Germans everywhere were shocked to discover today that the nation’s wealth has not been evenly, uniformly and fairly distributed as had previously been believed.
“Wah? Howya figure?” asked one dumbfounded German upon being informed by Spiegel-Online that the upper ten percent of his fellow countrymen possesses 60 percent of Germany’s wealth while the lower half only owns a lousy 2.5 percent of it (leaving lots of wealth left over somewhere else if I’ve done the math correctly, but still). “This sure is news to me. We Germans have all been raised in the confidence that we live in an ideal, egalitarian society in which things like income inequality are absolutely unthinkable and unheard of, much less possible. Why, these are amerikanische Verhältnisse or something! Why weren’t we informed of this earlier?”
Spiegel-Online apologized for this but then comforted their distraught readers by explaining that at least every German household enjoys having some 214,000 euros ($240,000) at its disposal – on average.
That means 5 trillion (don’t ask, but it really does). And that’s how many euros German savers have set aside for a rainy day.
That’s going to be one rainy day.
Zwar investierten die privaten Haushalte ihr Geld trotz niedriger Zinsen vor allem in kurzfristige und vermeintlich sichere Bankeinlagen. Trotzdem wuchs ihr Geldvermögen von Juli bis September 2014 um 28 Milliarden Euro oder 0,6 Prozent auf 5,01 Billionen Euro, wie die Deutsche Bundesbank mitteilte.
Observing Hermann 