Hi Aemilianus, I'm sorry you feel these comments are angry, I'm just trying to be an informed citizen to make the best voting/policy judgments for the country, and share them with other people interested in global economics and trade policy, and this is the story that makes sense to me. I'm not trying to upset you and I'm open to any counter-arguments (many of which I've considered, however, as I try to read summaries of the ideas of most major economists). I'm not quite sure why you find an attempt to analyze these phenomena, or the conclusion that German consumption is low and that might have second order effects, so upsetting as the attempt does seem to be upsetting you. I apologize if it comes off that way to you, that's not the intent (although for sure I sometimes veer colloquial and emotional for effect but try to own up :)), and I would love to hear your response to my counterpoints below:

I can clarify my use of that adjective insignificant/small to describe the difference between the 10% German household savings rate and 7.6% USA household savings rate--I am using the adjective insignificant from the perspective of, "Does this difference account for the very large difference in consumption as a % of GDP" between the USA and Germany?" From that perspective, where Germany's consumption is just 52% of GDP and the USA's 68%, a difference of 2.4% in household savings rate is not nearly enough to account for this large difference--hence my use of the word "small." I hope that clarifies. I brought it up because you attributed Germany's trade surplus to German thrift, but in fact, the savings rate does not explain the large difference in consumption, which was my point. Household debt and credit card debt I have not heard used as examples by major economists as things which materially affect this issue, although I am happy to hear you make the case in a data driven way and more detailed than simply pointing them out.

At a 10% savings rate, using Germany's household consumption of 52% we can roughly calculate Germany's household share of national income at 57% (X-.1X=52%), and the USA's household share of GDP at 73%.

This 73% vs 57% (roughly calculated) tells the story--on aggregate, and historically (you asked for both of these measures, and household share of GDP is as aggregate as it gets, and I have repeatedly looked back 20 years historically), German workers end up with a far smaller share of the pie than their American counterparts (of course, we also know that Germany has national healthcare, among other benefits, which I absolutely applaud, but in terms of what business has to pay their employees, it's far less in Germany than the USA, German wages are far lower than American wages, the German corporate tax rate is lower at just 15% although all corporations effectively dodge their home rate, etc), and the balance must go somewhere. Of course, we saw that immediately after the Hartz reforms in 03 (as I noted at length in the response to Klaus), the German household share of GDP went down immediately, and corporate profits, along with their trade surplus, soared immediately.

In sum, I think the major insight which appears to be so intuitively wrong to you is that, as you say, how could any country prosper by depressing domestic wages and magically boosting employment? The answer is simple--if your product is $100, and so is your competitor's, but then you cut wages so your product is $90, suddenly your product is more "competitive" internationally, you will sell a lot more, and hence you will need to increase production and hire more people. That's the insight right there.

The issue globally is that if everyone does that, there will not be enough buyers left because ultimately it's your employees/households who buy stuff, so if all households around the world have depressed income, the strategy won't work because there will be not be enough foreign buyers and it will be impossible to run a large enough trade surplus to maintain full production/employment (as Germany basically has since Hartz in 2003).

I understand you have misgivings about the GDP statistics I've been using, but I hope that basic insight about demand is helpful/illuminating for you. Cheers mate.