How is Germany SO RICH? (American Reaction)

Thank you for watching me, a humble American, learn a bit about how Germany managed to have the highest GDP in Europe. Go Germany! Thanks for Subscribing.

[lphaetaamma]

1:50 these parts of germany don't look like Disney movies. - The Disney movies look like medieval germany/europe. And Disneyworld and Disneyland are the plastic versions of it

[simongunkel]

GDP is annual, so you couldn't buy half of Germany with the value of Apple, rather collectively Germany creates the value of two Apples each year.

[effektgeraeteinfo]

Fun fact: „Made in germany“ was originaly introduced 1887 in Britain to mark inferior foreign produce but germany managed to leverage it as a brand synonymous of product quality, durability and reliability.

[feluno]

About that "it looks like out of a Disney movie"

It's actually the other way around.
Many famous Disney movies are based on century-old german fairy tales (=Märchen)
Those include:

-Cinderella (=Aschenputtel)
-Beauty and the Biest (=Die schöne und das Biest)
-Rapunzel (=Rapunzel)
-Sleeping Beauty (=Dornröschen)
-Snow-white and the seven dwarfs (=Schneewittchen und die sieben Zwerge)

Many others are based elsewhere in Europe around similar times.
Therefore it's no surprise that Germany looks like Disney movies - it's because Disney movies actually play in Germany and its neighbouring countries.

[ollir.]

I'm German and it's crazy what others think about us. About our architecture, it's old houses from the 15th century, it's not allowed to change them from the outside, many of our inner cities look like this, especially in smaller villages.

[CHarlotte-royi]

I think the debt thing is a very good demonstration of German culture. The German word for debt is ‘Schulden’ which has the same semantic origin as the word ‘Schuld’ which translates to guilt. For any German semantically speaking debt and guilt are very closely connected and who likes to feel guilt?! So frugality and refusing to use credit wherever it’s possible is very much part of German culture. This also goes as far as Germans using credit cards less and more cash because then you only spend what you actually have in terms of disposable income.

[hape]

This is really comparing Apple(s) with oranges: Germany *makes* 4, 2 Trillion in GDP a year. Every year! Apple as a whole is *worth* half of that. But only once. Apple *makes* "only" a few billions a year. What Germany is "worth", if it was for sale, can't be estimated, just for all the art in churches, palaces and museums.

[MichaEl-rhkv]

0:40 Berlin
1:50 Frankfurt/Main, Römer Square
2:40 Until 1990 West Germany was about the same size as UK or France. Than the 16 Mio. people from East Germany were added.
4:30 Hamburg, Outer Alster. A normal summer day.
6:30 Germany's economy is not driven by the big companies. The most surplus (and the most technological advancements) is generated by middle-sized companies and family-run businesses.
7:00 GDP per capita is often higher in countries which live from financial services and/or are tax havens, but are not as productive in terms of technology or manufacturing.
8:00 Comparing wages is only one half of the story. You would also have to compare what you can buy for that money - the spending power. Comparing that category Germany was 2020 third in Europe after Luxembourg and Switzerland and before Norway.
11:20 That's bullshit. Coal and steel were important in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. The EU started as the European Coal and Steel Community to pacify the conflict between France and Germany around that resources and to give the neighboring states more control over the resources used by the German arms industry. But since the 1970s the coal and steel industry lives only due to subsidies in most developed countries - nowadays other resources are far more important. Additionally there is not much iron left in German soil, German stone coal mines are mostly closed due to economic reasons - what's left over is far to deep in the ground. There is still surface mining for brown coal, but only because it is subsidized (with money, but also with old laws allowing compulsory acquisition for exploitation of some natural resources). There is no economic profit whatsoever regarding national accounting. Germany has not much natural resources left except of its agricultural used area (48% of its total area, Germany exports a third of its agricultural production) and its forests.
11:50 Berlin, near Brandenburg Gate. Berlin is not the cleanest of German cities.

[ein_nachti]

When I was in school my teacher tought us that Germany was pretty low in resources but we're always praising ourselves as "Land der Dichter und Denker" (land of the poets and thinkers), to set our core values to creativity, knowledge and inventions

[aj]

You, as an american would be surprised by european infrastructure (especially the german speaking area and the scandinavian countries). America looks to us like a developing country in some places.

[enimaroon]

9:50 Germans very much dislike being in dept. Kids learn early on that taking a credit will make your financial situation worse. If you can't afford a product, there is a good reason for that. If you can't solve that reason, borrowing money won't change the fact that you still can't afford it. Most people will only take credits when they want to buy something very expensive but long lasting (like a car or a house) or in cases of emergency.
Also Germans are not super focused on being or seeming rich. Having the biggest, newest, shiniest thing will not impress many people. If anything, people that always buy the most expensive stuff are looked down on for being wasteful and unable to handle money.

[Abu_Ipek]

I'm an intensive care unit nurse and medical student and I want to add that visiting medical school / University does cost us 150€ per Semester (use of public transportation included) and our health care system cost us ~7, 3% of our monthly income (Here we usually wont have to pay any "bills" when we visit the doctors in regards of health issues or when we are admitted to the hospital e.g. intensive care unit).
The usual work hours here in western germany are 38, 5h and as a nurse I have 39 days of vacation each year.
I believe in the US the work-ethic is somewhat different?

[phiobe]

Ever since I was a child, my parents always told me that there are only 2 good reasons to take out a loan: to buy a house, or a decent car! For everything else, save until you have enough money!

[tosa]

We Germans work so little because we have recognized that a good work-life balance increases productivity. Maybe the U.S. should also try giving workers paid vacation.
4:40 We also love the quiet. The lake is in the middle of the city and motorboats would make too much noise and disturb the people relaxing on the shore. On this lake private sailing with motor boats (also boats with electric motor) is allowed only with a written permission. When driving motor boats with 5HP and more engine power, the sport boat license is mandatory.

[Cornu]

The "resource rich" part of this video is only kind of true. We used a lot of them already in the last millenia and the economy shifted to buying raw materials or simple components and assembling or refining them. Germany also has a large service sector contributing to the GDP.
It is still the goal here to educate the population to enable them for high valued jobs. Results are a little bit meh in the distribution of that education

[jonasdroste]

As a German, I need to clarify a few things. (You know, Germans love being precise and have the urge to correct someone, so sorry for that! 😅)
- It is nowhere near as nice and clean as in the videos. Especially Berlin is only so clean in the tourist areas. There are many ugly places with horrible architecture in Germany, because most of the big cities were destroyed in WWII. Only a few were (partially) rebuilt. You often see functional buildings that were built quickly and cheaply in the 1950s and 60s.
- 25% of Germans work in the low-wage sector. They can only survive with state aid.
- Even though we have one of the best social security systems in the world, living on low wages is not a good life.
- In my opinion, German companies are often undervalued in contrast to American ones, which are often completely overrated (compare e.g. Tesla vs. Volkswagen, that would be worth a separate video)

[Alfadrottning]

I spent nearly a decade in Germany with the EU Erasmus (i studied in Hamburg)

- as for why it looks so nice. Well - you will find plenty of terrible, poor, dirty places in German cities, too. (like that should not be a question) - but the video does by no means show the most beautiful places in the best light. I would say .. from my subjective experience .. it shows adequate places, above the average sight (also, a clear sunny day, instead of a steel grey, overhung rainy day) .. so - what it shows is not "beautified" but actually pretty normal places for people to go.

- wealth .. from what i have seen, it is more similar to us Nordics. Wealth is slightly better .. distributed than in the USA. You wont have the 1% or 0.1% that dominate spending so much. You have a more solid middle and upper middle class - but make no mistake, you also have a wide lower class .. The thing is, when you are of a specific "class", you kind of hang out with people that are similar to you .. so i do not know how poor Germans live; or how many there are - because my family and i are also kind of solid middle class.

- debt ... since i studied education (i did some teaching in Germany, too .. but i am now back in my home country). I did basic school in Germany as well as secondary school. Not sure if it was actually in the curriculum .. but we did teach our students about debt and why NOT take it. So we did a whole seminar with the students about avoiding debt, saving instead of spending etc. - but could have been just a side project of my mentor then.

[rainerzufall]

That "lake" at 4:45 is a river in the center of Hamburg, Germany, called the "Alster". Beautiful place, I can tell you! That railway directly leeds to "Hauptbahnhof", the Central Station of Hamburg. And yes, there are several boat and sail clubs at the Alster, as well as field hockey (but that's another story).

[wolfgangwalk]

As for the old houses: If you build a house that stands for 500 years (and some of them are older), then it's still efficient, even if it takes three times as long as building an average American house that mostly is gone after 50 years. Then again: these huge timber constructions never were average homes. They were mostly build by the rich mercantile upper class of their times.

[MellonVegan]

12:30 That is true and the importance of the Marshall Plan is often highly overstated. It did help, obviously, but it did not cause Germany's economic miracle. After all, other countries received more funding and didn't show the same results.