I think its about time everyone seriously considered learning this lesson from Germany and improved their work ethic. It's amazing that a culture could be so generally efficient. Compare that with typical work culture elsewhere - grossly inefficient. We all know this to be true. I worked in a few places and witnessed how half-assed things could get. It's frustrating and pathetic to see coworkers stream tv shows for hours, read books, take naps, go out for coffee 5 times a day, and ultimately accomplish nothing while making 70k+. This is most prevalent in large organizations with big bureaucratic structures. I would welcome this change. Focusing on task, eliminating distractions, having greater accountability, being straight-up, and getting to the point are all wonderful ideas which should be emphasized and practiced. A lot of workplaces are great, but a lot still are poor.
Toronto, Canada. I worked as a dev in a fairly big software company which made B2B software. There was a dev who would literally do nothing for half the time. Their productivity was extremely low. They would only work enough to appear to management that they are busy, but ultimately had the rest of the department pick up their slack. Of course, management didn't have a clue about what competent dev work ought to look like and were themselves incompetent, like most management is. This person worked at the company for years before being let go. I think this problem stems from management not being able to relate to the work. I worked at a web dev firm which would contract me out to a partner company to design websites. I would literally have no boss, or anyone tell me what to do. Try as I might, I couldn't get clear-cut work assigned to me from management, who were not devs and thus could not relate. There was poor organization. I would waste time worrying that I'm not being productive. I hated the experience for all those reasons. My girlfriend works at a hospital and tells me about coworkers who work for 10% of the day. They have been working there for over a decade. A lot of people are hard working, but most are not. I think given the opportunity, most would slack off, this is inherent human nature.
First, you can't really tell from this data whether an American actually produces more than a German in the same job. The data covers all the jobs in the country, and if the US happens to have a higher fraction of employees in highly paid jobs like investment bankers, lawyers, doctors, etc., it would raise the average.
Also, do the data for the US account for all the work that employees do after hours, like answering e-mails and phone calls? Since the kind of employees that do this are usually exempt from receiving overtime pay, these extra hours wouldn't be recorded anywhere.