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Yes, but German society is structured to require much less energy, just as Dutch society is structured to use much less land.

If you put Germans whose lives function in a US-style, even just getting to work will be a huge drag.

Misery depends on the structure of society. Here in Sweden I can walk to work. This means that I'm spending zero money on travel to work, and that my travel to work contributes $0 to Swedish GDP. But this is actually better than if Swedish GDP were higher and I was traveling by car.

This is one way in which GDP can be extremely misleading.

by joe_mamba1 days ago|

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>Here in Sweden I can walk to work.

That's you. but nobody In Sweden drives to work?

I see walking to work as an relative to each individual and their job lcoatiopna dn circumstance of where they live, not a country related thing.

For example, ,ost of my jobs in EU that me and my gF had required a car to get to work because companies put their offices out in the boonies to save money so walking was not an option, and neither was public transport.

> But this is actually better than if Swedish GDP were higher and I was traveling by car.

GDP growth "experts" would disagree. It's the reason we don't have mandatory WFH for white collar jobs after Covid proved it's possible and salves the environment

by impossiblefork1 days ago|

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>That's you. but nobody In Sweden drives to work?

A smaller fraction than in the US. I think most people I know drive.

>I see walking to work as an relative to each individual and their job lcoatiopna dn circumstance of where they live, not a country related thing.

Well, it isn't. It's about how walkable environments are.

>GDP growth "experts" would disagree. It's the reason we don't have mandatory WFH for white collar jobs after Covid proved it's possible and salves the environment

Well, they may disagree, but the whole point is the goal of society isn't GDP, since GDP is easy to game with things like creating situation where people are effectively forced to waste energy, drive to work-- that sort of thing.

by joe_mamba1 days ago|

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>but the whole point is the goal of society isn't GDP

Then why are people(westerners mostly) bullying Japan for stagnant GPD growth and refusing mass migration to boost their GDP?

by cindyllm1 days ago|

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by cindyllm1 days ago|

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by afc1 days ago|

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Per Wikipedia, in 2018:

* Median household income in Mississippi: $44,717

* Median wage in Germany: €5,370 per month, equals $73,565.

So even the individual median wage in Germany is more than 50% higher than the median household income in Mississippi.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

by atq21191 days ago|

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This doesn't actually seem to be true based on a quick googling, i.e. Germany has somewhat higher median income.

But in addition to the raw numbers, you have to keep in mind that they don't account for cost of living and that different countries account for various services differently, especially health care.

by mc321 days ago|

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Totally understand that; but it counters the assertion of “abject poverty”. Perhaps relative poverty is a better descriptor but abject poverty is someone living in cardboard tents by the riverbank. Regular poor is living in section eight housing or subsidized housing. I don’t think we have 50% of Mississippians living in abject poverty.

by officeplant1 days ago|

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As a gulf state resident, a whole lot of us live in shitty old shotgun houses that have been patched up hundreds of times just waiting for the next hurricane to wipe us out finally.

I would assume this doesn't account for Germans having different healthcare costs which will aboslutely wreck the average American household with how fucked our system has become.

by mc321 days ago|

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Do you believe about 50% of Mississippians live in abject poverty as put forth by GGP poster? The kind of poverty you saw in Dust Bowl era workers or Weimar era Germany or 3rd would today? Sure people may not be middle class but they are not in abject poverty where they steal chickens, shit on the street, sell their relatives into servitude and barely have two changes of clothing. At least I don’t think so. What those people live would be middle class for counties where there is lots of abject poverty.

People watch too many influencers and lose track of reality -it’s not all Beverly Hills and Kardashians and Real Wives of X-town everywhere. That’s fantasyland.

by officeplant1 days ago|

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I find it hard to believe 50%, but we are not doing well down here. Homeless populations have increased massively and the average cost of a single bedroom apartment has gone from $500-1150 in my area since I moved here in 2008. Meanwhile the minimum wage is still $7.25/hour up from $5.50/hour in the 2000's.

Gentrification has also bought up a lot of the older areas and created what feels like faux poverty aesthetic gated apartments and over priced eateries with random shit sprinkled in like Axe throwing places. (Please someone where did all of these axe throwing places come from)

Things are also different down here because you see a massive loss in land/homes lasting families for generations due to petro-chemical and now data center companies buying up whole towns to bulldoze and built into pollution centers.

I'm seeing a lot more cars with doors, bumpers and windows missing because people just need their scrap heap of a car to continue to get them to work across town. We don't have walkable cities and even homeless people sometimes have cheap bicycles with scrap weedwacker motors bolted on because they can't afford a car or the time to get a license.

Someone else brought up the real truth, a lot of us are living paycheck to paycheck and entirely beholden to how much room we still have on various credit cards to buy food after paying bills. Eternal debt slavery is becoming extremely common.

It's not abject poverty, its just dire circumstances for a huge number of everyday folk.

by chairmansteve1 days ago|

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This just demonstrates that there is something wrong with the statistics.

by shimman1 days ago|

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Okay and what exactly do you get for that income? What are the material outcomes for having a "higher" income than Germany? Because I know very few people that would openly choose to live in Mississippi versus Germany.

by mc321 days ago|

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The GP claimed that 50% of the US lives in abject poverty. Mississippi our poorest state compares with Germany in terms of median income and Mississippi itself does not suffer from 50% rate of abject poverty. So by extension the US as a whole doesn’t suffer from a 50% rate of abject poverty (begging, trinket selling, selling off relatives, shitting in public, etc.) rates of abject poverty. That’s stuff you’d see in the Great Depression or Weimar Germany level stuff.

by shimman1 days ago|

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Okay so thank you for avoiding the question, once again what does a higher income in the southern US get you that people in Germany don't have?

People want healthcare, they want cheaper housing, they want high quality jobs, they want lower crime. Material outcomes absolutely matter and there is zero evidence to suggest that "high incomes" in the US translate to anything except more blood for corporations to extract.