Offtopic, but I think noteworthy: "Even the Europeans..."
I am always a bit amused by this pattern of "us and the others" thinking. To me, this feels a bit old-fashioned. And if you need this small jabs against "the others" then this looks a bit small too. Sorry.

This is because taxation is not the only factor to decide where to build your new shiny factory. Often there are limited tax exemptions if you create jobs. Other important factors for market entry are the legal environment and the "social peace".
Two examples:

• DuPont once stopped selling some chemicals necessary for artificial joints in the US. The product was great. However, legal risk compared to the profit to be made on this component did not justify selling the product in the US market.
• Compared to Italy, Switzerland is a higher cost country. Higher salaries, higher material cost, higher rents. Yet, at the Italian-Swiss border, there are some Italian companies built on the Swiss side of the border. Industrial action is hardly known in Switzerland. Working time per week is longer. In the end, you have a more stable environment for production. This can justify the higher prices for production.

In the end, countries are competing with each other for corporations.

Xenophobia is difficult to measure. And as I grew up as a foreigner in Switzerland, I do not think that the country is "an embarrassment for all of western Europe".
Four different languages are spoken inside the country without causing much of a problem. There are not many other countries accomplishing this.
Most information at the townhall is available in several languages. E.g you can make the driving license in English.
In Switzerland, there are about 20% of foreigners. And this seems to work without issues. We do not have the racism of Italy or ghettos like France.

Show me other countries with a similar level of integration...

Actually, the Swiss always had an opinion about everything. However, we think our laws apply only in Switzerland. We do not think that we have to improve the rest of the world. So, maybe our opinion is not so known outside of Switzerland as the opinion of other countries sometimes is...

Disclaimer: Yeah I am biased.

If you consider the difficulties involved in the transfer of 1 mio USD you might see why it is expensive.
Clue: trust between business partners, cost distributed for the effort involved, every partner may go out of business at any moment

It is a bit different. Due to the SEPA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area) agreements, money transfers got cheaper inside the SEPA area, but they are not for free.
Money transfers do cost money and they are suprisingly complicated for a bank. Worst case, a customer wants to transfer money to a bank with which the bank has no business relation. Then the bank has no accounts with the other bank which complicates things. Often such transfers are routed through half a dozen financial institutes to find a relation to the target bank. Nobody is doing this for free. Charging you 20 USD for such a service is a fair price.

Disclaimer: I work for a bank.

Switzerland is not sharing bank information with other countries; expect for defined cases of legal help. However, the crime which is the base for such a legal help request must be respected in Switzerland as well.

Disclaimer, I am Swiss and I work for a Swiss bank

I am even more sorry, I do not see why that excuses my own government monitoring the financial transactions of people, companies and financial institutions in my country.

Well, there are a lot of "1st world countries", but some are firster.

And it is always a bit difficult to find a metric for comparing the quality of countries. Myself, I like crime rate http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita and teenage pregnancy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_incidence_of_teenage_pregnancy

Since four or five years, I am using a convertible (compaq Tc4400) and I would never go back. The ease of the direct interface with the pencil and yet a normal notebook when you need one. Perfect.

Light, long battery life, medium CPU power: up to 4K USD and I am in.

I donate each year between 3000 and 4000 USD. However, this is around 2-3% of my income. And lets face it, this is more like giving from surplus than sharing.

If we discuss charity then we should do this in relation to our wealth.

So, you want to leave your country because the grass is greener somewhere else? You think at becoming a "refugee light" (0% oppression, maximum comfort)?

Well, although I think this is absolutely justified, you are free to move around, be aware that in most cultures you will not be welcome. You might have a look how your own society treats immigrants. This is what you can expect abroad.
Yes, you might find a job and you shall be able to make a living. Do not expect to meet friends, do not expect to be invited to our BBQs

We are not member of the EU. There are treaties but they do not force Swiss authorities to do a public bidding. In Switzerland, such regulations are often depending on the county ("Kanton"), which makes it very local. However, the decision to go unchallenged with Microsoft raised a few eyebrows. In a country with a direct democracy, this is not a good thing for the government. Media coverage was not huge but for such a technical issue surprisingly good.
I am confident that this will not happen again.

Actually, you learn this in a hospital. If you hit the artery of the patient you can repaint the ceiling. There is enough pressure to squirt up to the ceiling.

SoF Payback was a class on its own. The gore was beyond the pale and it was highly politically incorrect. There was one setting were the streets were littered with body parts of Arabs.
The SoF series always had an unbelievable image of the world. I remember one game which started in Praha. Rainy streets, MG nests and everybody is your enemy. I gave them the benefit of doubt and I assumed that they intentionally went over the top.
I do hope that even cellar dwellers in Texas know that Czechia is different...