Cost of living, benefits, wages, housing childcare etc. Germany v UK

Can't compare a rich country like Germany to a poor one like the UK.

However the pensions thing is a bit of a red herring, Germans generally don't have private pensions like the majority have in this country.

Fundamentally though the UK is beset by rampant NIMBYism that either stops and delays almost anything getting built.
 
However the pensions thing is a bit of a red herring, Germans generally don't have private pensions like the majority have in this country.
Probably because they don't need them as the state pension is so good, so releasing more money to spend in the economy
 
However the pensions thing is a bit of a red herring, Germans generally don't have private pensions like the majority have in this country.
Probably because they don't need them as the state pension is so good, so releasing more money to spend in the economy
Not really, you are either saving a proportion of salary in to a pension fund or you are getting taxed to pay for a state pension.

Overall though you'd have to say the main takeaways front the thread is that UK tax is too low across the board and we simply don't build enough stuff whether it be roads, railways, powerstations, houses, etc etc. We're still stuck with our socialist planning system whilst we created a better one in Germany at the same time.
 
Overall Germany will be a better place to live for the average person with regards standard of living, but some of the things put forward as facts in the tweet are not true or distortions. One example student loans - the tweets quote a degree as 4 years, but the standard in the UK is 3. Half of the UK student loans are never paid off and some degrees in the UK don't have fees. The UK systems is more akin to a graduate tax.

Another example saying overall prices are 25% lower in Germany than the UK, where is the evidence for this? When I went to Germany I would say they were very similar overall and I know people who have gone to Germany recently and said the same. I don't know about incomes is Germany, but if the average income is over £43,000 I would expect Germany is to be flooded with people from other countries i.e they would represent over 50% of the overall German population. The £43,000 looks a little too high for say a median wage. The difference in GDP per person between the Germany and the UK is about 12% according to the Internet. However I do expect the wage differences are increasing and I expect the UK to have much more regional inequalities, income and wealth inequalities, because we are quite an unequal society. From what I have learnt Germans have seen themselves as a more collective society, certainly since 1870 than the UK while in the UK its been more fashionable to look after number 1 and put a low priority on wider society.

Germany has done well to keep most if its manufacturing base and modernise it. German companies in general are cleverly run. For example I have just watched a programme about Slave labour in Germany during WW2. Many German companies today benefitted from slave labour. No reparations were paid untill the fall of the Berlin Wall i.e a WW2 peace treaty was in place. The average payment was 5000 DMs about £1700 for people still alive and this was only given after long legal battles and an agreement it was final payment. Many of these companies are very prosperous today IG Faben, Krupps Thyssen, Siemens, Mercedes Benz, Dresdner Bank, VW, Allianz, Bayer etc
 
Not really, you are either saving a proportion of salary in to a pension fund or you are getting taxed to pay for a state pension.

Overall though you'd have to say the main takeaways front the thread is that UK tax is too low across the board and we simply don't build enough stuff whether it be roads, railways, powerstations, houses, etc etc. We're still stuck with our socialist planning system whilst we created a better one in Germany at the same time.
Too many tax perks here and I noticed they increased the perks again in the last budget, so wealthy people end up paying only about 15% of their income in tax and if anything their effective direct tax rate has been declining since the 1970s. A prime example was when Lewis Hamilton bought a plane without paying the VAT.

There has been a lack of state investment in general since 1979 - which is the opposite of socialism - look at the vast number of sell offs of public assets that generate profits for overseas owners, instead of the UK Governement and UK tax payer. Its doesn't happen in Germany.
 
The housing thing is a big part of why we have lower pensions. We spend money on assets. I have friends in Germany on really good money and they'd love to buy a house but can't afford one. They can rent but it's really difficult to find a place you want to live in because while rent control keeps costs down it means people don't move. If you change housing association they can charge higher rent so you are restricted on what the housing association has available. Families in the cities are in small flats where in the UK (other than London) most people live in houses. It's hard to compare any data though because London skews things massively.

I think Germany is better off than us though largely in part because their working class jobs are better paid than ours. They have a huge manufacturing industry which we don't have. I'd guess their middle class jobs pay similarly to us but again London will skew things because salaries are much higher there than the rest of the UK.
 
Good thread that. I don’t know much about it but a few things about the German economy are really interesting.

As far as I understand the rent control thing, you get your house at whatever the rent is and that deal stays in place essentially forever with inflation included - basically what social housing used to be before we sold it all so southerners could be paper millionaires.

I’ve got some mates who live in the trendy areas of Berlin and they’re either in their old aunt’s apartment - on a 1970s rental rate - or have taken over the contract from someone else from 30 years ago. So insanely low rents.

This is why Berlin was the hipster city of choice 20 years ago. You could work one day a week and live in a cool 2 bed apartment right in the middle of the city. It’s a bit different now, and there was (anecdotally) a phase about 10 years ago when loads of Scandinavians and other rich Northern Europeans came in, realised how good it was, started buying what property was available, and rents stated going up because there was finally some private owners in the city rather than mainly rent controlled social housing.

I know that artists - once you get to a certain level - are employed by the state. So you have actors, painters, dancers on 12 month guaranteed income contracts who get paid whether they’re working or not; and when they are working, they get the same 21 days annual leave as a normal government employee. I’ve never heard of this happening anywhere else in the world.

It’s also interesting how they’ve gone for essentially unlimited immigration, from Syria and Turkey mainly - famously 1 million migrants from Syria during the war. At whatever cost to the “fabric of German society”, whatever that means and is probably 98% right wing scare stories, but at a huge benefit to the economy. I read an interesting article at the time that analysed it like this: Merkel went for it part due to emotion, Germany doing the right thing in the 21st century after doing so much wrong in the 20th, but also guaranteeing the future of Germany with a huge population boom of fit, young working people who will pay tax and do the crap jobs like social care and manufacturing.
 
BBG - some people do very well out of the UK. I know it can feel at times everyone is crapped on. To me its too disorted in the UK and looking at Germany they seem to have things in better proportion , but its not quite the land of milk and honey portrayed by the Tweeter.
 
Most people should do well out of the UK though, not just some. Probably 99% are being crapped on right now. Nobody is expecting a land of milk and honey, we can aspire to a fairer society though.

The top one percent earn on average around £160k pa actually. Even though that's a lot there will be plenty in that range who are also being crapped on so 99% is a conservative estimate imo.
 
The some is more than 1% - the website below, quotes average gross income for a retired person at £30,500 before deductions. Well above my income btw.


I agree averages can hide a lot, but alot of the over 55s are better off than their parents were at the same age. I have just read over 1m people in the UK were affected by the £1.073m cap on private pensions - thats around 5% of the full time working population?
 
Can't compare a rich country like Germany to a poor one like the UK.

However the pensions thing is a bit of a red herring, Germans generally don't have private pensions like the majority have in this country.

Fundamentally though the UK is beset by rampant NIMBYism that either stops and delays almost anything getting built.
More right wing nonsense. The UK is not a poor country. We're not the force we were due to our ridiculous philosophy of the last 45 years but we're still a wealthy nation.
 
BBG - some people do very well out of the UK. I know it can feel at times everyone is crapped on. To me its too disorted in the UK and looking at Germany they seem to have things in better proportion , but its not quite the land of milk and honey portrayed by the Tweeter.
He's not making it out to be the land of milk and honey, he's simply comparing.

Pop over and have a look at the difference in the standard of living, the High Streets, the transport system etc. It stands out like a sore thumb.

We're being conned, we did vote to be conned though.
 
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