How does Netherlands/Germany do it?


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So I have been to a few Eurpoean countries and most notably Netherlands and Germany ( especially Netherlands ) Use alot of qualty stone roads and everoyne has like expensive tile roofs. Plus alot of the houses are made out of expensive brick or cement.

Most of the side walks are expensive hand layed stone and then they switch colors from grey to red to mark where the sidewalk dips to allow car to enter the street.  Even traveling in Netherlands I see big industrial places that have like mechanic shops the entire big drive way is in stone and also gas stations.

In USA most people only really see hand layed out stone like in city centers because it is so dam expensive. Also tile roofs unless you are in the south are almost non existant unless you are very rich. Plus most houses in USA are made out of wood.

Almost forgot all the power lines are burried in Netherlands and Germany as well ( except for the few high voltage transformers ) This is very expensive as well. Even rural areas of NL and Germany have burried power lines out in the country

Basically my question is for Dutch and Germans on here. How the heck do they do it???? These things are so expensive and these 2 countries so so pretty and clean. Tile roofs, Brick/concrete houses/ stone sidewalks roads everywhere literlaly even in suburbs / burried power lines.
 

The average Dutch or German has these things but for Americans you have to be very wealthy to have this. Then unless in city center usa government would never make stone side walks or stone roads in suburbs . You go to a grocery store in Netherlands or Germany and the entire parking lot is layed out stone and not with painted lines but the lines for the cars are another type of colored stone. So fancy and so expenive but so cool!!

I know this is alot of writing but a person from these 2 countries or person who has been there will knoe exactly what im talking about. Can a Dutch person or German expalin where you get all this money to do this?? :)

 

PS: The roads in Germany and Netherlands are amazing and with virtuall no pot holes.

I love your 2 countries!!

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one word: Taxes

People pay more taxes I guess and the government does something useful with it.

In Europe the government also puts rules on how power companies have to conduct business, none of that free market rules stuff.

 

This is just a guess, so don't shoot the messenger ;)

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one word: Taxes

People pay more taxes I guess and the government does something useful with it.

In Europe the government also puts rules on how power companies have to conduct business, none of that free market rules stuff.

 

This is just a guess, so don't shoot the messenger ;)

 

True they do pay higher taxes but also get like no upfron cost university and healthcare. But basically France has high taxes as well but as soon as you cross the border from Netherlands or Germany into France you notice a big differnce. They odnt use tile roofs everywhere, not neraly as much stone roads, and roads have pot holes over there and power lines are not burried.  Just seems like Netherlands Germany ( maybe other Germanic countries ) just so uber clean and rich.

To be honest alot of France looked 3rd world to me but then in Netherlands did no see one ghetto or a pot hole in the road and I have sen alot of Netherlands. I am not here to bash France basially just Netherlands and Germany so uber clean with stone everywhere etc. Basically Dutch sidewalks and streets look so dam clean could like eat off them. Not to mention it looks like everyone in NL has a professional gardiner.

Those who have flown over Europe. You can tell you are flying over Netherlands from thousands of feet up by seeing the orgaization from so high up but once you leave NL borders from 20,000 feet up you know your not in NL anymore..

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Being Dutch myself... and obviously living there, I really have no clue how we got this 'wealthy' compared to you guys.
(however I do know that many of the world's highest ranked companies all have Dutch in their management positions, so obviously a lot of the money we make there gets 'recycled' in our home country)

I've grown up, not knowing any different so it's normal to me... but now that you mention it, I really have no idea.
(it's probably easy to find the right answers on Google, I haven't looked in to that)

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I also think they have rules about the style of house you can build.

Lots of places in the Netherlands got destroyed during the war and then rebuild.

 

If you buy one of those houses or you buy land in an area like that you have to continue in the same style as the rest

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It's not just Germany or the Netherlands. Most of European houses are built of brick, with tiled roofs. Most roads are tarmac, concrete or stone, most "sidewalks" are paving slabs, stone or tarmac.

 

It's not "rich", it's perfectly normal; Just like building houses from wood is normal in the US.

 

As for the cleanliness you mention, that's a societal thing.  The Dutch and Germans are just cleaner than Americans! :p  They don't throw their garbage in the streets and recycle a hell of a lot more.

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When it comes to houses, it's also a differance of priority in the Netherlands. Out of personal experience I would say that people in a lot of other parts of Europe seem to prefer having a more expensive/luxurious car than having a well maintained house. 

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Same buildings here in Romania , stone, concrete and more concrete. However I wish we had wooden-built houses and less concrete around.. its all so Soviet here.

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Well... In Germany a third (average) of our wage is going away for tax.

For one liter gas we (entire EU Eurozone) pay 1,30 - 1,50 Euro (1,80 - 2 USD). About 80% of this price are taxes.

There are regulations how streets have to look like.

 

There are also regulations for building houses.

They have to be quakeproofed, there are rules for it (calls DIN in German)

 

In Germany we are surprised how people in the US can build a house by wood and some plates and at the other side every year we see sad people in the news who lost their houses by hurricanes (No offense!). I would say these people would have less problems with houses build by stone and bricks.

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Roads in the UK SUCK, anything is better than here. At least I only pay ?20/yr to tax my car. If I was still paying ?225/yr I'd be one angry road user.

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Same buildings here in Romania , stone, concrete and more concrete. However I wish we had wooden-built houses and less concrete around.. its all so Soviet here.

 

Soviet brutalist architecture has its charm. For depressed folks (me), anyhow.

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Roads in the UK SUCK, anything is better than here. At least I only pay ?20/yr to tax my car. If I was still paying ?225/yr I'd be one angry road user.

 

Your Vehicle Excise Duty (car tax) doesn't go to the roads upkeep and never has.  A very common misconception, but still a misconception.

 

Potholes happen everywhere and repairing them is down to your local council and comes out of your council tax. In my area, the roads are pretty good.

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Roads in the UK SUCK, anything is better than here. At least I only pay ?20/yr to tax my car. If I was still paying ?225/yr I'd be one angry road user.

Try going to Italy. They charge for motorways that only have two lanes (with no hard shoulder), have roadworks everywhere, the barriers are solid concrete with no regards to safety and they also have speed cameras everywhere. Most rural roads have no barriers, even along cliff edges, and the road simply drops away at the edges. Painted lines appear and disappear at random (on motorways as well as main roads).

 

Roads in the UK aren't great but they certainly aren't the worst.

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It's not just Germany or the Netherlands. Most of European houses are built of brick, with tiled roofs. Most roads are tarmac, concrete or stone, most "sidewalks" are paving slabs, stone or tarmac.

 

It's not "rich", it's perfectly normal; Just like building houses from wood is normal in the US.

 

As for the cleanliness you mention, that's a societal thing.  The Dutch and Germans are just cleaner than Americans! :p  They don't throw their garbage in the streets and recycle a hell of a lot more.

It is rich. Stone, tile roofs, brick are way way more expensive than timber houses and shingled roof. Concrete side walks are also way way cheaper than stone side walks. It why the USA uses these materials becaues the others are to dam expensive. I used to work in this industry.

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It's not just Germany or the Netherlands. Most of European houses are built of brick, with tiled roofs. Most roads are tarmac, concrete or stone, most "sidewalks" are paving slabs, stone or tarmac.

 

It's not "rich", it's perfectly normal; Just like building houses from wood is normal in the US.

 

As for the cleanliness you mention, that's a societal thing.  The Dutch and Germans are just cleaner than Americans! :p  They don't throw their garbage in the streets and recycle a hell of a lot more.

I agree and they dont use shutters in the USA very often most of them are fake shutters. Concrete or brick houses plus shutters or Rollandens like they use in Germany would help cover the windows etc instead of bording them up.

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It might also be that (from my experience anyway) European houses are much smaller than in the USA.
So the quantity of the building materials is much less, making it cheaper to build than an equivalent American house.

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Nothing racial or anything against Romance/ Latin Europe but I see a huge difference when crossing all borders from Germanic Europe to Latin Europe. Same with economies and unemployment. But yea I know this is off topic and not related to much of my first post as I wanted to stricly talk about these expensive materials, etc. USA suppost to be rich where I am from but yea Netherlands and Germany just amaze me.

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The house material actually comes down to most common nearby natural material. Netherlands have far more access to stone than wood. As for Germany I believe stone or wood depends on where you are and especially in the mountain where wood is more accessible, most houses will be wood, also it's colder in the mountains and wood is more practical for heat and insulating purposes there.

There also of course a long perspective when it comes to economics for certain choruses like roofs, natural or "artificial" stone roofs have a much longer lifespan than other for types, and thus becomes cheaper over the lifetime. Over here in the past a lot of houses used living grass roofs(some still do, but then generally older style log cabins and such, usually expensive ones) since they virtually last forever and are naturally insulating and waterproof.

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It might also be that (from my experience anyway) European houses are much smaller than in the USA.

So the quantity of the building materials is much less, making it cheaper to build than an equivalent American house.

Just FYI, stone and/or brick houses aren't necessarily more expensive to build than wood houses, not over here anyway. But building regulations tend to be a lot stricter over here.

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Try going to Italy. They charge for motorways that only have two lanes (with no hard shoulder), have roadworks everywhere, the barriers are solid concrete with no regards to safety and they also have speed cameras everywhere. Most rural roads have no barriers, even along cliff edges, and the road simply drops away at the edges. Painted lines appear and disappear at random (on motorways as well as main roads).

 

Roads in the UK aren't great but they certainly aren't the worst.

 

That's an odd thing to say.  The majority of Italian motorways I've driven on (all over the country) have three lanes and I've rarely encountered roadworks although that's probably just lucky timing (driving in the south of France one year I was constantly delayed by roadworks and vowed never to do it again).  I don't recall driving on roads without a barrier on a cliff edge either.

 

Having said that, I agree with you about the concrete barriers and the lack of a hard shoulder.  That can be terrifying, especially when overtaking in the fast lane.  The other irritating thing about driving in Italy and France is the constant tollbooths.

 

The best motorways I've ever driven on would have to be in Germany.  Even in the middle of winter with thick snow all over the place they're pristine and very safe and easy to drive on.  British roads are OK but the thing I like about driving in this country is that everyone is generally very considerate, much more so than in other countries.

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That's an odd thing to say.  The majority of Italian motorways I've driven on (all over the country) have three lanes and I've rarely encountered roadworks although that's probably just lucky timing (driving in the south of France one year I was constantly delayed by roadworks and vowed never to do it again).  I don't recall driving on roads without a barrier on a cliff edge either.

I went on a road trip around Italy focused mainly around the north, including Pisa, Florence, Venice, Parma, San Marino, Rome, Perugia, Orvieto, Gubbio and Verona. There were three-lane motorways too but I was surprised by the amount that were only two lanes and the way the barriers were all temporary looking concrete blocks. Most of my time was spent around Florence, as that's where my ex-girlfriend lived. My experience of Italian roads was not positive.

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Germans prefer to build it right the first time and have it last. Americans build below sea level and sit there refusing to evacuate when a category 5 hurricane is approaching. Then we spend billions rebuilding it and subsidizing the people who didn't evacuate.

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Germans prefer to build it right the first time and have it last. Americans build below sea level and sit there refusing to evacuate when a category 5 hurricane is approaching. Then we spend billions rebuilding it and subsidizing the people who didn't evacuate.

Yea the Amerians for new orelans after the hurricane had to bring in the Dutch to help re engineer their levys etc since American Army core of engineers had so many design failures lol.  Dutch and Germanys very good engineers.

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