Chapter 66: War Resumes

Happy days always pass quickly, Audrey and their movie filming has come to an end, the extras have all been disbanded, and only a group of leading actors are left to make up the final shots.

They were also in a hurry so that Audrey could rush back to Switzerland to take her exams after filming the film. She will be in her third year of high school in the fall, and although Swiss universities do not have high requirements for basic grades, they are very picky about moral, intellectual, physical, aesthetic and labor requirements.

But Audrey was ready, she didn't go anywhere, she went to university in Lucerne. In addition, the disciplines have already been studied, and it is a discipline that has just been launched this year, called Social and Communication Science.

This discipline is actually the discipline of journalism in later generations, but this era is just emerging.

In 1922, Walter Lippmann wrote a book called Public Opinion, which for the first time linked the concept of communication with society and politics.

In the United States, many universities already offer journalism disciplines, but in Europe, communication is more associated with politics and humanities. The University of Lucerne has always been one of the leading universities in Europe in the humanities, and last year it proposed to offer one of these courses, which was approved by the school board.

The first class of students will be admitted this fall, with only five students and only one full-time professor. With the exception of journalism and communication professors, who were recruited from the United States, all other disciplines were taught alongside students from other disciplines in the humanities.

Audrey is also a celebrity in Lucerne now, her fame in modern dance, her fame in making movies, and the fact that she is Zhou Nan's wife, which adds a lot of points to her. As long as the grades are not too bad, you don't need to look for anything if you want to go to this university.

Zhou Nan also had to hurry up and deal with the transfer procedures of antiques and return to Switzerland, because the Swiss parliament has passed two proposals in a row to hold a referendum.

Both of these proposals have something to do with Zhou Nan, and in order to pass the referendum, Zhou Nan must also return to China to carry out a propaganda campaign.

The first proposal is the Swiss Immigration Act. Switzerland has never been a country of immigrants and has very strict rules and procedures for immigrants.

During World War II, because there were too many people who were ****, at least 200,000 refugees remained in Switzerland. There have been many votes on what to do with them in Switzerland, but no one side has the upper hand.

The situation in Europe, and in Switzerland and the Nordic countries, is slightly better, and these refugees want to stay in Switzerland, but most of them can't find a canton that is willing to accept them.

The Swiss cantons have a lot of power, and the federal government has no way to interfere in many aspects of internal policy, which means that these people do not have legal status.

Without legal status, there can be no effective management, and these people have a great impact on social stability.

In response to these people, Zhou Nan came up with a comprehensive approach to the immigration policies of Singapore and Switzerland in the future, and handed it over to some **** members of the parliament, so that they and the judges of the court could consider it comprehensively and formulate the current set of immigration bills.

To put it simply, this set of bills is to look down on people and look at the dishes.

First of all, Switzerland has an extremely high threshold for immigration. If you don't have any special skills and don't have money, then don't think about immigrating because you don't meet the threshold at all.

If you are educated, skilled, and have no money, if you are just one person, it is easier to immigrate, and if you have a large family to drag you down, you will lose a lot of points.

For investment immigration, the threshold is higher, and there is a very strict control over the use of funds, so that people will not take 500,000 today, immigrants come in, and then spend 500,000 elsewhere.

At the same time, because of the end of World War II, the probationary period for immigrants has changed from the current two years to five years, and the probationary period for family immigrants is a minimum of 12 years and a maximum of 20 years. For children under the age of 16, one year of living in Switzerland counts as two years.

All in all, it's a draconian set of laws, but it doesn't block the door to immigration.

In order to facilitate the management of these refugees, Zhou Nan also came up with a plan, that is, to divide the people into nationals, residents and long-term residents.

Students who come to Switzerland to study and come to Switzerland for work are long-term residents of the third category, who do not have the right to buy a house, but who have the right to work and do not enjoy all the benefits of Switzerland.

Residents can buy a house in Switzerland, work and enjoy basic benefits, but the basic benefits are definitely not enough for your pension expenses in Switzerland.

Citizens can enjoy all the rights and benefits, and even after retirement, they can still enjoy free education, medical care and pension.

This brings us to the second bill, which is the Swiss National Pension Act.

In the previous life, this bill was also proposed in 47 years, but it has been revised many times before it became the world's first pension system.

Switzerland's pension system is definitely the first in the world to be perfect and advanced, and no country can compare.

First of all, Switzerland is not like the Nordic countries, which average wealth with high taxes. Taxes in the Nordic countries can reach up to 65 percent, but what about Switzerland? All taxes combined, do not exceed twenty-five percent.

See, it's all taxes......

Except for a few duty-free ports and small countries in the world, no country has as low taxes as Switzerland.

So what does Switzerland rely on to maintain the high welfare of its citizens? There are three main aspects.

The first is the basic pension, all self-reliant people who have reached the age of 17 must open their own pension account, and from the first month you get the salary, you must pay 5.05% of the pension. Whether it is using your company, store, or farm, you have to bear the other 5.05%.

These eleven percent make up your basic pension.

Secondly, it is occupational pension insurance, which is based on the amount of your income, as long as it exceeds the average living security level in Switzerland, the excess part must be paid pension first and then taxed.

For example, in Switzerland, 200 Swiss francs per month can maintain basic living security, so if you earn 300, then 100 will have to pay a part of the pension as a supplement to the basic pension.

Moreover, pension insurance contributions are tax-deductible.

The third is personal commercial endowment insurance, you can choose the insurance company to insure, or you can directly like the bank insurance, the insurance method is flexible, and the amount of the same insurance can be tax-free.

There is also a very important part of this, that is, killing the rich and helping the poor, but this killing the rich and helping the poor is not mandatory, but voluntary.

Although Switzerland is not rich now, it is subject to great constraints on development because of its lack of resources. But it has always been a neutral battlefield for European countries.

Whether it is World War I, World War II, or now, countries around the world like to come to Switzerland to solve their conflicts. For this reason, Swiss banks have also developed strict professional secrecy schemes.

A lot of international trade has also been negotiated by Switzerland, so the current living standard of ordinary people in Switzerland is not high, which does not mean that there are not many rich people.

For example, across the lake from Zhou Nan's home, Meghan lives in the royal family of three countries, but she is not poor at all.

Switzerland has introduced a voluntary insurance scheme whereby wealthy people can save their family property through large commercial insurance, and these assets are not only tax-free, but also have priority inheritance.

Although the return of this insurance bill is not high, much lower than that of general commercial insurance, it is very stable. This has led to many wealthy people willing to buy such an insurance policy, so that the family property can be passed on to future generations in a stable manner, and there is no need to pay inheritance tax.

At this time, Switzerland still had an inheritance tax, and it was not until the 80s that Switzerland's insurance account exceeded 500 billion US dollars, and Switzerland abolished many taxes such as inheritance tax.

500 billion US dollars, which is an extremely terrifying figure, because at that time there were more than 7 million Swiss talents, not as many people as in a big city, but the insurance money was 500 billion dollars.

Therefore, even if Swiss banks do not rank high among commercial banks, Swiss insurance companies and Swiss Re Group have always been the giants of funds in the world.

In later generations, Switzerland changed from a high-welfare state to a country with an insurance system, mainly relying on the pension bill passed in 47.

And Zhou Nan directly perfected some provisions that need to be improved, and some policies that cannot be implemented now have also delineated a living scale, making this set of bills more complete and reasonable.

Setting a high threshold for immigrants, but improving the treatment of the people, so that some outstanding talents can be absorbed, this is the purpose of Zhou Nan.

Zhou Nan is now Swiss, and of course hopes that Switzerland will develop better, not for the sake of individuals, but to set a good example for that country in the East Indies.

He is now actively participating in politics, not for the sake of power, in fact, he only participated in the initial legislative discussions, and did not participate in the subsequent voting bills.

But he wants to show the Chinese what he's capable of many of the policymakers, so that they can respect their opinions more.

It's just that this idea, no one else knows yet.

Now no one is sure that the Dutch will be able to achieve their goal, because the Javanese are revolting again. With Yogyakarta as their capital, they set off a new round of revolt.

The Javanese were not willing to occupy a small part of the island of Java, which was the most fertile land in the East Indies, but the area was pitiful.

This time, however, no other people fought with them, and the Dutch army attacked their city directly.

During this time, countless residents of other ethnic groups on the island of Java were fleeing to other islands, and many Chinese who were reluctant to give up their own property had to leave Java and go to Borneo.

Whether it was the Soviets, or the Americans, or the British, they sent a large number of ships to pick up refugees.

Of course, this is not because of their high humanitarian spirit, but because large areas of the East Indies have become another battlefield for the confrontation between the Eastern and Western camps.