Germans call in sick more than 20 days per year on average, much more than workers in other EU countries.
Without the increase in sick days, the German economy could have grown by around 0.5% in 2023, instead of retracting by 0.3%, a study by pharma industry association vfa estimated last year.
How is it possible that an article so crudely mixes illness with laziness? On the other hand, if Germany hadn’t taken such an arrogant attitude during the 2008 financial crisis, labeling all of Southern Europe as lazy and incompetent based on statistics like this, this news wouldn’t feel so satisfying.
I don’t believe that revenge will get us anywhere, but I can’t help but crack a slight smile while reading it.
I totally understand this feeling but let me tell you that German politicians are likewise using these numbers to label their own populace as lazy. So actually politicians don’t seem to really care about nationality when they can smear someone and destruct the welfare state.
But maybe Germans deserve it a bit more lol.
No, they don’t deserve it—that’s the point. No population deserves to be treated that way as a whole. Politicians and the powerful, in general, will make you see others in whatever way suits them, whenever it suits them. Fifteen years ago, from the South, we tried to explain it in many ways, but back then, it seemed like the German population fell for their establishment’s trap (I suppose there would be all kinds of people, but at least a part of them did fall for it). Now, in the South, we know that’s all nonsense, and we don’t buy into it, even if at specific moments we say, ‘See? What you said about me can also be applied to you.’
The Germans lazy? No one would say that, at least for all the Germans. A little less flexible to improvise than in the south and throwing arrogants about the quality of their work, but nobody would say lazy