How an Isolated Valley Became the World's Richest Country

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"Unemployment is barely above 1%" Imagine the whole country knowing which 400 people don't have jobs lol

Tax haven. There. Saved you 17 minutes.

When your country is the size of Liechtenstein even the corner shop needs to think internationally. Liechtenstein is a fascinating place. Thanks for covering it.

It's mind-boggling that Brooklyn, NY and Liechtenstein are roughly the same size by land area, yet while Liechtenstein has a population of around 38,000, Brooklyn has over 2.7 million!

Main reasons: - tax haven - highly specialized manufacturing - tax haven - well run government - tax haven Would be interesting to see how well they do if they got rid of being a tax dodge.

Visited Liechtenstein this summer really just to say I’d been there, but it really is beautiful. Vaduz is a small and quiet town surrounded by beautiful mountains and rolling green hills. Walking across the bridge into Switzerland after leaving was magical.

I had the privilege of meeting Hereditary Prince Alois when I was a kid in the 90s. His family was invested in a business my mother worked at and she was the VPs secretary, I had gone to work with mom that day because it was my birthday and I had the day off school for some reason (teacher training or something). Anyway, he is a very nice person, like not just passing courtesy but he went out of his way to tell me happy birthday and asked about my plans. For a 6 or 7 year old kid, yeah 10/10 experience. I think I told him he sounded like Arnold Schwarzenegger now that I think about it...

Note: GDP per capita is inflated if workers are not resident in Liechtenstein, because per capita GDP is calculated by dividing GDP by the population. Still a very rich country.

The only thing I would say is for the casual visitor it has long since lost much of the quaint surroundings and beautiful old buildings with painted facades and wood shingle that I remember with such joy from my childhood. Vaduz in particular feels horribly bleak with ill thought out pedestrianisation and a devotion to strange cube architecture! As a place to do business though it’s great and if you push up into the mountains some of the walks are spectacular, the three sisters is a favourite with wonderful views.

Ireland surprised me, once ravaged by the worst famine that drove 80 percent of its population to migrate ,a country that was one of the poorest in Europe to 4th richest

I went to liechtenstein over summer, explored vaduz and the castle and went hiking. The views on the hike were absolutely stunning and the city seems so well run and polished despite being so tiny

The upper Rhine River valley where Liechtenstein is situated is by no means isolated. An old trade road from or leading to Italy runs through the valley. In the 19th century a railroad was added. The Zurich International Airport is nearby.

So just like Dubai, Singapore, and Hong Kong. A small city state taking advantage of it's location between much larger economic juggernauts.

The company Hilti is located in Liechtenstein. It's so crazy that a multi-billion dollar global company like that could come out of such a tiny country!

marvelous as always :)

even thought World of Tanks ad on a video like this feels goofy, it is still much better than Masterworks or Established Titles

Wanted to see Liechtenstein for awhile now. When I was on Facebook I followed a skier from Liechtenstein who posted a lot of photos of her country. I'll get there someday.

One other factor that's not mentioned is simply that Liechtenstein did not border any state of the Holy Roman Empire other than Austria. The HRE was dissolved in 1806; after Napoleon was defeated in 1815, Prussia slowly began to emerge as an economic and military power, resulting in the founding of the German Empire in 1876 and effective annexation of the other German states. But Liechtenstein was and is separated from the nearest point of Bavaria by about 20 miles as the crow flies. THIS is the geographical oddity explaining why the country still exists.

1:00 notice! They had a Leonard DaVinci painting to sell. Who else can say that? The "super rich" investing in its people actually works better than taking their money.