>I thought being Europe's strongest economy would help. I don't think that reducing a country or an econonomy to a single metric (here: gdp, I guess?) is the r

>I thought being Europe's strongest economy would help. I don't think that reducing a country or an econonomy to a single metric (here: gdp, I guess?) is the right approach; we are looking at very complicated systems here. One thing that makes Germany unique is its Mittelstand-phenomena [0]. Historically, innovation isn't driven by wealth, but by pressure, see: times of war, or the US' "make it big or die"-mentality. Germans are very well off: cabs in every village are high-end mercedes models (suggesting that the entire society is rich), and social security is simply unmatched globally (afaik, no other country pays you 400eur+rent until you find a job, no matter how many years it takes). Growing up in this environment, I never felt incentivized to come up with ways to become super-rich (which is the idea behind being an entrepeneur, isn't it?). Theres just no point to that hustle if you can live a really decent life working a normal job. Sure, there is some class struggle (and there always was), but generally speaking, people just don't need to "make it" on their own - opposed to the US, where status is everything) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelstand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelstand