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Winterfall has implied that he (she) is an Iranian. In any case he sure has a long history of posting in which he defends the crimes of the radical Islamist regime. Sometimes he minimizes them by attacking US "crimes".
He (she) has also explicitly pronounced himself a proud Marxist.
Maybe he can find a hellish place on earth in which he can live with both of his devils.
Of course you have no evidence I support the Iranian regime. You also don't seem to care when commentators laugh at the death of 1 million people.
Oh yeah, I'm also not religious or a Muslim (neither is anyone in my immediate family) but keep believing your own lies.
Value added taxes are the way the Swiss pay for most of their government. There are extremely few raw materials that are ever exported from Switzerland. The Swiss keep their industries healthy and strong by requiring that only finished goods are to be exported.
Of course, there are a few exceptions, but they are so few that they are inconsequential. The very few raw goods that pass out of Switzerland always have something attached that will bring the Swiss back more of something than they send out.
An example:
Here in the United States, anyone can cut a pine tree down as long as he has a permit to log in that forest.
What he does with the pine tree is his business. He can use the wood, adding value to it, or he can sell the raw timber. If an exporter buys it, as long as the deal is legal, there are no difficulties in sending the pine tree abroad.
In Switzerland, the national forests are groomed, evaluated, and all the trees that are deemed fit for cutting are tagged. If a Swiss wants a pine tree, he has to go select the specific tree he wants, and he has to state his purpose for its use before it's cut in a submission form.
The submission then goes to a committee who can deny or approve the cutting, and only when there's approval can the tree be cut. If the person who sought the permit chose the wrong tree for his purpose, he must then give the tree back and re-apply for another, repeating the entire process. Any exporter will have to go through a similar process.
This is a severe intrusion to our thoughts about free trade and commerce, and it's a socialistic process that goes against our grain. But for the Swiss, it's simply assured money in the back.
An example of how this philosophy works to add value:
A woodsman for a Swiss furniture factory can go select the best woods for his factory, show the committee the estimated factory needs for the wood, and get exactly the number of the best trees he needs for his factory.
Even all the by-products from that pine trees go through similar value-added procedures. The bark isn't burned, it's processed into fuel pellets along with the sawdust. The scrub branches are used for things that add value to them. The pine needles get value added to them. Some of it stays home, some of it is exported.
The factory's woodsman usually doesn't do any of the cutting. That's left up to a professional sawyer who works only in that particular forest. This minimizes the waste, and maximizes the added value.
In the best forests, there are cables strung overhead in grids. A single tree may be all that is cut in a year in a forest, and when cut, only that tree is hoisted to the cables and lifted out using the cable grid. The cable grid exists so that other trees will replace the prime tree that was cut. Eventually, the entire forest is nothing but prime timber, so the expense of the cables becomes just another added value.
The forests are so groomed they don't have forest fires in Switzerland. The wood is simply too valuable as a natural resource to be left to go wild and un-tneded. Every other natural resource the Swiss have is treated in similar ways.
If a person needs a pencil, the Swiss-made pencils are always the best pencils a person can find. And they always cost more than the others.
That's not because Swiss pine trees are the best pines in the world. It's because the best pines for the purpose of making pencils was used to make pencils, and the human labor that added the value was all Swiss.
I've often thought that America, which is far richer in natural resources than Switzerland, would ever adopt more of the Swiss philosophy, a lot of our financial woes would disappear forever.
Switerland is the 4th highest ranked countries for freedom rating on doing business. Better than the United States
Switzerland has a long tradition of openness to the world but jealously guards its independence and neutrality. It did not join the United Nations until 2002, two referenda on membership in the European Union failed by wide margins, and membership in the European Economic Area was rejected in 1992.
Switzerland’s sound institutional environment, low corporate tax rate, and productive and multilingual workforce make it a prime location for starting and operating a business.
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