[joe_mamba]

>how cheap / penny pinching his German companies and their employees were when doing deals

I think most people(Americans mostly) don't have the faintest idea how true that is right now. Here's a comment of mine from a few weeks ago giving such a present-day example that will blow your brains of how cheap german companies are. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47018023

I feel like German companies know they lost the innovation race (I mean companies that aren't Zeiss), they lost the cheap manufacturing race "thanks" to Russian gas dependence and ideological denuclearisation before enough renewables were built, so all that's left for them now to stay afloat is reducing labor and operating costs by offshoring and pinching all the pennies they can find, but even that it not enough since from where I stand there's weekly corporate bankruptcies and layoffs and that's including the fact that the government has been speeding like crazy the last 3+ years to make sure the private sector industry doesn't completely collapse.

[RGamma]

~46M employed (of which ~16M part time, usually related to child or elder care), ~84M total population, ~22M pensioners, avg age ~47, lots of SMEs, little natural resources. It's part of necessary consolidation. Considering all that, we're doing quite well...

[twoodfin]

I’m told that Germans in general are “cheap” and that this is an expected consequence of their economic policies designed to reinforce their industrial base.

I wish I could find the reference I’m thinking of, but the idea was that Germans buying absurdly cheap wine and their constantly underfunded trains were part of a pattern of deliberate domestic under-investment to keep exports competitive.

Someone ITT surely knows more.

[logicchains]

Surely not as cheap as the Dutch, who'll apparently send you a bill for a couple dollars worth of snacks you ate at their house.

[joe_mamba]

Dutch may be cheap at hospitality but they're savvy at running business, while Germans are cheap at running business and the economy in general, hence why austerity is their favorite word in the vocabulary, they're penny wise and pound foolish.

And unfortunately the focus on austerity post-2008 spearheaded by Germany only held the EU economy back compared to the US.

[petre]

If they're planning to reduce labour with this BMW robot, I have interesting news for them: the Chinese showcased kung fu dancing robots that runs circles around their lame German humanoid robot who can't even pour a beer, let alone assemble cars.

[specialist]

> blow your brains of how cheap

Yes and: ossified, top-heavy, ever more bureaucratic, MBA/consultant brain rot.

From your linked comment:

> willing to bet my entire salary that the costs of all the new extra bureaucratic overhead

Yup.