Mirco Good

@goodmirco.bsky.social

PhD Student in Political Science at the University of Bern / Public Opinion / Politicization / Swiss-EU Relations 🇪🇺🇨🇭 / EU Politics

Very interesting paper — and highly relevant to current Swiss politics. 📮 Swiss voters will decide on a 50% inheritance tax for bequests exceeding CHF 50 million (only the portion above 50 million would be taxed) on 30.11.2025.

Bastian Becker@beckerbastian.bsky.social · 9mo ago

🚨Elites often warn: taxing the rich hurts everyone. 🤔But do citizens buy that story? With @bcastanho.bsky.social & Hanna Lierse, we find: They don’t! Most people believe progressive taxes can deliver both — more equality and more growth. @jpublicpolicy.bsky.social #openaccess cup.org/3JVuvHm

To be clear: deportations to increase cultural homogeneity is the text book definition of ethnic cleansing. Demands that come even close to this are so far outside any democratic norm and the rule of law. What has happened to a country when this is not condemned in the strongest possible terms?

Amid wealth tax discussion, it's worth reflecting on recent changes in tax takes across the income distribution. Combining all payments (ie income taxes and VAT etc), the richest and poorest pay the most as a share of their gross income. But rates are down markedly in the middle of the distribution

Line chart showing trends in the shares of gross income being paid in total tax by those living in five equally sized income groups, from the richest fifth (quintile 5) to the poorest fifth (quintile 1). Covers the UK and the years 1980 to 2022-23. Shows shares falling then rising among the richest 20%; rising, plateauing, then rising again among the poorest 20%, and falling, plateauing and then falling again among the middle three groups. By 2022-23, average effective tax ‘rates’ (measured as four-year averages) were 37.5% among the poorest, 29.7% among quintile 2, 30.6% among quintile 3, 31.9% among quintile 4, and 37% among the richest 20%.

The far-right SVP continues to frame itself as the voice of the “little man”. Yet it is now the Swiss party with *the highest* number of formal ties between its MPs & the banking lobby. Also, in Switzerland, public skepticism toward deregulatory policies is growing, as shown in my new publication

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Political Data Yearbook@pdyearbook.bsky.social · last yr.

🆕 #Switzerland #PoliticalData @rfrbrghs.bsky.social reports on 2024, when dissatisfaction grew, driven by perceptions that state interventions disproportionately favoured large corporations, as public needs amid a #CostOfLivingCrisis were sidelined. ✍️ buff.ly/XMQUV8X #OA

#POLITKOLUMNE: There are 2 main strategies to counter the far-right: legal means & political responses Courts alone won’t save democracy. What’s needed: 1️⃣firm stance against the far-right 2️⃣protest /civil soc. mobilization 3️⃣public institutions that guarantee equal public service access for everyone

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Those trying to understand the tariffs as economic policy are dangerously naive. No, the tariffs are a tool to collapse our democracy. A means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief. 1/ A 🧵 to explain his plan and how we fight back.

Post 1: Introduction Do Swiss voters want closer ties with the EU? 🇨🇭🇪🇺 We asked voters if they support the new 🇨🇭🇪🇺 agreement that extends existing bilateral agreements – and how important good EU relations are to them. We also included two survey experiments. Curious what they said? 👇 (1/11)

BlueSky, kannst Du helfen? Bald steht unser Masterseminar zum Vergleich der polit. Systeme 🇩🇪🇨🇭 an, inkl. Studienreise nach Berlin & Austausch mit einem MdB. Nun verpasste es die Wiederwahl. Hat i-jemand einen niederschwelligen Kontakt zu einem MdB? Unsere Studierenden würden sich SO freuen! #btw25

If you've lost track of Swiss-EU relations, Fabio Wasserfallen's piece @republik.ch is highly recommended. Key point: A favorable deal for Switzerland, but it risks failure unless domestic legislation (eg. regional minimum wage) is passed to mitigate the deal's impact www.republik.ch/2025/01/23/w...

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Rahel Freiburghaus@rfrbrghs.bsky.social · 2y ago

NOW HAPPENING: @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu, the President of the @ec.europa.eu, declares: "Today is a day of great joy. This agreement between the European Union and Switzerland is historic" as she unveils the new EU-Switzerland deal alongside Viola Amherd, the President of the Swiss Confederation

Extraordinary quote in the FT profile of Alice Weidel - the AFD candidate for German Chancellor. Asked to explain how her being married to a woman fitted with the party's "anti-woke" philosophy an official said: "She is just gay by biology but not by political conviction."

1/ Die NZZ kritisiert wieder mal, dass zu viele Menschen studieren und erst noch das Falsche: Sozial- und Geisteswissenschaften. Lasst uns anschauen, ob und was die Leute bei der NZZ studiert haben. 🧵

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🧐Do you teach comparative politics? ❓Do your students sometimes struggle to find the right data for their projects? If so, my chapter might be what you need! It offers a collaboratively curated collection of data sets specifically tailored for the study of political institutions polisky

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This recent R package is a great contribution! Not only because it allows you to harmonize regional Eurostat data, but it also implements a nice solution to address the issue of regional boundary changes. Also great helper tool to merge Eurostat data with EU-NED data www.eu-ned.com #polisky

European NUTS-Level Election Database

The European NUTS-Level Election Database (EU-NED) provides national and European parliamentary election results on the level of Eurostat's NUTS 2 and NUTS 3 administrative units, covering all EU (& a...

eu-ned.com

Werner Krause@krausewe.bsky.social · 2y ago

Excited to share a new R-package (written w/ @aaoritz.bsky.social)! "nuts: Convert European regional data in R" tinyurl.com/4yhbnpxn nuts allows to harmonize and aggregate European regional data across all NUTS versions (2006, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2021) & levels (NUTS-3 to NUTS-1). 1/4

Switzerland might soonish vote on a popular initiative on an inheritance tax of 50%, with the first 50mil tax free. The super wealthy are already threatening to leave. Maybe we should not give this too much weight – even if Zug and other tax haven places cannot be described as vibrant places.

Simon Hix@simonhix.bsky.social · 2y ago

Fascinating and important research by Andy Summers and co at LSE. Public perception that super rich will leave if taxes rise is based on a very biased signal from a tiny number who threaten to leave. The majority would never leave NY, London, Paris etc www.ft.com/content/4232...