Congratulations to Switzerland, the “improbable success” that is home to the world’s most sensible voters.

The left put a referendum on the ballot to impose a national death tax and the people of Switzerland overwhelmingly voted against the class warfare initiative.

Every single canton in every single region voted no. More than 90 percent of voters said no in the best cantons (Schwyz and Appenzell Inner Rhoden), while the margin was 2-1 against in the worst canton (Basel City).

The Wall Street Journal editorialized in favor of the outcome.

Here are some excerpts.

The right-left wave of hate-the-rich politics that is riding high in the West hit an iceberg on Sunday in Switzerland. Some 78% of voters rejected a 50% inheritance tax on the country’s wealthiest residents. …a majority of Swiss voters in every canton opposed the referendum sponsored by a group known as the Young Socialists. …The sponsors pitched the tax as hitting only some 2,500 people in the country, or the top 0.03% of the population. They also said the money would be used to fight climate change, which is popular in Europe. But voters across the Continent are figuring out that climate money merely goes toward ideas that do little for the climate. Many of the richest Swiss taxpayers vowed to emigrate if the referendum passed. Switzerland has prospered over many decades as a refuge for the wealthy looking to escape punitive taxation. …Various forms of wealth tax are gaining support in France and such progressive American states as California. The Swiss public has offered voters in those places a lesson in economic common sense.

And the Washington Post, now with more sensible leadership, also opined that Swiss voters made the right choice.

So much bad economic policy comes out of Europe that it’s notable when a good decision gets made somewhere on the continent. That’s what Swiss voters did Sunday when they robustly rejected a proposed inheritance tax. …The Young Socialists party that proposed the new law says the money would be used to fight climate change. Yet it was so resoundingly rejected that it may deter others on the continent from following suit. …the electorate made a rational decision to keep what helps make the country so wealthy: a stable and predictable business climate with relatively low taxes. The Swiss understood that taking that away would hurt even those without huge inheritances.

Both editorials are correct.

Any sort of death tax or wealth tax is bad news. Such levies are double taxation and would hurt workers by reducing investment and productivity.

The people of Switzerland are smart enough to understand the issue. I hope Americans are similarly astute.

P.S. There’s a long tradition of good votes in Switzerland.

• In 2001, the people of Switzerland voted by a 5-1 margin in favor of a spending cap.
• In 2010, nearly 60 percent of the electorate rejected a class-warfare income tax proposal.
• In 2014, Swiss voters overwhelmingly killed a minimum-wage mandate.
• Also in 2014, the voters of Switzerland rejected single-payer healthcare by a landslide margin.
• And in 2015, more than 70 percent of voters rejected a federal death tax.
• In 2016, there was a landslide vote against a scheme to provide universal basic income.
• In 2021, there was another landslide vote, this time against double taxation.
• In 2023, voters in Geneva rejected a wealth tax.

P.P.S. I can’t resist sharing some passages from an article in the U.K.-based Times about the economically illiterate student who launched the referendum.

Thanks to its low taxes and safe, stable environment, Switzerland has long been a haven for the world’s wealthy… Their Alpine idyll has come under threat, however, from a 26-year-old student who has emerged as the face of a proposal to impose a 50 per cent tax on the inheritances of the super-rich. …Mirjam Hostetmann, the head of the youth wing of the Socialist Party, which initiated the vote, has been thrust into the middle of the debate, receiving hate mail and even death threats. …A native of Obwalden, one of Switzerland’s most rural and conservative cantons, Hostetmann has been unpleasantly surprised by the response she has received, including serious threats, not just online but also in letters delivered to her parents’ home. “I wouldn’t have thought at the beginning that people would get so emotional about taxes,” she said. …Since the Young Socialists began gathering the 100,000 signatures needed to bring about a national referendum in Switzerland, their opponents have been fighting back. …Instagram and TikTok videos…have been produced for the Free Democratic Party by Elisa Strebel, a 21-year-old economics student and influencer, which have attracted more than 1.5 million views. “The wealthiest 1 per cent of our population already pay the majority of our taxes,” she told me. “Punishing them again would be counterproductive.”

Thankfully, Swiss voters voted with Ms. Strebel over Ms. Hostelmann.

And I can’t resist noting that nearly 87 percent of voters in Ms. Hostelmann’s canton rejected her class-warfare initiative.

P.P.P.S. No wonder some people in Sardinia want to leave Italy and join Switzerland. Though maybe in the future they’ll want to join Argentina instead.

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Image credit: bigbirdz | CC BY 2.0.