All that while producing a significantly higher happiness index than the US. Amazing.
My point is that a life of comfort is not the ideal to which we should aspire, and that humanity's accomplishments have not come from people who didn't want to bother exerting themselves.
As I've said previously, European social policy is basically rest-and-vest at civilization scale.
You are equating a life of comfort with happiness. A lot of people have a more nuanced ways of evaluating their lives, where they value facing challenging and meaningful problems while also seeking stability and comfort.
It's why we have better adjectives to describe a good life than "happiness", i.e "fulfillment".
> humanity's accomplishments have not come from people who didn't want to bother exerting themselves.
Many of humanity's greatest breakthroughs came from people who were specifically insulated from the uncertainties of daily survival. From aristocrats experimenting with physics, to lifetime tenured monks (and later academics) who were given the day to day security to pursue lines of thought that otherwise wouldn't be considered.
Despite the oft-repeated cliche, necessity is more often the enemy of invention. Necessity serves as a pruning mechanism to select the best hypothesis of the many that were created when resources were plentiful.
That's a fantastic way to put it. If we aren't being productive to improve happiness (directly or indirectly), then why are we doing it?
Some grand, hand wavy idea of great fulfilment somewhere down the line doesn't cut it, because you know what never built a great bridge, cured a disease, or discovered a new particle? Living with crushing debt, stagnant wages whilst working paycheck to paycheck.
Back in my day, every Philosophy 101 curriculum included John Stuart Mill, who had this to say.
"Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification."
You're using a very narrow definition of happiness. A uselessly narrow definition IMO, and apparently for no reason but to spread bigotry. Most people wouldn't be happy knowing they hadn't achieved anything (see: Maslow's hierarchy of needs). Even the otherwise rather short-sighted "Objectivists" tacitly accept this view, with "enlightened self interest" being their phrase of choice to avoid acknowledging the origin of that thought.
Modern Germans do not lack in accomplishment. They just choose to balance goal-directed work with enjoyment of its fruits, instead of staying on the treadmill past the point of diminishing returns. Here in the US, there's a bit of a fetish about claiming to work super-long hours to satisfy a Calvinist "work is virtue" image, while actually goofing off for (at least) half of that whenever nobody's looking. That's really stupid. The European approach of actually enjoying that time with family and friends guilt-free seems smart, compared to spending it in the office neither being productive nor having fun.