Open Thread

Hurray an open thread,
Now I can repeat something that I wrote about a couple weeks ago that I think no one saw because it came so late in the open thread season.
I was really really pissed off when the US government blew up the Nordstream pipeline and caused my winter heating costs to go up 400 or 500 %. But more recently I have learned things that make me take that in stride. First of all I learned that house insurance in Germany, at least for now is way way below what it is in the USA. I imagine that there is quite a bit of variation in costs for house insurance in the USA but I pay 300% less than family members in MInnesota. And my property tax rates are way way lower than property tax rates in Minnesota. These two things alone are way more than my winter heating bill.
OK the price of gasoline is double in Germany compared to the US. But European cars are much smaller and Europeans do not have to travel as far to get where they need to go. So Germans probably spend less on transportation. Then sales taxes are much higher in Germany. But despite that prices for food and consumer products are not higher in Germany. Food is now actually cheaper and when I moved go Germany in 1996 food was more expensive except for dairy products.
Health care bills are much lower in Germany, There is no college tuition. Though college is still usually a costly undertaking because people need to pay room and board and defer getting a paid job for several years longer than someone who goes to trade school.
Houses cost more to purchase in Germany. But the house that you buy is really a house not some kind of toothpick structure with cotton stuffed in between the toothpicks, covered in chalk.
Now if we can only break free of our colonial chains I wonder if the Russians will understand that many Germans were never on the side of NATO and those that were, were tricked. It may also be to late to rebuild German bridges to Russia as the Chinese may not allow that to happen. But if it did the Germans could slide in to the collapse of industrial civilization with more Deutsch Marks than any of the other G-7 countries. No doubt about it.