Switzerland is what Americans imagine Germany is like. It’s very … buttoned-down, conservative, and precise. There’s a certain love of rules, of everything being in the place it’s supposed to be. The streets are clean. The trains run on time.¹ In short, it’s a place that prides itself on being reliable and unsurprising.

That means it’s somewhat more immune to the current political paroxysms which seem to have infected much of the world. There’s a power sharing agreement which basically agrees that all of the political parties share equally in running the government, so nothing especially radical gets through. Of course, that also results in things like granting women the right to vote in 1971.²

I’ve had a very nice time visiting friends, seeing some of Zürich and Lucerne, lingering over meals. It’s a lovely place to visit. If only it wasn’t so ungodly expensive.

Switzerland has a reputation for extraordinarily high salaries and extraordinarily low taxes, which isn’t quite right. The salaries are high, compared to the rest of Europe. But the taxes aren’t all that much lower, since a lot of the difference is because things like unemployment insurance and pension payments aren’t considered taxes, and neither is health insurance despite being a mandatory expense.

The real difference, though, is cost of living. I’m mostly aware of that because of the cost of food. Restaurants that cost $20 for dinner in New York City cost $30 for dinner in the small town nearly an hour’s train ride outside of Zürich. Zürich is worse. And it’s not just restaurants; a small bottle of soda runs $5 in the train station. Supermarkets are often twice as expensive as their German counterparts.

Nobody’s entirely sure where the blame for this lies. The Swiss Government agrees it’s a problem; there’s a lot of people who run across the border to buy clothing and groceries from Germany or France, which hurts Swiss retailers and costs the government tax income. Maybe it’s those high salaries, which obligates retailers to set high prices in order to pay their staff. Maybe it’s inefficient negotiations with the EU, since Switzerland has that same vague I’m-in-but-not-really relationship³ as Norway. Maybe it’s just greed⁴ on the part of retailers, who are going to charge whatever the market will bear.

But it ultimately comes back to a government decision, or a lack of one. The government could raise taxes on people and cut taxes on retail goods. They could allow people to deduct food and clothing on their taxes. They could implement price controls, or nationalize grocery stores, or pursue any number of policies which would affect retail costs. Being Swiss, I’m guessing they’re most likely to grumble about it, fiddle with some tax laws at the margins, and let the market do whatever it wants.

I was supposed to be taking the train from Switzerland to Denmark, even looking forward to it.⁵ I had been advised you could just hop the train, no advance purchase required, and avoid all the hassles of flight. No doubt that’s all true. But when I double-checked a couple days before my trip, I discovered the train trip took over 13 hours and cost roughly $170. To compare, there was a direct flight from Basel to Copenhagen for $70. Total travel time 6 hours, including the train ride to Basel, the train ride to Odense after landing, and getting there 90 minutes before my flight.

That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. There are a lot of reasons for it, of course. It’s comparably easy to negotiate landing a flight at any given airport, compared to trying to coordinate the trains between three different sovereign nations with different labor laws and technologies and regulations governing rail travel. There are horrific environmental costs related to air travel⁶ which just aren’t being borne by the airlines. And airlines qualify for a lot of subsidies out of a belief that air hubs are vital for business or tourism or trade or prestige in a way that train travel, prosaic since the ’40s, just isn’t.

These are all political decisions. A charismatic leader could bring all parties to the bargaining table and forge a jointly-operated express train route from Zürich to Copenhagen, or from Paris to Berlin. Subsidies to airlines could be cut and subsidies to trains could be increased. Carbon offsets for flights could be mandated across the board.

And this is what governments are supposed to do. Sort through policy proposals and make active decisions to balance the desires and needs of their constituents, both majority and minority. But it seems governments all over the world have gradually fallen into gridlock. They often seem to lack the ability to elaborate a economic plan beyond “taxes bad” or “coal good” which acknowledges the risks and tradeoffs inherent in each choice.⁷ These withered debates lead to wasted resources and market interventions which do less than nothing. And the market follows its own inexorable logic.

Maybe that’s fine, in the case of Switzerland, where the population can afford the vagaries of the market.⁸ But governments that fail to govern and markets that work as an engine to transfer wealth from the have-nots to the haves create vast swaths of the population angry at having prosperity pass them by and resentful of those the market, in its inscrutable wisdom, decided to bless. That’s fertile ground for nationalistic populists to demagogue. And their reaction, when that rage boils over, is less “fuck the government” but more “fuck everybody, including myself, but especially the marginalized.” And it’s a very short step from that to voting with your fists, or a bomb, or a gun.

Next: Copenhagen (CPH) to New York City (JFK)
Prev: Zagreb (ZAG) to Zürich (ZRH)

Footnotes

¹ At the moment I’m on a train to the airport, having gotten up a full hour earlier than I needed to, after being thoroughly warned that the train which went direct to Basel from where I was staying ran on the German side of the border and simply could not be trusted. So I’m going through Zürich, instead.

² Appenzell Innerrhoden, the smallest canton by population, didn’t allow women to vote in local elections until 1990, and then only after being forced to by the Swiss Federal Court.

³ The same one the United Kingdom seems to be angling for, although they don’t nearly have the same income levels as the Swiss and the Norwegians which ameliorates some of those inefficiencies.

⁴ Or “savvy business tactics,” depending on your comfort level with unrestrained capitalism.

⁵ I remain somewhat terrified of flying, not because I have any concern about crashing, but because I know any level of turbulence is going to send me into a real freakout. I generally survive by taking mostly short hops, practicing breathing exercises, and having access to a ready supply of beta blockers.

⁶ As someone who travels by air a lot, I’m part of the problem. The lack of a functioning international train network makes alternatives horrifically difficult.

⁷ And let’s not even talk about the “debates” around social issues.

⁸ Although even at that 7% of the population lives in poverty.