competition Restrains Excessive Government
I have to start this post with a big caveat. I’m not a fan of the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The international bureaucracy is infamous for using… Read more
A Swiss-Style Spending Cap Would Have Prevented the Current Fiscal Mess in America
I greatly admire Switzerland’s “debt brake” because it’s really a spending cap. Politicians are not allowed to increase spending faster than average revenue growth over a multi-year period, which basically… Read more
Portugal May Become the First of Europe’s Bankrupt Welfare States to Stumble upon a Genuine Recovery Formula: Less Spending AND Lower Tax Rates
There aren’t many fiscal policy role models in Europe. Switzerland surely is at the top of the list. The burden of government spending is modest by European standards, in part… Read more
Switzerland’s “Debt Brake” Is a Role Model for Spending Control and Fiscal Restraint
I’ve argued, ad nauseam, that the single most important goal of fiscal policy is (or should be) to make sure the private sector grows faster than the government. This “golden… Read more
Patriotism, Loyalty, Tax Competition, and “Tax Fugitives”
I fight to preserve tax competition, fiscal sovereignty, and financial privacy for the simple reason that politicians are less likely to impose destructive tax policy if they know that labor… Read more
European Economic Crisis Highlights an Increasingly Important Reason to Oppose Gun Control
bout a year ago, I spoke at a conference in Europe that attracted a lot of very rich people from all over the continent, as well as a lot of… Read more
Are Tax Havens Moral or Immoral?
Being the world’s self-appointed defender of so-called tax havens has led to some rather bizarre episodes. The bureaucrats at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development threatened to have me… Read more
Five reasons Why Switzerland Is Better than the United States (but Five Reasons Why I’ll Stay in America)
Greetings from Montreux, Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Geneva. There aren’t many places where palm trees are framed by snow-capped mountains. Heck, even I managed to take a decent… Read more
Federalism Spreads to the United Kingdom
The United States, Canada, and Switzerland are the only developed nations that have some degree of genuine federalism (Germany and Australia don’t count by my standards), and Switzerland is the… Read more
Three Cheers for Switzerland as Voters Reject Class-Warfare Tax Hike in National Referendum
I’ve always had a soft spot for Switzerland. The nation’s decentralized structure shows the value of federalism, both as a means of limiting the size of government and as a… Read more
