Yes, we're total idiots over here, spending about half of what the mortgage payment would be in order to allow the long-term problems of the house remain someone else's financial nightmare :)

My (German) husband and I were seriously considering buying a house soon after we married. However, we noticed something funny about our small city: the same sorts of houses that we felt we had a sufficient downpayment for (under 250,000 EUR) were renting for well under 1,000 EUR/month. The half of a big duplex (with good-sized back yard) we ended up renting is 700 EUR/mo - similar ones with smaller lots are on the market for over 200,000 EUR.

200,000 / 8400 = 23.8 years, and that would take talking the sellers down about 10-15%.

This is part of why even well-off Germans sometimes rent for years. The other factors are how sluggish the real estate market is even in good times and traditionally, very high down-payment requirements. I, an American, thought I was cautious wanting to put in at least 20% - he wouldn't consider anything less than 40% to be safe. I still can't work out why this is a good deal for my landlady as opposed to selling the house for 170,000 EUR, but if it works for her, wonderful - it's sure working great for us!

Note to my fellow Americans: tenants in Germany have far stronger occupancy rights than do ones in the US. My landlady would have to give us 3 months' notice if she wanted the house back, and "I want to charge higher rent" is not sufficient grounds. It's an even longer notice period if we're in for at least five years.

Our food:shelter ratio is about 1:3, because although we don't go out to eat much (too time-consuming!), we like to cook with really nice ingredients.

I get into doctors' offices on much shorter notice in Germany than I ever did in the US... and pay much less for the privilege when I do.

The plural of "anecdote" is not "data," but from what I've heard talking to elderly Germans who fought as Wehrmacht in WWII and got picked up by us (or their grandchildren), they were indeed pretty well-treated. They do not seem to be bitter about their time as POWs. Most importantly, once returned to Germany, they had no desire to take up arms against the occupying US forces, much less attack the US elsewhere - they just wanted to get on with their lives.

Just a bit elitist, are we? The audience of Slashdot is not uniformly as technical as you assume, antizeus. I particularly enjoy Jon's articles. He is a talented writer who has a knack for getting to the root of complex situations and ideas and explaining them in a way non-techies can understand - something the Linux and geek community desperately needs as the ideas and development going on begin to spread towards the mainstream of people who don't have a clue what an IP address is.

Recognize that there's a bigger world out there past the protocols and device drivers and benchmarks and distributions, one that is more than just ones and zeros. That's our target audience now. The tech community already knows Linux. The analog world doesn't. And until we as a community stop shunning them and begin embracing them, our chances of presenting a serious challenge to the big players are nil.