> You would struggle to buy a house if you worked at VW assembling cars.

Any source for that? What's the average VW salary , I'm assuming life long VW workers are actually pretty well compensated.

> Nothing close to what Americans are able to afford.

Americans are rich in small part due to true innovation (Google, Microsoft, biotech etc) and large part running endless deficits by having the world's reserve currency. Also America is the complete opposite of the government planned economy / state socialism you're proposing the Germans should do.