Were You Born on the Wrong Continent

What makes a society truly rich? Thomas Geoghegan’s book overturns the standard answer of economists: gross domestic product. Through vivid travelogue and comparative observation — from Chicago’s crumbling parks to Zurich’s perfumed streets and Berlin’s lively cafés — he argues that wealth lies less in monetary output and more in public goods, leisure, security, and civic culture. GDP, he insists, blinds Americans to forms of prosperity that can’t be bought: clean cities, time to read, universal health care, reliable pensions, and a sense of order in daily life.

Across his chapters, Geoghegan introduces you to a gallery of scenes and characters — lawyers in Bonn, union leaders in Frankfurt, apprentices and artists in Berlin — all illustrating how Germany’s institutions convert social democracy into lived comfort. He layers personal narrative with economic insight to show how a country can be both capitalist and humane, productive yet slow, industrial yet green.

Rethinking prosperity beyond GDP

Geoghegan begins with sensory wealth. Walking through Zurich, he notes the scent of violets, gleaming muesli bowls, and public cleanliness — signals of hidden affluence that no GDP table records. Compare that to the disrepair of American parks, where poverty renders public life unpleasant. He argues that when public goods work — when health, education, and transit run efficiently — individuals consume less privately yet live better collectively. GDP overstates U.S. prosperity because it counts money spent to patch the gaps left by public neglect: extra security, private schooling, full-cost childcare. The numbers glow, but the lives they mask grow harried.

Time as the new currency

For Geoghegan, the ultimate form of wealth is time. Europeans, working hundreds of hours less per year, enjoy an asset Americans give away cheaply: leisure. His own struggle to leave his Chicago law practice exposes the cultural trap of long hours and constant connection. When he finally spends evenings in German cafés, he rediscovers what American productivity erases — slow reading, argument, and contemplation. (Note: This echoes Keynes’s 1930 vision of a 15-hour week as civilization’s crowning achievement.) Germans haven’t abolished work, but they’ve balanced life to leave room for the pleasures that make it worth living.

Institutions that hold capitalism accountable

Germany’s ability to combine prosperity with social equity rests on its institutions of Mitbestimmung — works councils and co-determined corporate boards — which give workers real influence over layoffs, scheduling, and strategy. Geoghegan immerses you in this system through encounters with Wigand, a union trainer, and Eckhardt, a Berlin labor lawyer. These arrangements transform labor from a commodity into a civic actor. Half a million Germans serve on councils, learning deliberation and negotiation much as Americans learn shareholder rights. This is democracy pushed into the workplace — an apprenticeship for citizenship itself.

Education, skill, and dignity

Beneath that civic architecture runs the “Dual Track” education system: one road to university and another to paid apprenticeships. By paying young people to master trades, Germany maintains a skilled industrial class bound to the firms and unions that train them. Apprentices acquire both competence and political literacy — an awareness of how to use skill collectively. In contrast, U.S. education isolates learning from earning, producing debt without social integration. (Think of Isabel, the German apprentice, versus Barbara, the debt‑laden Chicago manager from Geoghegan’s comparative example.)

Industrial strength with moral restraint

A paradox sustains the German model: high wages and worker power have not killed competitiveness. On the contrary, they foster quality and specialization. Firms, constrained by labor law and mutual trust, invest in long-term tooling and export high‑value goods. Geoghegan connects this industrial edge to the national character: a society “Green” in environmental ethic and “Dark” in moral vigilance. Ecological restraint and memory of past horrors cultivate a collective conscience that curbs reckless market excess. The bells of Frankfurt Cathedral, he writes, still “bong” to signal limits — an audible reminder that wealth without reflection risks catastrophe.

From welfare to resilience

The book also tracks the evolution and strain of this model — through unification’s fiscal shock, the Agenda 2010 reforms, and the 2008–09 financial “Krise.” Unification forced social democrats to balance solidarity with austerity, and Agenda 2010 became the “dirty deal” that slimmed welfare while preserving its core. Even so, Germany weathered the crisis better than most, thanks in part to public Sparkassen banks and subsidies that kept workers employed. Institutional design mattered more than ideology: when capital and labor share power, panic finds less purchase.

Culture, youth, and the democratic commons

Finally, Geoghegan invites you to see culture as infrastructure. Berlin’s cafés, free universities, and train corridors create time and space for reading and civic talk. The young who fill its squares, often supported by their parents, sustain not just creative industries but the deliberative habits that underpin democracy. Public trains, thick broadsheets, and cheap housing together form an ecology of attention — something invisible to GDP but invaluable to society’s depth.

Core argument

Measured only by GDP, America wins on paper. Measured by time, security, civic literacy, and joy, Germany may be richer. Geoghegan’s book is both diagnosis and invitation: to think of prosperity as a shared experience, not a private balance sheet.

Geoghegan builds one of his sharpest contrasts around time — how different societies spend it, and what that spending reveals about their values. For Americans, long hours have become a badge of success; for Europeans, shorter hours signal civilization. He translates the data into lived experience: Americans log roughly 1,800 hours per year; Germans, under 1,450. The difference — about two months of free time — is not theoretical. It’s the margin that allows a Berlin mother to read with her child, or a Zurich clerk to enjoy lunch in a park without rushing.

The fear of standing still

When Geoghegan decides to spend two months in Europe, he encounters his own terror: “What about your practice?” That question, asked by colleagues, embodies an American paradox — enormous income but chronic insecurity. He documents how weak safety nets, employer control, and debt tie professionals to overwork. The culture treats vacations as indulgences, not maintenance. In contrast, Europeans regard rest as part of the economy — a right enshrined in law and backed by unions.

GDP’s illusion of gain

Geoghegan argues that long hours inflate GDP without increasing welfare. Think of all the services you buy because you lack time: daycare, cleaning, takeout, tutoring. Each adds to national output while subtracting from personal leisure. You pay to compensate for exhaustion. That cycle, he writes, leaves both families and cities impoverished — nobody has time to volunteer, read, or rest. Keynes’s dream of a future leisure society has been reversed: we earn more but live less.

Practical lesson

Ask not “How much do I make?” but “How much time do I have to think, to love, to do nothing at all?” That is your real net worth.

When you step into a German firm, Geoghegan tells you, you are also stepping into a small democracy. Works councils and co-determined boards transform employees from bystanders into decision-makers. He walks you through the daily life of these institutions: meetings where elected council members negotiate hours, discuss mergers, and veto arbitrary layoffs. About 500,000 citizens serve on councils, learning persuasion and compromise as concrete civic skills.

The power of shared governance

In Germany, half of a large company’s supervisory board belongs to workers. Imagine Barnes & Noble with clerks voting on store closures. That structural check prevents the pure shareholder logic that dominated American corporations after the 1980s. Geoghegan signals Wigand, a union trainer, and Eckhardt, a lawyer defending a hallucinating bank teller — both examples of institutions treating employees as citizens deserving due process. Every labor dispute becomes a lesson in justice.

Human capital as collective property

Co-determination forces firms to invest in people because they can’t easily discard them. Skilled teams stay together; tacit knowledge deepens. Heinz’s training centers for works‑council members illustrate this civic professionalism: workers learn negotiation, social insurance law, and ethics of representation. The result is productivity grounded in trust, not fear. When managers open the books, workers open their creativity. (Scholars like Streeck later called this “organized capitalism,” but Geoghegan’s tour makes it tangible.)

Core idea

Industrial democracy, far from a drag on efficiency, is Germany’s competitive advantage. When labor has voice, capitalism produces both quality and consent.

Where do responsible workers come from? Geoghegan finds the answer in classrooms and workshops. Germany’s education system doesn’t send everyone to college; instead, it channels young people into three tracks: Gymnasium for university, apprenticeships for trades, and a small third group without defined skills. The second path — the Dual Track — is the system’s marvel. Apprentices earn money while mastering a craft, study theory in vocational schools, and enter adulthood debt‑free and employable.

Apprenticeship as civic education

Because apprenticeships link directly to unions and works councils, they train citizens as well as workers. V.’s sister, who schemed to join this track as a jewelry maker, becomes emblematic: she builds skill, autonomy, and collective awareness. This connection of technical and political learning ensures that the working class possesses civic muscle. (Contrast: U.S. vocational training isolates the individual and often ends with insecurity.)

Reading culture and public literacy

Geoghegan expands education beyond school. On trains and in cafés he sees reading everywhere — commuters with newspapers, students with history tomes. This print habit sustains a public sphere capable of serious debate and complex governance. The Frankfurt station scene — passengers reading long articles en route — summarizes his thesis: infrastructure plus leisure equals consciousness.

Takeaway

Education, when linked to work and civic participation, builds not only skills but solidarity. Germany’s secret advantage is teaching ordinary people how to govern themselves.

Contrary to free‑market myths, Germany’s dense labor institutions have not destroyed competitiveness — they’ve preserved it. Geoghegan shows how co-determination, sectoral bargaining, and vocational training together channel industry toward high‑value production. The country exports over a trillion dollars’ worth of goods, remains a net creditor, and still pays high wages. Factories invest in automation, precision machinery, and process innovation rather than cheap labor. Employers compete on quality, not race‑to‑the‑bottom costs.

Why structure beats austerity

Geoghegan debunks the idea that only “wage moderation” saved Germany. Instead, it’s structure: long-term relationships between banks, firms, and councils keep capital patient. The Sparkassen and the Mittelstand form a symbiosis — local lending to durable employers. During the 2008–09 Krise, these ties cushioned shocks. Compared with the U.S. financial system, which chased speculative profits, Germany’s stayed devoted to production.

Industrial democracy and citizenship

Factories, for Geoghegan, are schools of democracy. Workers who debate hours and pay also learn to debate politics. Manufacturing is not just economic but civic infrastructure — it creates citizens attuned to negotiation rather than nihilism. In this sense, industry and democracy reinforce each other, an insight going back to the post‑war founders who merged Catholic social thought and trade‑union pragmatism.

Lesson

Capitalism works best when it is slowed down — tethered to communities, skills, and institutions that make profit serve competence rather than exploitation.

Beyond economics, Geoghegan examines the cultural soul of social democracy. Germany’s “Green” and “Dark” traits — environmental discipline and historical guilt — give its politics moral depth. Green policy reflects restraint: people accept taxes and consumption limits because those fund visible social goods like childcare, pensions, and public transport. Dark memory, born from war and genocide, fuels vigilance against dehumanizing systems. The combination yields a moral economy guided by conscience.

The bells and the boundaries

When cathedral bells toll in Frankfurt, Geoghegan hears a civic instruction: stop, rest, remember. The sound stands for a society that imposes limits on commerce. Environmentalism, Sabbath laws, and public quiet are ways to encode history’s lesson — that unrestrained ambition leads to collapse. (Note: He connects this to Europe’s post‑war resolve to make social democracy both ethical and safe for humanity.)

Culture as continuity

Berlin, meanwhile, manifests the playful side of modern restraint. Its cafes buzz with students from free universities; parents subsidize their creative children, fueling a low‑rent cultural economy. The city’s abundance of leisure is not decadence but investment — youth experimenting inside a civic safety net. Even the glühwein markets and May Day concerts embody a productive use of public space, turning cultural participation into soft power.

Moral insight

Collective memory can be an economic asset. Societies that remember their worst tendencies build institutions to prevent them — and, in the process, craft healthier forms of prosperity.

No modern social order escapes stress. Geoghegan details how Germany adapted to unification’s fiscal strain, the painful Agenda 2010 reforms, and the global financial storm. Each test forced re‑negotiation rather than collapse. Officials like Mr. W. in Berlin describe wage subsidies keeping people on payroll; SPD members mourn fiscal restrictions under Maastricht that limited generosity. Yet the structure endured: collective bargaining, works councils, and public banking acted as built‑in stabilizers.

Agenda 2010’s paradox

The “dirty deal” redefined welfare: shorter unemployment benefits but higher basic supports. It angered unions but saved the model politically by aligning with European fiscal rules. When the 2008 Krise hit, this compromise allowed rapid resilience. Unemployment stayed manageable, and Germany’s creditor position gave it autonomy to act. The Sparkassen again emerge as heroes — steady lenders that kept the Mittelstand functioning while Wall Street reeled.

Political crossroads

Still, Geoghegan warns of fragility. Union coverage has slipped from 90 to 60 percent; temporary and service workers remain outside protection. Proportional representation splinters the left, allowing right‑leaning coalitions to dominate. His SPD interlocutors stress an urgent task: “Organize the janitors and the guards.” Inclusive unionism, not nostalgia, is the future of co‑determination. Europe’s fate now hinges on whether these ideals can extend beyond the industrial core to the new economy of care and service.

Final message

Germany survived by reforming solidarity, not abandoning it. Its path suggests that democracy’s endurance depends less on growth than on the capacity to share risk and time fairly.