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Aren't countries like Luxembourg , Liechtenstein , Monaco , etc. , supposed to be far wealthier than Germany ?
FWIW the very concept of certain countries being " wealthier " than others in Europe ( outside of the non EU part of Eastern Europe of course ) in the implied sense of having a higher than average material standard of living is very outdated IMHO , but that's neither here nor there .
If it were truly outdated Western Europe wouldn't be full of immigrants from Eastern Europe. Half of Poland wouldn't have moved to the UK to say it in an exaggerated fashion.
The gap has certainly narrowed quite a bit over the last 15-20 years, but it's still there.
That said I don't think there's a big difference between the specific places where the actual extremely rich have their 1st, 2nd or 3rd homes regardless of which country they are in. If you're a billionaire, you're a billionaire and you can build whatever house you want wherever you want whether it's in England, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Greece or Croatia.
All those places you mentioned ....and I would add places in Switzerland too.
Some very weathly people, including celebrities, live in Switzerland.
Elizabeth Taylor lived in Gstaad....Shania Twain lives near Lausanne.
Switzerland with it's low tax rates and secretive exclusive banks, ticks all the right boxes in terms of elites.
I’d start with Frankfurt and Munich. The wealthiest cities in the wealthiest country. The wealthiest places near those are Hochtaunuskreis and Starnberg.
I second that. Also, Stuttgart and the areas around it are pretty wealthy too from what I’ve seen
If it were truly outdated Western Europe wouldn't be full of immigrants from Eastern Europe. Half of Poland wouldn't have moved to the UK to say it in an exaggerated fashion.
The gap has certainly narrowed quite a bit over the last 15-20 years, but it's still there.
That said I don't think there's a big difference between the specific places where the actual extremely rich have their 1st, 2nd or 3rd homes regardless of which country they are in. If you're a billionaire, you're a billionaire and you can build whatever house you want wherever you want whether it's in England, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Greece or Croatia.
While wages in Western Europe are still certainly higher in absolute terms , that doesn't mean that the actual material standard of living in Eastern Europe is much lower .
After all it's not as if Eastern Europeans tend to live in rundown shacks with no running water/electricity while starving and going thirsty , while Western Europeans have all the comforts of modern living .
That's not to even mention the fact that ( unless sources like this are incorrect ) Eastern European countries tend to have much higher homeownership , including free and clear homeownership , rates than much of Western Europe :
In short the mass emigration of typically young Eastern Europeans to western parts of the continent has much more to with the " grass is greener " syndrome that has been pumped up by misleading articles pushed by the mainstream media which conflate higher absolute wages with a higher material standard of living , instead of any real difference in actual material standard of living .
Migrating to Western and Northern Europe for Eastern (and many Southern) Europeans makes sense for those groups as they would be better paid there:
- doctors/nurses
- college professors/teachers
- menial workers like plumbers, gardeners, and most blue collar jobs, drivers etc.
For many IT people like web developers and programmers it no longer makes sense as in fact they could win similar amounts of money in Eastern Europe and enjoy them more with lower taxes and quality of living. But the heatlh services are appaling when they need them as most doctors are paid bad here.
For other business process outsourcing positions /back office/clerical/call centers etc. it might make sense to probably go to a different Eastern/Southern/ex commie country with higher salaries where your native language is rarer. But those are moving out of Western Europe and over there most of them are not paid well compared to the local standard while in EE they pay about average to above average salary. Why get a meagre 1500 EUR in France as a clerical worker when you could earn 1300-1600 in Bratislava enjoying a much lower cost of living?
On the other hand if you'd like to work in academia, a factory/field/garden etc. or are a nurse/doctor you'd be better paid in Western Europe. So most of the middle and upper middle classes no longer immigrate except for educational and medical workers.
Migrating to Western and Northern Europe for Eastern (and many Southern) Europeans makes sense for those groups as they would be better paid there:
- doctors/nurses
- college professors/teachers
- menial workers like plumbers, gardeners, and most blue collar jobs, drivers etc.
For many IT people like web developers and programmers it no longer makes sense as in fact they could win similar amounts of money in Eastern Europe and enjoy them more with lower taxes and quality of living. But the heatlh services are appaling when they need them as most doctors are paid bad here.
For other business process outsourcing positions /back office/clerical/call centers etc. it might make sense to probably go to a different Eastern/Southern/ex commie country with higher salaries where your native language is rarer. But those are moving out of Western Europe and over there most of them are not paid well compared to the local standard while in EE they pay about average to above average salary. Why get a meagre 1500 EUR in France as a clerical worker when you could earn 1300-1600 in Bratislava enjoying a much lower cost of living?
On the other hand if you'd like to work in academia, a factory/field/garden etc. or are a nurse/doctor you'd be better paid in Western Europe. So most of the middle and upper middle classes no longer immigrate except for educational and medical workers.
Why would I want to live in Bratislava when I can live elsewhere?
Why live in Western Europe with its rapes and terrorism when you can live in Eastern Europe and earn similar?
It's on a big river, safer than France and most of Western Europe = not so many dangers connected to terrorism as the minorities all work there, welfare isn't good there. Hotter girls than most of Western Europe, too. It's near two foreign countries, actually 3 as Czechia is also close so great for weekend cross-country travels. Right in the Center of Europe. While not as posh and architecturally beautiful as Prague and Vienna it's much cleaner and less touristy than them.
I saved lots of euros there earning a slary that could barely make ends met in France.
Migrating to Western and Northern Europe for Eastern (and many Southern) Europeans makes sense for those groups as they would be better paid there:
- doctors/nurses
- college professors/teachers
- menial workers like plumbers, gardeners, and most blue collar jobs, drivers etc.
For many IT people like web developers and programmers it no longer makes sense as in fact they could win similar amounts of money in Eastern Europe and enjoy them more with lower taxes and quality of living. But the heatlh services are appaling when they need them as most doctors are paid bad here.
For other business process outsourcing positions /back office/clerical/call centers etc. it might make sense to probably go to a different Eastern/Southern/ex commie country with higher salaries where your native language is rarer. But those are moving out of Western Europe and over there most of them are not paid well compared to the local standard while in EE they pay about average to above average salary. Why get a meagre 1500 EUR in France as a clerical worker when you could earn 1300-1600 in Bratislava enjoying a much lower cost of living?
On the other hand if you'd like to work in academia, a factory/field/garden etc. or are a nurse/doctor you'd be better paid in Western Europe. So most of the middle and upper middle classes no longer immigrate except for educational and medical workers.
You raise many good points here , but I'd like to point out that skilled tradesmen can actually make a living just as well in Eastern Europe as in Western Europe nowadays ( at least in my neck of the woods ) due to the fact that there is a huge shortage of them , which combined with a lower cost of living can and does result in many of them making a comfortable living .
I myself know several German/Austrian/Dutch tradesmen over in Transdanubian Hungary who make a really good living doing work for all the retirees from their home countries who now live year round in Hungary , a phenomenon which while not as readily observable as it is in reverse , very much exists nonetheless .
Also there are actually many factories in Transadanubian Hungary that offer free room/board to unskilled workers who work for them , often at higher than minimum wage pay , which means that saving up for a down payment on a small cottage in a village as an unskilled factory worker in Western Hungary isn't at all an unrealistic goal .
I don't know too much about the situation in Slovakia and Croatia on the other hand , since the places I split my time in those two countries are quite isolated/my knowledge of Slovak and Serbo-Croatian is far weaker , but I doubt that things would be much all that different than in Hungary .
All this typed I'm not in the least trying to claim that Eastern Europe is better off economically than Western Europe , only that outside of the aspect of Western Europe still being economically much " bigger " and more influential than Eastern Europe , it doesn't really make much sense to talk of it having a higher standard of living than Eastern Europe especially in the absolute sense of the term people tend to imply .
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