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Keeping Up With the Germans

We have a love hate relationship with the Germans, but the truth is we're jealous of their success. How can we emulate it, asks James Charlton

By James Charlton

3 Jul 2011, 20:06

John Stuart Mill wrote “Men do not desire to be rich, but to be richer than other men”. His assertion was that people are obsessed with doing better than their peers. And so it is true of nationhood.

Mill’s quote strikes a chord with Britons. We want to do better than our neighbours, not only for the sake of our own well-being, but to keep up with the Jones’s. It is often felt that Scandinavians are the archetypal Jones’s. Healthy, happy and wealthy. Calm coalition governments and steady economic growth. Swedish models in every sense.

For Britons, there should be no greater example of the Jones family than Germany. Our recent histories are so closely intertwined it makes comparison irresistible, if not a little uncomfortable.

“Two world wars and one world cup” is fair enough, if you started counting in 1914 and stopped again in 1966. What of our more recent records? In sporting terms it has been a whitewash. Since 1992, the Germans have scooped up 96 Summer Olympics gold medals, to Great Britain and Northern Ireland’s 45. Unified Germany has never ranked below 6th place in the medal table, whilst Team GB has been in the top six just once.
 
Over the same period, results in our ‘national game’ make for even worse reading. The Germans have reached the last four in six international football tournaments since 1992. From 1970, the English national team has achieved this only twice. On both occasions (1990, 1996) it ended in semi-final penalty heartbreak against German opponents. Even at the All England Club, things look bleak. Our only Open era Champion, Virginia Wade (1977), has been comprehensively usurped by Steffi Graf’s seven titles, Becker’s hat-trick and Michael Stich.
We’ll leave out Eurovision for now.

Economically, we’re getting an absolute pasting. Germany’s growth last year reached 3.6%, as the UK’s was 1.7%. With stronger growth across the whole of the last decade, the Germans today have much lower levels of inflation (1.3% to our 4.5%), lower unemployment and higher rates of productivity. Germany exports (£1.146 trillion) more than it imports ($1.020 trillion), which is helpful. The UK does less than half of both, and gets it the wrong way round. They are also (very slightly) less reliant on the service sector.

Their society is pretty good, too. British politicians make hay telling everyone how ‘broken’ and wrong everything is. One Briton now living in Germany points out (via Steve Richards), that in his adopted country trains run on time, political discourse is better and they take social welfare seriously. Their federal system allows for tailored policy-making, rather than a one-size fits all approach.

On climate change, the UK signed a “legally-binding pledge” to reduce carbon emissions. It doesn’t appear to be making much difference. The German government incentivised people to generate their own electricity, so they could plug it back into the national grid at four times the price. OK, it didn’t really work. Everyone in Berlin bought a solar panel, a capital that gets very little sunshine. But at least they gave it a go. It could still pay dividends in the long run.

Partly due to their horrific past, German authorities are careful about restricting civil liberties. They have a proactive state, but one that recognises an individual’s right to make his or her own decisions.

The Germans generally rent rather than buy houses. Fewer people get rich simply because they bought a house (or rather, the bank did) at the start of a housing boom. The ‘undeserving rich’. It also means that people can move around to match their personal circumstances. There presumably isn’t the bizarre situation where everyone feels bad that an octogenarian widow can’t afford to live in their six-bedroom family home. Good. Let a family live there.

Another convenient scourge of British life is the credit card. They are unpopular as well, and Germans actually save around 10% of their earnings.

Germany is both socially and economically richer than the UK. So we should start learning from them. We are happy to admit that our smaller neighbours do things well (e.g. Sweden and Australia), but are reluctant to face up to the German reality.

Our two great nations have a similar make-up, and are equitable in size. There is nothing wrong with trying to keep up with the Germans; we just have to admit we want to first.