Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Wednesday, 2 Sep 1992 00:28:19 CDT
From: Pankaj Saxena <U09416@uicvm.uic.edu>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german
Subject: Shopping Hours, etc.

I have followed with interest the comments on shopping hours, bathrooms, cars
and machinery in Germany, as contrasted to the US. It seems to me that we are
basically discussing an interesting issue, without quite naming it: that is,
how culture and geography affect consumer preferences and practices. I would
like to start a discussion along this thread, if enough people are interested.

For example, someone mentioned that German cars are better made than American
cars, and they are also more expensive. Aside from differences in "work ethic",
I can think of other reasons why American cars are of relatively poor quality.
Commuting in most of the US involves large distances and non-existent public
transportation. Therefore, a car is a neccesity, rather than a convenience. And
that makes affordability a more important factor than workmanship. How well a
car is built depends largely on how much time (manhours) is spent building it,
and the US manages to build cars with fewer manhours than any other country
(except possibly Japan). As for the issue of the dismal state of public trans-
portation in the US, it's obvious that it depends very closely on the resources
available. A good public transportation system requires lots of capital. Again,
geographical factors are important. Resources depend upon your tax base, which
depends upon population density. Every country starts off with virgin land.
Then you have people who share the effort (through taxes, these days) of
turning the land into an urbanised cityscape. The US has about 4 times as many
people as Germany, trying to urbanise an area about 15 times as big as Germany
(pre-unification figures) with a shorter history (time-span) to do it in. It's
not so strange to think that they haven't made the remarkable progress that
Germany has. Hence the sorry state of mass transportation in the US, and the
need for cheap cars.

Of course, the situation wasn't made for individual tastes that demand a higher
quality of workmanship. One posting in this group expressed a preference for
high-quality mechanical items, even if they were more expensive. I'm sure a lot
of Americans would agree with that, and they're free to buy German cars in the
US, sometimes for less than German consumers pay for the same cars. However,
the American market was geared towards cheap, replacable, average-quality cars,
and that's what they're cranking out now. The Japanese understood this, which
is why they sell more cars in the US than the Germans do.

Another factor is that the American market matured in a way very different from
the European markets. For example, consider the question why the American car
industry could never make *any* really good, world-class car, even as a limited
production model. Aren't there any quality conscious consumers here? If not,
couldn't we sell it to the Europeans and improve our exports? Aside from the
obvious fact that the car companies are lethargic monsters and other such
simple explanations, I think there's something else involved here too. It's an
attitude that has grown among the American people, without their being
explicitely conscious of it. It's a very closed and inwardly focussed attitude,
perceived in the local newscasts that spend half an hour every evening telling
you what happened within a radius of 15 miles around you. I don't think there
is any industrialized country in the world that spends less time on the news
with international events, than the US. Why should we bother with making better
cars- we can buy German or Swedish or Japanese cars so easily, it doesn't
infringe upon our personal freedom to choose high-quality products. Why should
we care about exports- less than 5% of our GDP comes from exports. As I said,
the American economy has matured in a way quite different from Europe's.

I think that the new global economy in the next decade or two will force the US
to adapt itself more to the way the rest of the world thinks. There's a lot we
can learn from Europe, and from Germany in particular. I would welcome comments
on this posting, and on anything to do with the US and German economies, busi-
ness practices and consumer-goods markets in general.

Mike
University of Illinois at Chicago
U09416@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german