Cheapness is what I want
"Geiz ist geil", stinginess is cool. "Billig will ich", cheap is how I want it or cheapness is what I want. These two popular advertising slogans pretty much sum up native spending behavior. They don't like to. Spend, that is. They are very frugal, you see. No, that's not really the accurate term to use here. Their parents and their grandparents were frugal. Today's native is downright knausrig. You know, cheap.
The groceries can't be cheap enough (you pay about half for groceries here than you do in the ), the vacation flights can't be cheap enough (about $30 for a flight from Berlin to Paris ), appliances and home electronics can't be cheap enough, either. And the list goes on and on and on.
And because nothing can be cheap enough, relatively little gets bought here. Native spending has rarely been lower. The native economy hasn't been at this low a level for quite some time, either. Native industry, for example, has gladly jumped on the cheapness bandwagon and is actively seeking cheaper employment costs - in neighboring countries of the east, of course.
If cheapness is what you want, cheapness is what you get.
