I have to agree with people that the German standard of living is way below where it should be compared to their production. A country, just a couple of years ago the world's largest exporter with 83 million people.. should nto have an average standard of living that appears below the UK average.
One of my best friends a computer programmer lived there for five years, and he was saying wages and what you can afford are lower than in the UK for comparable jobs.
In one of the posts earlier on this thread it talked about an industrial worker in Germany who was happy to take less pay and benefits in exchange for greater job security. On an individual level you can see his point.. but on a national level German workers should not be having lower pay and benefits than ten years ago, considering the sparkling success of their industries.
It seems to me German industrialists, major corporations and the German state is taking these enormous surpluses and investing them outside of the country, in a systemic attempt to keep wages lower in Germany. For if these surpluses poured into Germany itself so much of the labour would move to things like home construction or services which would outbid labour from the industrialists.
Mercantilism is a fine strategy for an emerging nation trying to industrialize, but for a fully industrialized country, let alone the leader of Europe its not a viable long term plan.
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