theo

I am so tired of the “Switzerland is just evil bankers hiding elite money” narrative Banking is only about 5% of Swiss GDP Pharma is bigger, at 5.8%, fyi we account for 10.5% of global pharmaceutical exports Manufacturing is around 24% We also rank #1 in innovation world wide Oh and we also have the only real democracy in the world The issue is that the foreigners view of Switzerland and its economy is plagued by it’s image… No sorry but it isn’t just Zurich and Geneva carrying a country of cows and ski chalets where inhabitants produce chocolate and expensive watches Zurich canton, aka the state of Zurich, produces roughly 18% of Swiss GDP with about 18% of the population Geneva produces about 8% of GDP with only 5.9% of the population The reality is that the country is full of small towns with industrial and service bases that employ people locally and sustain entire regions Take Monthey, where I grew up. It’s a city of around 15,000 people, yet it holds one of the largest contiguous chemical site in Europe: 2,000 people on site daily, with names like Ciba, BASF, Huntsman, Sun Chemical, and Syngenta. For Syngenta, largest crop protection producer in the world, Monthey is a globally important production hub That site is also where the world famous Ferrari red pigment was invented That’s the real Switzerland Small places quietly making world-class things, and the system works: My father grew up on a rural farm, couldn’t get a higher education. To give my family a better life he got a job at Syngenta working night shifts as a factory worker. 20y later he still works there, but now he moved up to a coordinator role in charge of a part of manufacturing where he leads a team of 20. There aren’t many places where you can leave school at 14, spend your whole life as an employee, never invest a cent beyond your retirement savings, and still work your way from the lower class into a very comfortable middle-class life 2 months ago, I took the day off to join my dad as he picked up his Porsche Taycan 4S. Sure, it was secondhand and around 120k off sticker, but for someone who grew up waking up at 4:30 to milk cows before school, then back to work again after class, and never had a vacation until he met my mom in his mid-20s, it’s an extraordinary milestone The state covered my healthcare until I was 20, and it quite literally saved my life, I would not be here otherwise Swiss taxpayers spent roughly CHF 18 million keeping me alive, and a big part of what drives me is the desire to repay that debt by becoming a net positive for my country And yes, of course Switzerland made real moral compromises during WWII, but for the love of god consider the situation it was in Judging those choices without looking at a map is deeply unserious: by 1940 Switzerland was effectively surrounded by Axis-controlled territory, so neutrality was a survival strategy under extreme pressure, not some claim to moral purity lol. So yes, the Swiss National Bank bought gold from Nazi Germany. The real question is not whether compromises happened, but if survival ended and complicity began. It’s very easy to moralize about clean choices once the war is over and someone else had to live through the alternatives… If you are going to criticize Switzerland, do it where criticism is deserved Lastly, before calling Switzerland cowardly for neutrality, remember that Pope Julius II founded the Swiss Guard in 1506 because Swiss mercenaries were the best in the world and had a reputation for loyalty and military effectiveness. Five centuries later we are still protecting the Pope btw Next time instead of taking about our big bad banks, talk about: our factories, our labs, our medicines, our engineering, or the diplomacy, the humanitarian work and so on Oh and look at your own countries actions before having the audacity to criticize others…