A few years ago a PBS documentary compared three German vs American mfg's. One was machine tools; the German company started everyone working metal with only a file & vice for 2 yrs, including the president & CEO(no bean counters or lawyers allowed). The German factory was spotless & their products highest quality, the American wasn't...
Because ..... Americans are fat gangster vain overconfident retarded self obsessed uneducated ebonics rapping soulless Mcdonald's eating 10 gallon hat wearing war mongering wmd cocksuckers :]
this is problem in US and similar places : primary guideline is to control people. and to be able to sack them at any time. therefore no true skills can be developed only to the level of 2 weeks apprenticeship. On the other side employers cannot trust employers. So, quality production can never happen.
such income will be taxed at same rate in US, if you sum ALL gvt taxes. local,state and federal. and there is no six week vacation and nothing is "free" in US
What you and many have trouble understanding is since WWII the US has provided all the military protection to not only Germany but all of Europe under the guise of "they are our ally". If you add up all the money we have spent over the last 70 years and sent the bill to Germany and everyone else in Europe, there would not be free anything over there. When is this country going to wake up and pull our troops from Europe and stop protecting them! Let's see how long their welfare program lasts when they have to start fighting their own battles. Under the same argument, if Europe had to finance our protection over the last 70 years, they would look like us and we would have free everything over here.
That's false. Someone making 170k in this country probably has a blended tax rate of 25% or less after deductions. If you are rich, you are much better off over here and there are far more ways to "shelter" your income then there are in Europe. This is why most wealthy Europeans set up entities outside their country vs inside their country.
Good point. One of the poorest countries in the world (Togo) spends more money on its military as a percentage of GDP than Germany does. Also, germans are taxed to hell. In 2009 German GDP was 2.9 trillion. They collect 1.5 trillion in taxes and spent 1.6 trillion. More than half of every sale that occured in german went to the government. To compare that to us, the USA, our GDP was 14.1 trillion last year and our budget was $2.1 trillion (although we spent 3.5 trillion) This means if we were to be like germany we would need to collect 7 trillion in taxes. Then we too could have 6 week vacations and retire at 50.
I worked for a German company for many years, Siemens to be precise... they treat workers like a valuable and useful resource... I did wonderful things for them year in and year out. Americans bought the company, they treat workers like ugly stepchildren... I just produced absolutely nothing, on purpose, for the Americans.... retired in place and it took years for them to get rid of me, I worked on my trading skills actually.... America has to grow up a lot before they can even begin to do what Germans do every day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures NATO requires 2% I believe. Another thing is that US show a much larger variation than Germany does, so that talking about the "average" is more dangerous when referring to the US than when referring to Germany. Good comparison http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/us-d.html