A subjective comparison of Germany and the United States
<http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/us-d.html>
Some excerpts:
Democracy ... The American parties are located to the right of their German counterparts. Former President Clinton for instance, a democrat, would have to be placed at the right wing of the German conservative party CDU. Some people at the right end of the American Republican party are so radical that they would probably be under surveillance in Germany. There is no social democratic party to speak of in the US; it is the biggest and oldest party in Germany, and indeed all parties in Germany are social democratic to some extent. ...
Bureaucracy
There are several strange things to be said about US bureaucracies: they are extremely user-friendly, amazingly inefficient, and universally hated. ...
Unions
Clearly, unions are much more powerful in Germany than in the US. They are huge, and they don't bother to bargain with individual employers: they talk directly to the employer's associations in the different fields. For instance, there is a single union representing everyone working with metal, and if this union decides to call for a general strike, a substantial part of the German economy stands still. If they win a regional contract, it will usually be adopted nation wide and will then apply to all employers in the field alike. Several large unions have recently merged in order to increase their power. It's virtually impossible to work in Germany and not have a union negotiated contract. There does not exist a minimum wage law, and there is no need for one. Only recently have some employers (mainly in Eastern Germany) tried to leave the employer's associations in order to avoid being bound by these contracts. .... Health It seems to me that while the average American is much more health conscious than the average German, the average German is actually healthier.
The first thing every visitor to the US notices is the immense number of astoundingly obese people. There is a huge obsession with fat-free foods, to the extent that people happily eat sweet desserts as long as they are fat-free. Americans seem to be eating constantly: in the car, at the movie theater, at work, while watching TV; more often than not, it is fast food or snacks. In many poorer neighborhoods, the only nearby store is a neighborhood convenience store which typically sells potato chips, coke, bread and peanut butter but little to no vegetables, fruit, milk or other fresh foods. In Germany, the schedule of three meals a day is still more strictly followed and groceries are much more common than convenience stores. ....
-- Andy