Verblüffender Befund (an amazing finding)? I don’t see how it could amaze anyone here – anyone who has ever gone shopping in Germany and then compared those prices to those you would pay in other European countries, that is.
Germans apparently aren’t aware of the fact that they have some of the lowest Lebenshaltungskosten (living costs or cost of living) in all of Europe. Of their immediate neighbors, it’s only cheaper to live in Poland and Czechia.
What is really amazing I find, however, is the fact that the Germans are able to enjoy these cheap prices while still having a higher per capita GDP than a lot of the European countries with a higher cost of living (Belgium, Denmark, France).
Beats the hell out of me. Hey, es darf eben nichts kosten here.
Verbraucher in Deutschland bekommen für ihren Euro mehr als die Menschen in den Nachbarländern. Lediglich bei den Nachbarn in Polen und Tschechien sind die Lebenshaltungskosten niedriger.
They’ve done a good job of containing inflation. The best way to look at that chart, (or any chart with a “sports league table” view of the EU member states) is to read each name to yourself and make a note of the POPULATION of those former nation-states.
A look at this chart shows Germany, whose rate of economic growth is relatively high to others of a large population magnitude, to be doing a much better job than IT, UK, SP, FR, where the cost-of-living is being held down by under-performance. A well-contained cost of living index is irrelevant to large numbers of people losing their jobs, but a poorly contained one does.
As for the basic problem with EUtopia, the under-performers actually NEED some induced inflation to restart the economic cycle, and DE and NL don’t. So there’s a rub – one of many getting in the way of the EUphoria of thinking that they’re building heaven on earth.
Observing Hermann 
They’ve done a good job of containing inflation. The best way to look at that chart, (or any chart with a “sports league table” view of the EU member states) is to read each name to yourself and make a note of the POPULATION of those former nation-states.
A look at this chart shows Germany, whose rate of economic growth is relatively high to others of a large population magnitude, to be doing a much better job than IT, UK, SP, FR, where the cost-of-living is being held down by under-performance. A well-contained cost of living index is irrelevant to large numbers of people losing their jobs, but a poorly contained one does.
As for the basic problem with EUtopia, the under-performers actually NEED some induced inflation to restart the economic cycle, and DE and NL don’t. So there’s a rub – one of many getting in the way of the EUphoria of thinking that they’re building heaven on earth.