Comments on: Global Competitiveness Report 2006-2007 http://battleangel.org/2006/10/12/global-competitiveness-report-2006-2007/ Tell us what you despise; by this are you truly known. Fri, 08 Aug 2008 21:21:52 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Francesco Orsenigo http://battleangel.org/2006/10/12/global-competitiveness-report-2006-2007/#comment-502 Francesco Orsenigo Fri, 13 Oct 2006 01:48:50 +0000 #comment-502 Said that I would pride myself of being swedish citizen (och ibland tänkar jag på allvar att flytta...), many would argue that northern countries have a much lower density and smaller populations, which makes organization and transport a lot easier: this would account for the better competitiveness.<br /><br />I'd gladly pay a lot more taxes to have the level of service you have in Sweden.<br /><br />I was surprised to see that Italy taxes are so high with respect to other countries, but is quite obvious as tax-evasion is our national sport.<br /><br />This leads me to think that it's more a matter of culture that strictly of taxes.<br />The scandinavian example just tells us that, in a really different (yet still european) context and a really different culture high taxes are not.<br /><br />I would rather correlate the competitiveness with the money spent in research and innovation:<br /><a href="http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/PGP_PRD_CAT_PREREL/PGE_CAT_PREREL_YEAR_2005/PGE_CAT_PREREL_YEAR_2005_MONTH_12/9-06122005-EN-AP.PDF" rel="nofollow">http://epp.eurostat.ec.euro...</a> Said that I would pride myself of being swedish citizen (och ibland tänkar jag på allvar att flytta…), many would argue that northern countries have a much lower density and smaller populations, which makes organization and transport a lot easier: this would account for the better competitiveness.

I’d gladly pay a lot more taxes to have the level of service you have in Sweden.

I was surprised to see that Italy taxes are so high with respect to other countries, but is quite obvious as tax-evasion is our national sport.

This leads me to think that it’s more a matter of culture that strictly of taxes.
The scandinavian example just tells us that, in a really different (yet still european) context and a really different culture high taxes are not.

I would rather correlate the competitiveness with the money spent in research and innovation:
http://epp.eurostat.ec.euro...

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