Fighting against clichés about Switzerland is all well and good, but how do you manage when reality turns out to be even more extraordinary than the stereotypes? In the canton of Zug, it is no simple matter, because here is the setting: a crystal-clear lake, surrounded, as one might expect, by soft green pastures and mountains. On the shore, the eponymous town stretches out peacefully, modest in size but home to several international business skyscrapers. There is little traffic, hardly any noise and the air is pure – money has no smell. And yet, there is more and more of it in this tiny area of 240 square kilometers at the heart of the Swiss Confederation.
A local joke goes that, given the number of Porsches in town, you would have to arrive in a Batmobile to get noticed. While Zug is one of the smallest cantons in Switzerland, it is by far the richest – one in eight residents is at least a millionaire, and statistically, you are considered middle class there up to an annual income of 180,000 Swiss francs (€197,000). With just 130,000 inhabitants, the canton alone generates a gross domestic product of 20 billion Swiss francs, on par with countries such as Armenia or Namibia, and its commercial register lists more than 40,000 companies.
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