Accordint to Tages Anzeiger. Why should that be? More people equals more spending and more demand.
It’s considered polite to put in a hyperlink to any newspaper article you are quoting.
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I saw the thread title and assumed it was by one of two posters. I was not wrong.
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If in doubt blame the emmigrants!
It’s declining because wealth continues to concentrate amongst a smaller group of people, and it’s being sucked out of the middle class.
I’m a centrist and a believer in capitalism…but it only works if those with wealth have a moral conscience, and pay a just amount of tax. C-suite executives don’t deserve 8 figure remunerartion.
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Well, mathematically, GDP per head should decline as you add more heads unless each head added increases GDP by more than the average.
However, as long as new immigrants contribute to the economy more than they take, then overall GDP should grow.
It’s a bit hard to add more to GDP when…not working (not generating income to consume goods and service). But, part-time work is not necessarily a bad thing.
Part-time work (a work-time percentage below 90%) has increased significantly over the past thirty years in Switzerland, from a quarter of employed persons in the early 1990s to more than a third today.
Any group of foreigners who traditionally earn less than the median income in Switzerland? For example in USA, Indians earn more than the average and Hispanics less than the average, at least that was my perception. In Switzerland, I know that the British and German are among those who earn the most here.
Blaming immigrants is a common game found all over the world. It is particularly ironic in Switzerland given that the wealth of the country from the sixties onwards has been dependent on foreign workers and high immigration. In the fifties, Swiss people were emigrating to the new world to get a better life,
Another issue is that for post industrial countries, GDP is no longer a good measure of quality of life. Working part-time is for many here a lifestyle choice
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When I was reading the local news yesterday I noticed a report that there is a housing shortage in Basel and this is being blamed on too many immigrants. It struck me I didn’t know how companies in Basel like Novartis and Roche can operate without using overseas workers to fill some of the skilled jobs (a number of my neighbours work in both companies and are from Italy, E Europe, Brazil and the US).
My OH is in IT and was offered a permanent job here after being a contractor for 3 years as his employers had difficulty finding someone else with his level of knowledge in the software they’re using for development.
It’s the way of the world, a relative is a retired Professor who ran a cancer centre in Scotland. The only way he could get qualified radiographers and radiologists was to recruit them from Sweden.
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This type of generalization is nothing but a hate speech. If you don’t have proper data (or don’t want to include proper data) you can always draw the conclusion you want.
It reminds me of an old joke:
A scientist conducts an experiment on flies. On the first day, he pulls one leg out of the insect and says:
- Fly, go!
The fly moves.On the second day, he plucks out its next leg and says:
- Fly go!
The fly moves.On the third day, he rips out another two legs for her:
- Fly go!
Fly does nothing.- Fly go!!!
Fly does nothing.The result of the experiment: After pulling out all its legs, the fly lost its hearing.
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I wonder if foreigners who buy their own house in Switzerland contribute to the housing shortage or is it the other way around? 
Foreigners must live here to buy a property. So it doesn’t make a difference to the housing shortage. They gotta live somewhere, who cares if they own it or not.
I heard a good one the other day, I think it was re Germany, aimed at the government: If they want us to live under the bridges they better build a whole load of new bridges.
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I’m paying 200% council tax on the house I own in Scotland. This is apparently supposed to free up affordable properties for rent. Rubbish in my case as my house doesn’t fall into the bracket of affordable housing. It’s a 2 bed semi that would rent out for £900 a month as it’s in a conservation area. No garden, just a small terrace at the back so not suitable for kids. I honestly wonder what people are on when they come up with stuff like this.
Basically you’re “punished” because you’re doing whatever you like with the property YOU own. (not renting it is the owner’s right IMHO…)…the idea is close to socialism…
There are many places in the UK where the locals, born and bred in those places can not afford to live there themselves as they are priced out of the market by second home/holiday home airBnB owners.
They have to move out. It destroys communities, and public amenities and shops (butchers, grocers etc) have to close as they cannot thrive with the occasional weekend patronage from out-of-towners.
Socialism is one way of looking at it but the weekenders end up destroying the town to which they were endeared in the first place. It’s no longer that place.
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It’s even worse in some countries where people who already own their homes are priced out: the rising home values increases the tax value of the home forcing those who may now have paid off their mortgage but retired and without large income to have to sell and move.
But hey, I guess this is just Smith’s invisible hand at work.
The old recipe how to retire early, buy an apartment and 3 others nearby to rent out. I guess it should still work, but “clever” tax systems might ruin it too.
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Clever tax systems imply clever accounting and reporting 
but that’s what the politicians do, they fire up an excel sheet, and manipulate the formula to hit with taxes those they want, touching the rest only slightly or not at all, that’s why sometimes you see formulas which makes no sense if you ask yourself who could have thought about it
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