Thread by @skedeschi

Here's a little look at German cost of living vs British cost of living, which goes a long way to explain why British people are suffering- despite the UK being ome of the richest countries in the world

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AVERAGE WAGES:

Germany = £43,507
UK = £26, 192

STATE PENSION:

Germany: about 70% of your previous working salary

UK: £9627 (which is 37% of the average salary)

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So they get paid a LOT more in Germany. Do they pay higher taxes though? A bit, yes.

So a worker on the average salary would take home:

Germany: £27,890
UK: £21,558

So an extra £6,332 in your pocket

But what does your money get you, say if you want to rent a place to live?

Germany: overall average rental price is £660 for a one-bedroom apartment or 18% of the average salary.

UK: that would be £758 or 34% of the average salary.

Interesting point here: a lot more people rent. Why? Well, at 18% of your salary that's affordable. Secondly, if you're retiring on 70% of your wages, you can afford to keep renting. Also tenant rights are superb compared to the UK.

What about cost of living? Food? Clothes? Transport?
Overall it's just under 25% less in Germany.

University?
Germany: free
UK: roughly 40k for a 4 year degree

What about crime? All those immigrants MUST cause crime?

No.

We've got 38% more murders and almost 3x the number of rapes.

Germany spends a little more on is healthcare. But somehow manage to get a lot more for their money.

Germany has three doctors per 1000 population. The UK has two.

Germany has three times as many hospital beds compared to the UK.

Germany spends 11.7% of its GDP on health, Britain 10%.

Most Germans pay 7% of their income for healthcare. Their employer pays the same.

It's free at the point of use.

The system is insurance based which everyone contributes to, but the healthcare providers are non-profit making organisations that are governed by strict regulations.

What about the big picture of the economy? If employers were made to pay high wages and healthcare for workers... did they leave?

No.

If billionaires and millionaires pay a but more tax...did they leave?

No.

Surely running a country like this costs more?

NATIONAL DEBT:

Germany: 71.1% of GDP
UK: 99.2% of GDP

If its sounding socialist (which it isn't) rest assured there's plenty of rich people. There's still more than 100 billionaires. There's still heaps of millionaires.

Things are just organised to ensure the average person has good wages, heslthcare, affordable housing etc.

And it's not because they cut immigration.

Germany houses 1.24 million refugees

Britain houses 230k

Nowhere is perfect. I'm sure Germany has its own problems but its unquestionable that other countries are being run much better than the UK and its unquestionable that immigration does not have a negative impact.

As a young German, you leave university debt free, with access to well paid work, affordable housing and a life that makes sense. Opportunity. A chance to do well.

In the UK, if your parents don't have money, you leave education saddled with debt with extortionate living cost

In the UK we have low wages, which are then topped up with in-work benefits. Which means taxpayers are subsidising employers. Which means taxpayers money isn't used on things taxpayers need. This system is a direct transfer of public money to private hands.

A civilised, well functioning country must have good wages - sufficient to easily get a home, food, energy, transport and also to live an enjoyable life!

Britain is definitely, and has been for a long time, failing to deliver on this. The economic system doesn't work for most people. And while its obviously gone nuclear in the last 13 years of Tory rule, it didn't begin there.

In fairness, many of the policies (like tax credits) were Blair inventions. I remember that period as prosperous, but it also laid the foundations for where we are now and the eye watering property prices that cripple anyone who didn't buy a home in the 90s.

The centre of the British system since I can remember has been profit. Squeezing the profit out of anything and everything- from selling off council houses to buy to let mortgages to privatisation and the way we do everything.

It's been unhelpful, to say the least, that immigrants were positioned as responsible. Leading to Brexit as well as the full focus of both government and opposition on this "crisis" that if "solved" won't solve Britain's problems.

This thread has made me think quite a lot about how much the decline of Britain has been caused by an economy that's designed from the top down to squeeze every cent out of citizens and the public purse into the hands of investors.

How different would the NHS be if we'd trained and looked after doctors and nurses instead of grinding them into the ground and then outsourcing to agency staff? Or if we still had the wonderful benefit of recruiting from all over Europe?

How different would the older generations feel if they were retiring on 70% of their wages? How different would the younger generation feel if they weren't saddled with enormous debt?

Our political class in bred and groomed from birth to Eton to Oxford. They work in finance or journalism so they dominate our economics and press; then they give each other top jobs and political power to cement their dominance.

I don't know much about German politicians- are they groomed in this way? Here, they seem to walk out of Oxford into a top journalism or finance job, and are then handed parliamentary seats. They share top jobs out amongst part of their elite. Like a club run only for them.

I tried not to make this thread partisan, but I hope people (left and right) can come to a point of seeing its not logical to blame immigrants, the EU or someone else for what's obviously been failure of policy, over decades, that's resulted in us not doing as well as we should.

I was pondering the inevitable question we always get when we suggest that citizens get absolutely any kind of better deal. Which is "how are we going to pay for it"? I tried looking at the differences in how both countries collect tax revenue to pay for all this cool stuff

It's too complicated for my skill level to lay it all out, as we don't include the same things (eg: health is seperate), but these are the interesting things I found....

Germany has a lower corporation tax (just over 15%). So I guess that's good for small businesses as paying nearly 20% can make it really tough to invest and grow.

Germany has a wealth tax! The rich pay an extra 5.5% in income tax. But this applies to applies to individuals who earn more than €250,000 per year — just some 108,000 individuals out of Germany's 42 million taxpayers.

Interestingly: in the UK, despite a much smaller population, more than 700,000 earn over that amount. So roughly speaking it looks like the UK has 9-10x more people earning super big pay packets. Which presumably they can afford after paying terrible wages :)

In Germany, shareholders pay 26.375% on dividends.

In the UK, 8.75%.

So those UK shareholders are paying less than a third of the tax on their profits....

Ouch.

So the brief picture seems to indicate the salary gap between workers and bosses is a lot smaller. People are paid bigger salaries rather than in-work benefits, bosses earn less. Taxes on dividends, profits, are much higher than in the UK

It sounds to me like people who make a lot of money contribute a lot more of it. And there's still very rich people; just a seemingly better set of circumstances for the other citizens too.

Its been pointed out to me that I have an error in the thread. UK divident tax is actually in bands. I'd really like to explore tax more but just lack the expertise and don't want to misrepresent things.

I was also asked what Britain do well.

Britain has a lower suicide rate, but I've had many comments to say Britain is good with mental health and neurodiversity so I wonder if that plays a role.

Britain also has about 30% less unemployment. But I'm always wary of this as a statistic because we include people working just a few hours a week and it I'm not sure other places measure the same.

But what's interesting is...

Unemployment benefit is 60% of your salary - 67% if you have children, plus the €200 per month per child in benefits. So it sounds like if you lose your job you're well supported.

In the UK its £333 per month plus £85 for first child and £60 for others. You might also get HB.

As we're always complaining in Britain about a lack of social housing, it's interesting to note social housing accounts for:

5% of housing in Germany
16% of housing in the UK

So more than 3x

Does that leave more people homeless in Germany?

No

UK: 271,000 homeless
Germany: 260,000 homeless

So despite having a much larger population and a third as much social housing, they have fewer homeless people.

So maybe more social housing isn't the answer.

Maybe the answer is just paying people enough money, not saddling them with education debt, offering affordable private accommodation with superb protection for tenants.

That way people are enabled to work and house themselves?