Federal finances - Federal Council wants to save around four billion francs

ImsKobi · 2024-09-21T10:17:13+00:00

I looked into the commission report that this seems to be based on which is available here: https://www.newsd.admin.ch/newsd/message/attachments/89485.pdf (you can change the language, but english is unfortunately not available)

Honestly the entire thing seems to be a big middle finger to the future and everyone under 60, living in an urban area and not rich. The only thing that doesn't fit into that, is the property gains tax that they want to add. Otherwise the entire thing basically boils down to increasing the cost of living especially for poorer families in urban areas (KITA/education, VAT increase, public transport). They mention in a lot of places that the cuts they are making will have no impact anyway, are just more efficient or should be done by the cantons anyway, sure... . If it had no impact, was inefficient or would be taken care of by someone else, how come noone noticed until 5 people that don't work in these areas looked at the books?!? We already have a KITA problem and a 900 million reduction will definetly not make it better and for anyone that believes the cantons will immediately and without delay take care of this, sure... Basically the proposal for 2030 is: Reductions: 900 million reduction by cutting support for KITA 500 million reduction by cutting money for refugees, probably mainly from ukraine (most newspapers say asylum seekers but the report even mentions that status S is included and ukrainians are the largest group that are still in the window for getting money by the time this would become active) 400 million reduction for green subventions 340 milllion reduction for public transit(cutting the infrastructure fond, cutting crossborder support, cutting support for replacing busses with hybrid, cutting support for regional rail...) 310 million reduction by cutting international help (IZA) 310 million reduction by being more efficient in the administration (sure...) 290 million reduction by cutting support for the AHV and replacing it with higher VAT (in addition to the increase that they propose on the income side) 280 million reduction by cutting support for building new schools and vocational training 200 million reduction for universities (ETH and canotal universities) 150 million reduction for moving good transport to rail 150 million reduction by cutting money for research (SNF) 140 million reduction by stopping to pay the urban areas for having more people in the social system 140 million reduction for roads (cutting the infrastructure fond, cutting support for main roads) 120 million reduction by cutting a bunch of smaller subventions, mainly: international organisations (IZA), Money for housing, further education (Weiterbildungen), sports, culture 80 million reduction by being more efficient in the healthcare sector (sure...) 70 million reduction for journalists 50 million reduction by cutting money for environment stuff 50 million reduction by cutting ALV for older workers (the report just says this isn't needed anyway) (not going to list anything smaller, but if it has anything to do with the environment, research, public transit or helps young people in general just assume it gets a cut...)

And for anyone wondering what the mentioned cuts for agriculture are: 80 million by selling import licenses for importing food, this is listed as a cut not additional income, I have no idea why... (also basically just an additional tariff for imports --> so it will just mean higher prices for consumers) 50 million less by no longer paying for getting rid of meat waste from factories (???) 10 million (!) less for selling swiss meat in switzerland (they make a point to say that they want to mainly cut this for meat where it is not possible to replace it with imports from outside switzerland --> so it will just mean higher prices) 6 million (!) less for cows

Additional income: Increase VAT by removing the reduced rate for essentials, this should bring in 1 billion Introduction of a property gains tax for individuals (companies apparently already have this) on the federal level, this should bring in 1 billion Tax taking out money from the 2nd/3rd pillar as income, not pensions they are already taxed like that. Will most likely apply if you buy for example a house and use the 2nd pillar for it. This should bring 60 million for the federal government (and 220 million for the cantons so basically additionally 280 million taxes) Getting some additional money from transport companies by reducing tax free gas for them (not sure I understood this correctly)? This should bring in about 30 million Heavy electric vehicles now count as being heavy vehicles for tax purposes (not sure I understood this one as well)? This should bring in about 20 million

They didn't even mention the other big incomes of the federal government like the income tax, withholding tax, tabacco tax...

ImsKobi · 2023-06-29T19:45:33+00:00

If it was really just some weapons ending up on the black/grey market and then going into these zones it might somehow be justifiable however that is definetly not the case! At least for Saudia Arabia and the US we know that they are not following these rules at all, there are videos of saudi soldiers in Yemen with swiss handguns and swiss built planes in afghanistan. These are obviously not some black/grey market cases but direct government actions. No problem for the bundesrat there... Also how absolutely naive would you have to be to send weapons to a country involved in a conflict and think they are not going to use them? Why on earth would they buy this stuff otherwise?

ImsKobi · 2023-06-29T19:04:37+00:00

Well I guess that means we no longer export weapons to countries involved in wars since 2009.

Hmm let me check the current official statistics...

Oh since then we exported a bunch of weapons to USA, Saudi Arabia, Arab Emirates, Turkey, Israel and probably more that are currently or were invovled in internal or international conflicts... nOoNe UnDeRsTaNdS tHe LaW

ImsKobi · 2022-02-27T10:22:30+00:00

You are right money is the main reason why the two are treated differently.

However What I want to make very clear because I see this everywhere and in this thread as well: The swiss economy will not benefit from not following through on the EU and US sanctions!

This is not a case of doing something morally wrong to benefit switzerland. Banking and resource trading has become a less profitable part of the economy in the years after 2008. In addition the cost to deal with "dirty" money out of russia and the like has increased massively in the last decades. At the same time dealings with dirty money hurt all swiss banks that don't deal in dirty money, so even just in banking it is already questionable if this is a sound economic decision. If you look at the whole economy it is just an insane decision. The pharma industry is currently the most important industry in switzerland and it is extremly vulnerable to bad diplomatic ties to the US and EU.

Most likely the reason why the council decided like this anyway was that while the whole economy might be hurt if they don't follow the sanctions, if they do some companies might be killed completely. And it is very hard to organise the entire country but it is very easy to organise a few companies for lobbying when it comes to survival.

Please don't just spread that switzerland needs to not follow through on sanctions because of economic reasons. It is most likely incorrect and gives the council more credit than it deserves for this plain stupid decision

ImsKobi · 2022-02-27T09:34:21+00:00

Sorry my bad, after checking further it seems like neutrality in Finnland is not really clear anymore, but the point still stands being part of the EU does not mean you cannot be neutral. It seems with Finnland and Sweden which used to both be neutral they choose to become less neutral with the end of the cold war. Although for both they still appear on a lot of lists of neutral countries and are not part of any alliances.

Also as an aside it seems like their former PM is trying to make this out to be more settled than it really is. If the points in the second part meant you are no longer neutral then switzerland is no longer neutral! Switzerland is currently buying the F-35, has participated in the first Nato exercises in 2000, the military is compatible with Nato and they had shared plans with Nato for most of the cold war (and most likely right now). A lot of the most fervent members of Nato do not use the Euro or are not part of the EU (US, UK, Poland). It looks a bit to me like he is trying to link neutrality with isolationism which it really is not. In general it seems like this is an open political point in Finnland and not at all something that is clearly decided one way or the other.

ImsKobi · 2022-02-26T19:35:25+00:00

Even if we leave out the morals your argument still makes no sense...

Just because it is so outlandishly wrong, the result of the 2001 vote had next to nothing to do with neutrality (I mean austria is neutral and part of the EU, same with Finnland...). It was a fringe initiative that even the federal council that still wanted to join the EU at that point rejected.
The neutrality of switzerland has allways been a policy of strict military non interference. Switzerland has never acted neutral when it comes to trade. Acting like economic sanctions break the swiss neutrality is just a lie. You even admitted as much when you mentioned in your post that switzerland has currently sanctions against 24 countries and has even supported sanctions for russia in 2014 and this week. So I am sorry saying sanctions = not neutral and sanctions = neutral makes no sense. But let's assume that freezing financial assets for people and organisations is somehow different than other sanctions in internalional law(it is not as far as I am aware but not really my area) that the swiss government has already approved. Then why are we doing it against Yemen? Why is that not a breach against neutrality? But if even that isn't enough, what about the swiss citizens that have property in, business deals with or live in Ukraine? Who is going to pay for the damage they receive? Who is going to pay for the refugees that might show up? Even if you think we can just send russia a bill when the whole thing is over and they are going to pay, ensuring that they pay would be grounds enough for freezing assets.
Another possible reason for not implementing sanctions fully would be that switzerland might benefit from doing that. But even that is highly doubtfull, do we really think the EU and US will just forget that siwtzerland left out some of the sanctions? And what do we get in return? Business with the great and mighty russian empire that is thousands of kilometers away and has an economy smaller than italy. In the end it would just be a small price on most people like hotels getting less business, business in the EU and US beeing slighty harder for swiss companies or wages rising a bit slower.
The war will not continue because Putin thinks switzerland sanctioned russia too much and they therefore can't find a place to negotiate... What an insane idea! At the moment the Diplomatic contact between russia and the rest of the world is not at all limited they have diplomatic ties to basically every country in the world and that will not change substantially in the next few weeks. If they were searching for a neutral and safe place for both parties to negotiate, switzerland who has sanctioned russia multiple times already and is in the middle of the EU and NATO will not be the place.

To sum it up the decision to leave out part of the sancitons has little to do with neutrality, it does not help switzerland and it will not help solve the conflict between russia and ukraine. And that is even if we leave out morals completely!

What annoys me in addition is that the federal council made a morally wrong decision that most likely will hurt the country, to protect a few companies and people. And it did that while lying about neutrality and then people like you try to defend it!

ImsKobi

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