This was more in context that Germany is underpaying its employees, i.e. the salaries are similar to France with much higher productivity, average pensioner gets less than somebody in Italy would get, and even Austria has higher wages now; not to mention Switzerland where wages are usually 2x higher. The theory was that if Germans were allowed to earn more, that would in turn propel economy; instead they are forced to save for worse times, companies/banks are super conservative in the time of expansion and not sharing any wealth, keeping their export advantage with stabilized cost of labor, leading to unnecessary suppression of growth that could have happened with increased domestic consumption.