by Dan Mitchell | Mar 7, 2018 | Blogs, Taxation
The Swiss people are normally very sensible when asked to vote in national referendums. Here are some recent results. In 2010, nearly 60 percent of the electorate rejected a class-warfare income tax proposal. In 2014, Swiss voters overwhelmingly killed a minimum-wage...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 27, 2018 | Blogs, Society
Last September, Economic Freedom of the World was released, which was sort of like Christmas for wonks who follow international economic policy. I eagerly combed through that report, which (predictably) had Hong Kong and Singapore as the top two jurisdictions. I was...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 10, 2018 | Blogs, Crime, Society
I haven’t written in any detail about “jury nullification” since late 2010 and it’s time to rectify that sin of omission. Nullification occurs when a jury votes not guilty because a law is either unjust or wrongly applied, not because a defendant is actually innocent....
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 16, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
There’s a lot to admire about Switzerland, particularly compared to its profligate neighbors. It has a spending cap, imposed in a landslide referendum early last decade, that has constrained the growth of government. It has a genuinely decentralized system with a very...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 16, 2017 | Blogs, Financial Privacy, Tax Competition, Taxation, VAT
Back in 2009, I shared the results of a very helpful study by Pierre Bessard of Switzerland’s Liberal Institute (by the way, “liberal” in Europe means pro-market or “classical liberal“). Pierre ranked the then-30 member nations of the Organization for Economic...
