Miles from the Trader Joe's in California
Aldi Süd has a much more pleasant store environment, in my experience. Aldi Nord is the variant present in the Netherlands.
>Internationally, Aldi Nord operates in Denmark, France, the Benelux countries, Portugal, Spain and Poland, while Aldi Süd operates in Ireland, Great Britain, Hungary, Switzerland, Australia, China, Italy, Austria and Slovenia.
So the cost does not reflect the standard.
Like someone said, Germany is a rich country of poor people.
Hardly any German person would claim to (or even lure) expats that Germany is the Promised land. The only reason I can think of any expat thinking about Germany as the Promised Land is self-delusion.
It happens a lot in Romania and I suspect in other Eastern-European countries too.
I suspect something similar happens across the border in Switzerland. I visited the French part of it a couple of times about 3 years ago and I was surprised how crowded the second-hand clothes stores in downtown Lausanne were (and the fact that there were any SH stores in that area at all). Also, looking at the prices in there and unless there’s some hidden UBI system up and running of which I’m unaware of I can’t imagine how come a low-middle class Swiss family can afford to live there. I do understand that wages correlate somehow with the cost of living, but I imagine that if you happen to fall between the cracks (you’re unemployed or you have landed a bad-paying job) then things are not that easy.
As far as I'm aware the country with the biggest second-hand culture in clothing is Japan, and they're not nearly living in poverty.
How is this not institutional racism? Or something that leads to inequality because of one’s ethnicity? Imagine if a person of African or Asian descent, who tries to rise up in German society, and get one of these jobs. Is the response: “Well, tough luck buddy, you shouldn’t have come to Germany to begin with.”
Doesn’t Germany pride themselves on being equal opportunity and democratically elected?
Or is that all a facade, and the Germans never really believed in that bullshit anyways. And it was all about putting the Germans first, before all others.
There's also a connection between why do Germans save so much and import so little.
Not sure what to do, I have a shit boring remote email marketing job for a US company. But with my small US salary, I live quite well here (own a big house w/ 1000 sqrt. m. garden in a nice small town, good car, no commute, kids go to private German school, good weather, ..).
Not sure if our quality of life in Berlin (me being a data scientist) will be better as our quality of life here in the third world (me doing monkey work but in a cheap country).
You would exchange living in a sunny country, where you own a house and your kids are able to go to a private school with cold and rainy weather (besides summer but summer is short), renting a much smaller apartment compared to your house and a shitty public educational system (because you probably couldn't afford a private school here) in which your kids would experience low educational standards.
Appearances are deceptive. Think twice.
Anyway, schooling systems are quite different between ARG and DEU, in Argentina private schools are quite common and the quality of these is quite bad when compared with German Gymnasiums. I know that private schools in Germany are quite uncommon. I attended a Gymnasium in Germany for some months when I was a teenager many many years ago (I'm nearing my 40s) and found the quality of german public schools way better when compared with Argentinian schools (private or public ones). At least Gymnasiums, not sure about Gesamtschules and Realshules.
You are right regarding weather and housing :)
Berlin schools, even Gymnasien, have a bad reputation due to Berlin's failed economic policy, which resulted in a lack of equipment and missing teachers. To get into a Gymnasium with a very good reputation processes are highly competitive.
Feel free to ask me anything.
Will send you a PM if I have more questions :)
I think i spend about one week near Cordoba in 2004 but I don't quite remember... My guest family back then lived in Ushuaia (very very beautiful landscape!) where I spend most of the time, but also a while with their extended family in Rosario. Last year I revisited Ushuaia again but spend most of the time in Tigre where my guest family lives now.
Feel free to contact me by pm or mail (kiney at-sign kiney.de)
I personally shop in Lidl, not Aldi, but Lidl is often compared to Aldi, about as popular and occupies the same price segment. And I eat like a king from there! Excellent protected origin cheeses, meats, wines, organic products... Half the time I leave the Lidl I go with a shopping cart that would make an American foodie drool. My most recent purchase there included Manchego cheese from Spain (fantastic stuff!), French wine, Kalamata olives, Belgian beer, Belgian chocolate...
The Americans I've taken to the Lidl have all been impressed; they certainly did not say anything to the effect of it being 3rd world. Canadian supermarkets, on the other hand, I remember as having shockingly high prices (even after converting prices from Canadian peso) and far fewer fresh items than I was used to.
Furthermore, people with "regular jobs" in Germany generally live much richer lives than their American counterparts. Fancy/organic foods are far lower priced in Europe, 30€ with a low-cost airline will take you everywhere from the south of France to Spain or Italy, museums, music and events are cheaper, top universities are in reach for your children... And yes (gasp!) in many places you don't even need a car! I commute around 240km a day by train + a few minutes' bike :)
Most processed foods (ready meals, frozen pizzas, etc) are also extremely low quality.
You've got to be kidding. German supermarkets are just small, because they don't have the cheap real-estate that suburban stores in the USA have, but the food is far higher-quality than in mainstream US stores. Comparing to Whole Foods is just idiotic; that's like comparing German cars to American cars and picking whatever passes for an economy car in Germany, and comparing that to the Tesla model S. Only a very, very tiny percentage of the American public shops at Whole Foods, or can even afford it. Most places don't even have them available.
>Most processed foods (ready meals, frozen pizzas, etc) are also extremely low quality.
Compared to what? Not stuff in American supermarkets.
Walmart supercenters have much higher quality - every larger town has mainstream and cheap grocers substantially better than Aldi in every respect.
To me, Aldi for food is like Goodwill for clothes. I understand that some people hit hard times and have no other options, but my perception is that if you shop there it probably means that you are in serious financial trouble.
The chicken thighs say cost fifty cents (not sure of the price but utterly cheap), but once you cook it was almost inedible, a mixture of fat and big thick bones - felt like not even fit for human consumption.
Again European Aldi's are not like that.
The root issue isn't Aldi's, it's the quality of food on the different continents. Food standards are much higher in Europe, so any grocery store is going to have generally better food than stores in America, unless you only shop at high-end places like Whole Foods and make sure to only buy good food there.
The only comparison to European Aldi's is to point out that in the US the food quality at Aldi is substantially worse than that of another typical local grocer, whereas in Europe it probably isn't
This is not to say that there isn't poverty in Germany. There definitely are a lot of people who are just getting by, especially after the Hartz reforms, although the social security net in Germany is still quite good. But it's not like nobody is well off.
Funny because processed/frozen food in the US, even from a expensive store like WF look and taste so disgusting to a french person (ever been to a Picard ?) that I've stopped eating any of them (which is great for my health I guess)
Go to a real supermarket like Kaufland or Globus.
In their favor I will say that there is less choice of products than in, say, a Spar or Rewe (mid-market grocery chains) and thus shopping, especially for a family, can be both cheaper and more efficient. At least in Berlin there's also Edeka everywhere, which is sort of cheap-ish but not so soul-crushing.
I guess I'm pretty far off topic already, but I will add that I find it weird that there's no equivalent of Whole Foods in Germany. You have some chains of "Bioladen" like LPG (yuck) or BioCompany (pretty good IMO) -- but nobody's got that magic Whole Paycheck mix of yummy food, organic and also gourmet stuff, and that sort of vaguely aspirational shopping experience while also having a big fat parking lot.
Or maybe this exists in Munich?
Enough that I kind of assumed it was a franchise rather than just a chain, until they started buying up all the Kaisers.
So maybe that's part of their strategy, to give the managers more responsibility to differentiate their stores instead of making them all the same?
If so I wonder how they incentivize that.
I haven't been to Germany (outside Frankfurt airport), but on my Italian vacation last year, just going to a convenience store and picking up some bread, cheese, and fruit was cheap but WholeFoods-like quality or better. Same with their supermarkets, with regional products featured with government regulations controlling what can be labelled that way:
https://www.thechefandthedish.com/single-post/2016/10/25/Wha...
Anything equivalent in Germany?
addendum: I really like the efficiency of Aldi/Lidl with respect to filling shelves. Why does someone have to touch all the pasta packages and arrange them when it's almost the same work for the customers to grab them right out of the box?
And Germans definitely have a reputation for being cheap and careless with their appearance that's not quite just a cliché.
Germany allows foreigners to purchase property, and as such prices in very desirable locations (Munich, Dusseldorf) have gone up. But not everywhere. Furthermore, it is really not necessary to own a house, as the rental market is well developed - many people choose to rent. Lastly, looking at The Economist data, affordability in Germany is better than, say, UK, Canada, and the US. [1]
> People dress cheaply, buy used cars and many live in frugal appartments
Yes, it is considered impolite to show off, and people don't really care about appearances, so they can be shabbily dressed. But then, they don't have to worry about healthcare, they travel quite a bit, and have time to read or follow their passions.
> buy in stores that many American or Canadians would consider third world
Aldi sells good food at excellent prices, by foregoing the eye candy and marketing found elsewhere.
[1] https://infographics.economist.com/2017/HPI/index.html or https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/06/27/global-h...
But thank god it still kept the good barcode scanner. I've just been to another (higher-end) store, Edeka, and the cashier tried to scan the potatoes twice over the band, then again with the handheld scanner, then typed the EAN in, all without success. Then she typed in the price directly, which she got from a crumpled-up note in her pocket. The same again with another article.
Aldi cashiers never have to scan twice, it always works. Because Aldi actually cares about speed and reliability of scanning, their barcodes are large, black on white, not small black-ish on transparent (and whatever color the article has inside the wrapping).
(I still rarely go to Aldi, although I realize I'm sounding like a fan right now)
Not that the US is a bastion of fairness, but there seems to be a teeny-tiny miniscule amount of meritocracy in the labor force. This doesn't really seem to exist in most of Europe.
The top 10% of earners don't make much more than the bottom 10%. Meanwhile, aristocrats are richer than the median by more than in the US.
This seems like the opposite of Marx's dreams...
Social mobility: https://www.economist.com/img/b/1280/761/85/sites/default/fi...
Inequality: https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/blog_...
The difference in quintiles is mostly age (especially wealth, but also income). The top 10%, 5%, and 1% are more interesting to look at. These are almost entirely laborers (in the US). In the EU, the top 5% is dominated by aristocrats.
WRT to the income chart, the top 1% is mostly laborers (in the US) but is completely skewed by the top 0.001%. It's easy to mislead with that.
Also, I think people are equally concerned with income inequality and wealth inequality. This is only half the picture. In the US, laborers can and do accumulate large sums of wealth. This doesn't happen in the EU.
Some things that I'd be interested to know -- in the US, 50% of people spend one year in the top 10%. I'd love to know what that is in the EU. I'd also like to see 5% and 1%. I'd love to see what percentage of people in the top 10%, 5%, 1% , and 0.1% were born there.
Who cares about the top 20% vs the bottom 20%? It's the difference in between being a waitress and being an electrician. Almost anyone could do any of those things.
The bottom 10% is interesting -- those people are literally poor. How many of them are poor simple because they were born there? The bottom 20%, not so much. A lot of people work low-paying service jobs because they're more interesting than mid-paying desk jobs and less risky than high-paying blue-collar jobs.
The top 5% is interesting -- especially in the US -- because anyone can, theoretically, work their way there (obviously, it's a lot of luck, but it is still mostly laborers, and the difference in wealth/income is considerable).
Germany never was communist. (OK Eastern maybe but that was a long time ago)