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Is Germany once again the sick man of Europe?

economist.com

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Re: Is Germany once again the sick man of Europe?

#171

Post by avgcorrection »

rockyj wrote: post #65
bgdam wrote: post #26

As an immigrant (and a very well paid one paying obnoxiously high taxes), I've recommended every single person asking if they should move from India to Germany to not to. The only upgrade is in cleaner air to breathe and safety from crime. If you're in the higher earning bracket in India, then you get these there itself. So then moving to Germany from India is like stepping back into 1996. Every single thing is so ob…

That is just your experience. You say as if things in India are all bed of roses. No major city in India (forget small towns) can boast of breathable air, manageable traffic, potable water from the tap or 24 hours of electricity. Women's safety - lol. Finding a place where there is a clean lake or some non-polluted piece of nature - forget that in North India. Not to mention as a minority, who knows when you can be l…

> That is just your experience. You say as if things in India are all bed of roses. No major city in India (forget small towns) can boast of breathable air, manageable traffic, potable water from the tap or 24 hours of electricity. Women's safety - lol. Finding a place where there is a clean lake or some non-polluted piece of nature - forget that in North India.

I think they were pretty clear about that:

> > If you're in the higher earning bracket in India, then you get these there itself.

It's not a comment from a "commoner", clearly.

Re: Is Germany once again the sick man of Europe?

#172

Post by avgcorrection »

glimshe wrote: post #119
bgdam wrote: post #26

As an immigrant (and a very well paid one paying obnoxiously high taxes), I've recommended every single person asking if they should move from India to Germany to not to. The only upgrade is in cleaner air to breathe and safety from crime. If you're in the higher earning bracket in India, then you get these there itself. So then moving to Germany from India is like stepping back into 1996. Every single thing is so ob…

I live in the US and every other day I see a HN thread saying how America is terrible and how Europe is so much better than here. At the same time, you also see a lot more Europeans coming to the US than the other way around. The reality is that no place is perfect, the grass is always greener on the other side and the US, despite its problems, is a pretty darn good place to live. By the way, I have many friends from…

> I live in the US and every other day I see a HN thread saying how America is terrible and how Europe is so much better than here. At the same time, you also see a lot more Europeans coming to the US than the other way around. The reality is that no place is perfect, the grass is always greener on the other side and the US, despite its problems, is a pretty darn good place to live.

This topic is about Germany. Moreover you're replying to an Indian who moved to Germany...

Re: Is Germany once again the sick man of Europe?

#173

Post by mschuster91 »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #170
mschuster91 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You absolutely can [1], you just have to issue the bill with the tax ID again once you have it (a week worth of waiting time). [1] https://www.existenzgruender.de/SharedDocs/BMWi-Expertenforu...

Sure but you are splitting hairs. If I enter a shop to buy sth and the clerk tells me I have to check back in a couple of weeks to get the proper invoice, I as a customer take my business elsewhere.

It's fine if you're running some sort of IT consultancy or whatever, your first invoice will be running weeks after the fact in any case.

Everyone else can wait a week (or less, if you're persistent in nagging the Finanzamt on the phone), but let's be real: if you're a shop owner, you need weeks of "empty" runway to rent a shop, set up the shop, buy inventory, wait for it to arrive... so in reality the week of waiting time won't matter.

Re: Is Germany once again the sick man of Europe?

#174

Post by iiiieu »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #63

I'm currently in the process of moving my business (one-man show, incorporated LLC doing IT/SW Eng.) out of Germany. The amount of bureaucracy running even the smallest of companies with no office at all (work out of home) is hilarious. So much you need to get an accountant/tax advisor, but even then they will pass-through a lot of the bureaucracy. I need to put down excel sheets for every day of a business trip I do…

> If getting a company car, you are in for some real tax hell.

Only if you want to make use of tax incentives for company cars. It's easy to complain about the downsides and ignore the upside. You can just not put it into your tax declaration, then you don't have trouble. Oh then you don't get the money?

> Meanwhile, when I talk to my friends in Spain they pay less than 1.000€/year for accounting for an LLC (S.L.) with not even close the bureaucracy.

Their cost of living is likely also a fraction of where you lived in Germany. (I'm guessing a larger city with high cost of living.)

Re: Is Germany once again the sick man of Europe?

#175

Post by iiiieu »

wink wrote: post #97
probably_wrong wrote: post #40

As a foreigner living in Germany for the best part of a decade, I tend to agree with the article that the situation is not dire but, at the same time, it does need work. The train situation is a good starting point: an industry that used to be great and has been in slow decline for years without anyone doing anything other than shrugging and saying "well, that's how it is" or "yeah, but we are still better than X". I…

The train discussion is often interesting with people who have lived somewhere where trains/public transport is spotty at best or nonexisting. Sure, it's nice to be able to take a train, but if my experience is that I'm never on time and also not sure if it will start or arrive at all, what good does it do? I don't want to miss my flight in another city, so am I gonna take the train? Or the one before that? Oh, I was…

It's also a great example because the public perception is heavily biased. If you look at the statistics, the vast majority of trains come on time. And have working AC. And are actually quite pleasant to travel with. It's fantastic how much train connectivity exists in Germany.

But a few cases of delayed or canceled trains, pushed in the media since it's easy to beat that horse, thankfully picked up by opposition-party-of-the-day (often those that were in government just a few years prior), and everybody talks as if no train is ever on time. And you can expect that car industry lobbies like that development too, without starting conspiracy theories here. (Tbh, if I was PR responsible for a car company, that's where I'd direct some funds..)

Re: Is Germany once again the sick man of Europe?

#176

Post by iiiieu »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #168
throwaway736282 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly should speak to a tax advisor because the facts you're stating are just wrong. From the minute you applied tax-id, you can invoice with the remark that you will supply the tax-id later. So parentposter is infact right. But it's probably easier to just rant, instead of gathering basic information.

And thats why you use a throwaway? Edit: and another, less obvious throwaway to answer this thread :) I'm not resorting in any way to personal threats, I'm just pointing out throwaway-account usage. Edit2: And the reply to this thread is removed, as I pointed out the other obvious throwaway usage. There was antoher answer by throwaway "iiiieu". I'm quiting this discussion, mschuster91, save your throwaway creations :…

[flagged]

Re: Is Germany once again the sick man of Europe?

#177

Post by littlecranky67 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #173
littlecranky67 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but you are splitting hairs. If I enter a shop to buy sth and the clerk tells me I have to check back in a couple of weeks to get the proper invoice, I as a customer take my business elsewhere.

It's fine if you're running some sort of IT consultancy or whatever, your first invoice will be running weeks after the fact in any case. Everyone else can wait a week (or less, if you're persistent in nagging the Finanzamt on the phone), but let's be real: if you're a shop owner, you need weeks of "empty" runway to rent a shop, set up the shop, buy inventory, wait for it to arrive... so in reality the week of waitin…

IT consultancies are not the majorities of businesses. Additionally, your tax id does not necessarily take a week. And good luck if you do international (but within EU) buisness - the EU VAT id takes even longer.

Additionally, when did we (germans) start to accept and get so stuborn to defend this process? I mean, the process should be: You go to the "Gewerbeamt", fill out the forms, and get the same day a tax id, a EU VAT id, and a one-time token to create your ELSTER accounts and certificates. Thats what digitalization should be. How does anyone think the current, cumbersome process is the ultimate way and that this is considered business friendly, yet tends to defend or glorifies this process?

Re: Is Germany once again the sick man of Europe?

#178

Post by tga »

iiiieu wrote: post #175
wink wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The train discussion is often interesting with people who have lived somewhere where trains/public transport is spotty at best or nonexisting. Sure, it's nice to be able to take a train, but if my experience is that I'm never on time and also not sure if it will start or arrive at all, what good does it do? I don't want to miss my flight in another city, so am I gonna take the train? Or the one before that? Oh, I was…

It's also a great example because the public perception is heavily biased. If you look at the statistics, the vast majority of trains come on time. And have working AC. And are actually quite pleasant to travel with. It's fantastic how much train connectivity exists in Germany. But a few cases of delayed or canceled trains, pushed in the media since it's easy to beat that horse, thankfully picked up by opposition-par…

> the vast majority of trains come on time

In 2022, only 65,2% of German trains were on time. In some regions, that ratio was under 50%.

https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/wirtschaft/puenktlichkeit-bah...

Re: Is Germany once again the sick man of Europe?

#179

Post by probably_wrong »

iiiieu wrote: post #175
wink wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The train discussion is often interesting with people who have lived somewhere where trains/public transport is spotty at best or nonexisting. Sure, it's nice to be able to take a train, but if my experience is that I'm never on time and also not sure if it will start or arrive at all, what good does it do? I don't want to miss my flight in another city, so am I gonna take the train? Or the one before that? Oh, I was…

It's also a great example because the public perception is heavily biased. If you look at the statistics, the vast majority of trains come on time. And have working AC. And are actually quite pleasant to travel with. It's fantastic how much train connectivity exists in Germany. But a few cases of delayed or canceled trains, pushed in the media since it's easy to beat that horse, thankfully picked up by opposition-par…

Sorry, but no, the public perception is accurate. I do not own a car, meaning I've used trains to commute in four Bundesländer and after all my years I feel confident to say they have all been uniformly bad.

Two friends of mine have bought cars to go to work. A third is often crashing with me because they can't make it to their destination due to delays. And I changed cities in no small part due to a one-year train line closure that's six months behind schedule and counting. DB schedules ten minutes connections for trains that arrive nine minutes late and then argues "it's just nine minutes!" disregarding the actual fifty one minutes that it takes for the next train to arrive.

I love trains and I'll keep using them for as long as they remain the greenest option. But I hate DB with a passion and I dream of a day when those at the top end up in jail.

Re: Is Germany once again the sick man of Europe?

#180

Post by iiiieu »

tga wrote: post #178
iiiieu wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also a great example because the public perception is heavily biased. If you look at the statistics, the vast majority of trains come on time. And have working AC. And are actually quite pleasant to travel with. It's fantastic how much train connectivity exists in Germany. But a few cases of delayed or canceled trains, pushed in the media since it's easy to beat that horse, thankfully picked up by opposition-par…

> the vast majority of trains come on time In 2022, only 65,2% of German trains were on time. In some regions, that ratio was under 50%. https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/wirtschaft/puenktlichkeit-bah...

Which was acknowledged and dramatically increased since then.

https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/konzernprofil/zahlen...

Within 5 minutes was at over 90% in july 2023 and within 15 minutes was around 98% in july, and it was even higher in the beginning of the year.

But you don't get that as front-page news.

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