Because it is the place it is due to the conditions it has grown in. Take away the EU and Switzerland loses a significant part of their economic power, which is needed to sustain being the place it is. Just like Brexit.
Is not accepting infinity immigration "taking away the EU"? And the population density is even more part of the conditions it has grown in. But much much harder to fix if it increases too much - shouldn't they take a precautionary approach?
Regardless, that's not the question I asked. I asked why the poster was pretending they don't know population number affects the quality of a place.
A rhetorical question is supposed to make you think, not state the obvious. Especially since the obvious has already been stated - it is the premise of the referendum!
It's also a much smaller economy and Switzerland, unlike the UK, is landlocked and surrounded by EU countries. More than half of its exports go to the EU. Switzerland needs the EU more than the EU needs Switzerland.
About half of UK trade is with the EU too and leaving made no difference.
As for "surrounded by EU countries", unless you're jumping in the same boat as joxdasba and claiming France, Germany, Italy and Austria will all simultaneously attempt to starve Switzerland into submission, that just doesn't matter much.
I simply think that it's self-destructive to block end all bilateral agreements that are dependent on the free movement of people in order to put a cap on population/immigration, and especially that not knowing whether or when would it be applied would create uncertainty to a country whose best strength is certainty and stability.
European countries have traded with each other long before EU free movement. In fact, most countries today, EU or not, manage to trade just fine despite strict borders.
For sure, but going back to this after such a close integration is much harder than the previous situation. Moreover, the uncertainty of when or if these measure will be applied would damage the predictability and stability of Switzerland, which are their best assets.
The UK went with the "hardest" exit possible in law, in which all integration was unwound, but trade levels continued on their pre-referendum trajectory. So it's not that hard, apparently.
Well, you may be right, who knows. I still think is not worth it to create uncertainty in a country whose biggest strengths are certainty and stability for limiting immigration in a country where immigrants cause no troubles.
> The majority of economists believe that Brexit has harmed the UK's economy and reduced its real per capita income in the long term, and the referendum itself damaged the economy.
That specific statement has five citations and all of them are from 2016 or 2017, when Brexit hadn't happened and so they were merely speculating about possible future effects. So none of the citations supports the claim.
The citations also contradict the statement, "the referendum itself damaged the economy". Instead they admit the referendum's effects were better than predicted by which they mean there weren't any:
"It won't mean Armageddon, but the broad consensus of economists—whose predictions about the initial fallout were largely too pessimistic—is for a prolonged effect"
and
"Unlike the short-term effects of Brexit, which have been better than most had predicted"
Wikipedia is a hopelessly compromised source, you shouldn't rely on it for anything where a left wing activist might have strong opinions because they'll just straight up lie to you, unfortunately. Grokipedia's article is marginally better, but still makes the mistake of citing discredited analyses and making false claims based on them.
If you really want to know the truth about this you have to just go to the core data and see for yourself, because the space is full of claims made by people with a clear agenda.
That's not an answer. Raw data is useless without interpretation. There's a myriad of other things affecting economic development, which need to be compensated for.
Or does your "raw data" have a column for "growth deficit due to Brexit" showing 0?
Just compare the British economy with that of France, or its own prior trajectory. Very similar economies, neighbours, one stayed in and the other left. France establishes there was no unexpected growth surge Britain missed out on. Continuing on the prior trajectory establishes there was no direct negative impact from leaving. Put them together and there's your answer.
Surely, somebody else has done that and either posted about it or even submitted an academic paper in some economy journal. Do you have any links?
[Ed.: nevermind, https://ukandeu.ac.uk/brexits-impact-on-the-uk-economy/ does what you described & it very much indicates an economic impact. You'll of course claim it's biased. Feel free to back that up with your own links to analysis.]
There's no point submitting papers to academic journals given that the entire economics profession systematically lied about Brexit for years. Even Paul Krugman has publicly admitted, in writing in the New York Times, that the profession has been manipulating the public for ideological purposes:
> "What we’re hearing overwhelmingly from economists is the claim that [voting leave] will also have severe short-run adverse impacts. And that claim seems dubious. Or maybe more to the point, it’s a claim that doesn’t follow in any clear way from standard macroeconomics — but it’s being presented as if it does. And I worry that what we’re seeing is a case of motivated reasoning, which could end up damaging economists’ credibility."
Your link is an example of what Krugman was talking about. It's a press release about the NBER paper. It's not doing what I described, it uses an invalid methodology. It:
• Compares Britain to a synthetic country primarily based on the USA and Estonia, i.e. a country with a massive tech industry and a fast-growing ex-Soviet state still catching up from the damage caused by decades of communism. Notably missing: France and Germany. Then it assumes any underperformance in this correlation must be caused by Brexit. This assumption is invalid.
• Argues that if it hadn't left Britain would have had a sudden growth spurt out of nowhere that would have made it by far the fastest growing economy in the G7 outside of the US, leaving the rest of the EU in the dust. From where??
• Argues that if it had stayed British unemployment would be 4pp lower, but the current unemployment rate is 4% so they think staying in the EU would have reduced British unemployment literally to zero. Not a single unemployed person anywhere.
The paper can't even be described as biased, really. It's straightforward manipulation of the public. Anyone can "discover" any impact they like if they're allowed to make absurd assumptions about the counterfactual.
You can find other papers written outside of academia that are much more honest:
> Contrary to initial concerns, Brexit has not had a major detrimental effect on UK–EU trade. Trade data doesn’t support the Office for Budget Responsibility’s claims that Brexit has caused significant negative impacts on the UK economy.
I did. First of all, its primary trade claims collapse when you look at more recent data from https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpay... - it appears 2022 was simply an outlier year. On top of that, I'm not sure the premise about "trade would shift away from the EU" is valid. It wouldn't capture an overall cooling of the economy. Further, a lot of trade goods cannot be shifted arbitrarily between trade partners due to logistics limitations. It's not even worth discussing though, considering it collapses on its own when you include 2025.
The paper was written in 2023. Citing numbers from years after it was published doesn't make sense, as it didn't make any specific claims about what would happen in future years. It was only pointing out that the narrative from pro-EU economists was false, which is what you wanted a paper for.
2022 had a catchup effect from COVID. Nonetheless exports and imports are both higher than in the 2010s, exports have been rising since 2023 and exports to the EU are currently increasing, not decreasing:
> Exports in the UK rose 0.2% month-on-month to £79.13 billion in March 2026 from £78.98 billion in February. Goods exports edged up 0.1% to £32.35 billion, driven by higher shipments to the EU (3.9%), while those to non-EU countries remained relatively unchanged.
The further we get from the actual date of leaving the less any specific trend can be argued to be caused by it though. It's especially tricky because lockdown impact was so massive it drowned out everything. But Brexit was years ago. None of the predicted economic disasters came true which is why its critics are reduced to playing with Excel.
