How living in Germany trumps living in the States (worth a read)

Ever since Norway has come up (and Norway eats our lunch in nearly every category), I wanted to know how much better it is living in Germany than it is living here. From some answers I have found from people who have actually lived in the country:

1. It's much safer in Germany than the US. The UNODC International Statistics show:
USA: 5.0 murders per 100,000 population, down from 8.1 in 1995. vs
Germany: 0.8 murders per 100,000 population, down from 1.7 in 1995.
The USA has more road fatalities than it does in Germany. The USA comes in at 10.4 while Germany comes in at 4.9

2. Healthier lifestyle;
3. Legally guaranteed 24 days of vacation
4. Poor and medium-income people can afford more
5. Free education (including universities, including for foreigners)
6. Great public transportation and more privacy

This comes with the general disposition of Germans in that they are more punctual in what they do. Employers in the US could learn from Germany, as well as Washington to legally guarantee 24 days of vacation instead of the bogus Paid Time Off scam we have that only begins to accrue one year after employment. From the same Quora article, I found that Germans are more frank with you over the US where people can be afraid to hurt feelings.

There is less respect for the military. Possibly maybe from the German militaries defeat in WW2 and a negative outlook at the US Military. There's restriction of hate speech, but much less patriotism. The income inequality is generally less in Germany than it is in the US. Almost no shops are open Sundays, compared to the US 24-hour Walmart lifestyle. The drinking age is lower. Immigration, however, is tougher to get (much less so dual immigration).

People wonder why the US pales in comparison to Germany and German culture. The reasons above are surely a reason why.

 

As long as you do and don't do whatever the German government orders you to do nor not do, you'll be ok in Germany. Do not think, however, you may act or think for yourself. That will get you unemployed and in prison.

There has been quite a bit of coverage of how the regulatory control freakism is grinding Germany to a halt. That certainly applies to any major German government project.

As for personal choices, you have few. For example, let's say you are an artist into woodcarving and want to make a living doing so. You can't. It would be illegal UNLESS you have a government license to do so. To get a license is not merely filling out paperwork and paying a license fee. It would take you many years. You would have to do approved work for a licensed woodcarver doing exactly what he says exactly to government requirements. Eventually, after many years, you MIGHT be able to obtain a license to do woodcarving like your required employment on your own.

I know an old German doll maker who sold many thousands of high dollar wooden dolls in the USA and at one point had a factory with 50 employees. When he retired back to Germany and wanted to just make dolls one at a time himself to sell as a hobby and for some income he was forbidden from doing so because he did not have a German doll making license nor could he obtain one.

In terms of employment, Germany has a quasi-caste system. The odds of your coming up with some new idea and becoming rich off it is ZERO in Germany. The only way to be rich in Germany is to be born into it. Potentially, a corporation you work for could get rich off your idea, but not you. You are not allowed.

Freedom of speech, of course, is not allowed in Germany. A wrong word on any political or social topic can land you in prison.

 

One thing about Norway is the population is very small. We have far more living in the SF Bay area than live in Norway. Norway is so far north they have very short daylight hours during winter. When the long days of summer arrive, they perhaps appreciate those days and do not cause trouble. But almost 85 percent of Norway are natives. Also they are mostly Lutherans.

Germany is a distant memory for me though from what I learn from Germans still living there not a heck of a lot has changed. Smaller towns tended to be, as it was explained to me at the time, mostly Catholic or Lutherans. Also in Germany in the small towns it is common for them to keep their animals by their homes. The towns stink like barnyards. When i was in Germany though not all that long past WW2, i saw no new homes under construction nor did I see for sale signs in their yards. Surely for a growing population, homes must be built. Seems a lot of them in cities are content to live in apartments.

Here in the USA we find apartment dwellers tend to be Democrats but for the nicer areas of homes, it seems to be republicans.

 

Germany is not a free country.

 

I left Germany in January or 1964 so there have been changes since then. But I doubt the culture is a lot different.
Get the idea first what you did. You tried to compare a country the USA to a country a bit smaller than our state Montana. Life varies all over America. We have 11 federal holidays plus state holidays. But to declare that Germany is healthier than all of our states needs be proved.

When I was there, I watched Germans at work drinking beer. And openly. Is that healthier to do on the job? Fuel costs were like you were buying luxuries. And then even for we Americans, taxis were cheap and they used mercedes benz at the time. Public transit was very reasonable. Reasonable is compared to something else. If you pay $10 per gallon of fuel, what they find reasonable might not match what Texas finds reasonable. Fuel costs in TX often are among the lowest in this country. Free public education can't be free. It can only mean the cost to the student is now on the backs of all citizens. Teachers cost and so does it cost to keep up buildings. Great public transportation depends on use and cost. I have been to so many German cities I lost count long ago and in a city like Berlin, depending on what part of the city you are in, you can say the public transit is good. They had various passes you could purchase and they saved you a good deal of cash.

Germans do have a culture but keep in mind, they are more restrictive on who lives there than even America is. They take Muslims in for example yet they also deport many of them.

I just checked our fuel prices for regular and found the lowest was $2.89 per gallon. Casper Wyoming came in at $2.29 per gallon and Houston came in at $2.09. So even in the USA, fuel costs vary a lot. CA gets ripped off in my view. But even here, we have some lower priced fuel if you don't mind driving 300 miles in my case for a fill up. I can save .20 cents per gallon at Bakersfield.

 

I was there as a employee of the Federal Government in the Army and can't say a lot about their freedom. I wonder what their internet forums say about this issue.

 

Best part of living in Germany? 16% VAT. 45% Federal income tax. Yearly 12% ownership tax... Taxes on taxes.

 

Shopping in Germany in small cities can be an annoyance if things are as they were in 62-64 Americans might try to recall we too have small cities that are essentially unchanged from that era.

I ate on base mostly but on the economy (I don't know if this is military talk or what, but we called it the economy) I ate at restaurants. I found it reasonable to eat out. But I also did not depend on my army pay. I had a side business going on at the Army base there.

 

Germany has:
Less diversity
Less choices
Less food
Less culture
Less people
Expensive American imports
And no currency of its own.

 

Where should I begin? I'll take a light overview at first...

Germany is the only country I know of in the world in which government, corporations/companies, and labor are capable of working together for generally mutual benefit.

Germans are quite socialistic, especially by American standards, but they also have an entrenched, mostly-free market economy. Hint: when you get your car repaired in Germany, you don't pay for it by reciting enlightening passages from Karl Marx.... Germans are very heavily taxed, although not so much as people are in many other EU countries. In return for this taxation, a person will receive medical services at no extra cost, along with other social services.

The German education system is light-years ahead of our 'public school' systems in the U. S. .In Germany, a child's education is oriented around that individual child's aptitude, learning proficiency, areas of interest, and intelligence. German children are given educational paths that provide a much higher likelihood of individual success, and achievement, while the maturing child gains the greater ability to be able to enjoy a productive, largely self-supportive life in which he/she can pay all those taxes that the state has an enormous appetite for! If anyone doubts that being able to support oneself is not of much importance to the German government, then try to immigrate legally to Germany without proving that you CAN support yourself!

The German military is in a state state of underfunding, disrepair, and overall decay. Their Defense Minister (Verteidigungsminister), Ursula von der Leyen, prefers to have inspection squads hunting through Bundeswehr barracks looking for any signs of old World War II Nazi memorabilia rather than keeping vital military units adequately staffed and provisioned. And, von der Leyen works directly for guess who...? Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel....

What I see very clearly now, though, is that in a larger and larger number of respects, many things in both the U. S. and Germany are becoming remarkably similar! My German friends and I describe almost identical situations in both countries in quite a number of areas -- and it's not at all good for anyone who has loved the 'good, old traditional Germany'. Simply put, Germans today are becoming a people without a country, a culture, and even their language is heavily peppered with smatterings of other languages -- especially English. Remember, this is a country that is half the size of Texas. Relatively small changes here reverberate strongly in a country with less than 1/3rd our population, and much, much less land mass.

. Helmut Schmidt, German Kanzler 1974 - 1982. This picture must now be removed from all German military installations!

 

Oh, and what a coincidence. Today, this appeared on the internet. Before you decide you dislike the source of the news, read the story. If it's true, it's consistent with everything I'm hearing from friends of mine in Germany today: https://www.rt.com/news/417641-what-is-wrong-german-army/

 

wow how soon can you move?

 

Looks like the standard of living in Germany is going down...

 

I wasn't aware that American culture pales in comparison to German culture. Having a daughter and grand daughter living there I never got that impression.

I don't mind if someone thinks so, but to reference it as if it's a fact, well....that's presumptive, to say the least.
That must be part of German culture.

 

I was stationed in Germany for 5 years. There are good and bad about Europe.
1) transportation: the Autobahn and mass transit systems are far superior to ours. However, there are enough idiot drivers in the US that an Autobahn would increase accidents. Also gas is expensive and rationed. Remember they are on the metric System, gas is sold by the liter not gallon.
2) Taxes are a lot higher than here.
3) You think the cops are bad here, I've seen cops whip criminals and I mean a massive beatdown. Batons swinging.
4) I do like that you can pay a traffic ticket on the spot.

There is good and bad in every country, I've been in 39 different countries... I'll take the USA any day.

 

Cars in Germany are subjected to rigorous, no-nonsense inspections by the Technischer Überwachungsverein (the TÜV). These inspections are extensive, and, expensive! But, they force Germans to drive much safer vehicles. Anybody getting caught without proof of a current, valid inspection by the TÜV will probably wish they'd been caught by the old Gestapo instead!

By contrast, here in the States, we have a hodge-podge of approaches to vehicle safety that range from measuring auto exhaust (by far, the biggest obsession), to brake inspections, to glancing at tire tread-depth, to absolutely no government inspection at all. Result? Nearly any idiot can drive any old 'beater' piece-of-sh*t anywhere he pleases in the U. S., and if it causes a wreck? Too bad... so sad....

 

I have read that Germany's manufacturing may well go the way of American manufacturing.

 

I wanted to focus on this because it seems to be a major canard of the left, and most of them have never visited any of these "socialist" countries.

In Germany 28% of the population has a college degree. The percentage of Americans who have a college degree is 44%. That seems odd since if it were free everyone would do it, right? But it's not free. It's paid for by the government, and government makes the decision at age 10 whether or not children will be put on the college bound path or not. There are also quotas for majors. If government isn't willing to pay for a large number of degrees in your preferred field of study, you're screwed. Top it off with the fact that American institutions dominate the rankings for top colleges and universities while none from Germany even make the top 30, and it paints a clear picture.

If your focus is on education, the real advantage of the German system is in secondary education. American high school graduates are often functionally useless. I've worked in The Netherlands for six month and one year stretches, and I lived in Norway while my Mom's husband worked for Statoil. I've noticed this is fairly common in Central and Northern Europe. Students finishing their secondary education often graduate knowing how to be plumbers, electricians, welders, mechanics, or any other number of trades.

 

Actually, the percentage of Americans with a Bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university is much lower -- although it has increased lately. As of March 2017, it was 30.4% . The Germans and Brits I've known with Bachelor's degrees have certainly seemed to be far better educated that similarly-educated Americans... especially those of the last thirty years or so.

But I agree with you completely about the 'quality' of education received by American high school students. Absolutely gut-bucket awful -- especially when you consider how much money-per-student we literally shovel at the public school bureaucracies and teachers' unions in the United States. The kids exit these public school systems after 12 long years not really knowing much more than they would have known anyway by simply being alive....

 

We can argue over the exact numbers or exchange anecdotes all you want, but the facts are undeniable. A higher percentage of Americans have college degrees than Germans, and they're from better colleges. In my state alone, there are two universities better than any in Germany.

Some might argue they know less. Sure they won't have read To Kill a Mockingbird or learn to do geometry proofs, but they'd probably know something that would make them useful. I'm in no way advocating the elimination of high school, but if a students wants to be an electrician or work in the oil fields the school should foster and nurture that goal rather than put them in four years of English, math, and science because there's standardized testing that needs to be passed.

 

Interesting! I can only agree with what I see here, based on my limited experience of life in Germany. Traffic laws are more strict, people walk and bike a lot more (whether to a destination or to and from a train or bus), and of course there are fewer gangs and guns around. Lots of reasons for people to be healthier and not get killed as frequently.

 

I am a citizen of both(although I've never been to Germany), and don't ever plan on living there. I mean for all it's worth you brag about your social safety net, yet us Americans manufacture more than you, and Japan, and South Korea, combined. US manufacturing(including domestic retail sales and exports) generates more GDP than your entire economy.

So lets not learn a thing or two from an economic dwarf

 

It's downright sickening. At least out here in Texas education seems to be more better

 

The US and Germany are 2nd and 3rd for industrial output(the official measure of manufacturing).

If by going the way of American manufacturing you mean 16% of global production, doubled from 1986, and neck in neck with China, you're probably wrong.

 

Norway is basically like what Sweden would be if you added lots of natural gas revenue into the government budget. That's probably the simplest way to see it.

So that's not necessarily a model that can be easily copied by the U.S.
(Just like the U.S. would be unable to copy the Saudi Arabian or Brunei economic model)

However, if you wanted to try to copy Norwegian-style social institutions with Swedish-level amounts of budget funding (i.e. a little bit lower than Norway) then I suppose that could hypothetically be possible. But keep in mind the Swedish economy is basically dominated by 50% government spending.