I think GDP matter in that it reflects the ability of a country to create resource. How ever how each country feels like using it is their prerogative. I doubt

I think GDP matter in that it reflects the ability of a country to create resource. How ever how each country feels like using it is their prerogative. I doubt German citizen would complain if they had another 20k per year on average. I think the issue is that values in those different countries are very different. Theres much less freedom in terms of housing and income in Germany which makes it easier to have equality of outcome. By the very definition of a free society the free-er you are to succeed, the free-er you are to fail and to the sadness of most people, the distribution of success is a pareto distribution and not a normal distribution . The usually doesn't want to do this mostly because 1. limiting freedom comes with Germany's very obvious downside. 2. The belief of a lot of Americans is a Government of the US scale typically implements those things poorly. We have states that would comparable but in general the idea is the bigger the governmental body the dumber it and simpler their tasks need to be so that it can't mess it up.