Have disdain for this.
Posted on 10/11/2006 4:15:03 AM PDT by Renfield
Davids Medienkritik discovered deep condescension toward America from a German executive whose company makes most of its money here. Porsche CEO Wendelin Wiedeking defends the German “social model” of capitalism, and implies that we Americans are barely out of the backwoods with our rifles.
Europe’s culture is decidedly older than that of the USA. The Fuggers were doing business, while hunting was still the order of the day in America. Right now 37 million people in the USA live below the poverty line. The gulf between poor and rich has widened brutally. Do we want to have a situation like that in Europe and particularly in Germany?
Why would anyone buy an expensive car from a company whose head looks down on him?
I wonder what Herr Wiedeking has to say about the Japanese after a beers?
So it’s not surprising to hear a CEO of a major German company repeat such trash.
What is surprising, though, is the fact that this CEO heads a company deriving most of its sales and profits from catering to the rich in – America. The name of the company is Porsche, and the CEO is Wendelin Wiedeking. He had this to say about America in an interview with the German weekly SPIEGEL (Issue 39-2006):
SPIEGEL: Are you promoting the idea that the old German economic system with its social market economy, which is increasingly giving way to the Anglo-American, should be retained?
Wiedeking: We mustn’t copy one to one everything that works in the Anglo-American realm, particularly since we have proof delivered over the centuries that our idea about economies works too. We have a tradition. Europe’s culture is decidedly older than that of the USA. The Fuggers were doing business, while hunting was still the order of the day in America. Right now 37 million people in the USA live below the poverty line. The gulf between poor and rich has widened brutally. Do we want to have a situation like that in Europe and particularly in Germany? (Translation of quote by Richard Bartholomew) (For original German quote see below)
May I pose a question of my own: why would Americans buy one of the world's most hedonistic and expensive products from a foreign company whose CEO thinks, and frankly states, that America's culture is inferior to Europe’s and who accuses the American economic system of producing millions of poor people at an ever increasing rate? (And I didn't even mention Porsche's Nazi past...)
What’s your opinion American Porsche owners?
Royal european inbreeding will make people think like that...
The amazing thing is the poor here are wealthier than the middle class in most of Europe.
The new GT3 sure is nice.
But for those who can't afforded it (like me) the Honda S2000 offers a spectacular sports car experience and Honda quality for a mere 30K
I'll take my Audi S4 Cabrio any day
Can't hold a candle to my disdain for all things German. Well, secular German.
I'm sure it nice, but it's not a sports car.
Not really. I work with the truly poor here as part of a faith-based construction mission. Many folks here in the US really are quite poor. That does not make them miserable, however. And it does not make 37 million people destitute.
Some are miserable, some are destitute.
Poor in America can be brutal, but where one draws the poverty line IS a matter of perspective.
Perhaps (perhaps) 1/2 of the folks below our poverty line are on par with European middle class, but certainly not all.
I always like to ask uppity Europeans and their admirers here in the US if they'd like us to have a robust European economy too? The European economic situation is pitiful in comparison.
Here is a good comparison of the EU versus the US economies.
http://www.timbro.com/euvsusa/
Here is a quote from the study:
" If the European Union were a state in the USA it would belong to the poorest group of states. France, Italy, Great Britain and Germany have lower GDP per capita than all but four of the states in the United States. In fact, GDP per capita is lower in the vast majority of the EU-countries (EU 15) than in most of the individual American states. This puts Europeans at a level of prosperity on par with states such as Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia. Only the miniscule country of Luxembourg has higher per capita GDP than the average state in the USA. The results of the new study represent a grave critique of European economic policy."
What is also amazing is that we measure poverty based upon household income, and that does not include the value of government subsidies such as food stamps, school lunch, aid to dependent children, earned income credit, medicare, disability payments, and the fair market value of government and subsized housing. If I recall correctly, Germany includes all the government freebies in calculating the number of people living below the poverty level.
"...Can't hold a candle to my disdain for all things German. Well, secular German...."
Bavarian wheat beer is wonderul. Must give them credit for that.
The Poverty Line is an invention of the United States Department of Agriculture. It does not apply to Germany, obviously. Germany does not have anybody below the Poverty Line, because there is no such thing as a German Poverty Line.
It would be interesting to compare the economic condition of the American poor with the German poor, but nobody bothers to do that. They just use our government-generated statistics to create sound bites to reinforce their own ignorance.
As for the brutal widening of the gap between rich and poor, what does that have to do with the plight of the poor? The fact of the matter is that the US poor are better off, by every conceivable measure, year after year. Their income, standard of living, and employment prospects continue to improve, while Germany and the rest of Europe stagnates.
People who complain about the gap between the rich and the poor are really complaining that the rich are too rich. Well, if being too rich is a problem, it is a problem I would like to have. Truth be told, good economic conditions make some folks very rich, but they make everybody better off. Whining about the gap between the extremes of rich and poor is just a poor attempt to find a negative in what is an altogether positive thing.
But it should not surprise us when ignorant Europeans parrot these idiotic talking points. They have been a staple of the US Democrat Party for the last 25 years. If all you did was listen to Democrat politicians and watch American television, you could easily get this mistaken impression.
Have disdain for this.
See post #9.
Poor people in the US are poor because of choices THEY MADE. They chose to use drugs, have children at 16, drop out of high school, whatever.
"The amazing thing is the poor here are wealthier than the middle class in most of Europe".
When you make a product as capable and well built as Porsche it doesn't really matter what you say. It ain't going to affect sales one iota. The car does the talking.
Besides compare the corporate health of GM or Ford with BMW or Porsche..
Excellent thoughts
Comment? In a word, 1973 911E Targa fully optioned for $13,800. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt, wore it, sold it. Socio-economics are clearly beyond this guy's grasp.
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