Either they live in their own bubbles where their lives revolve around constant shopping, traveling, throwing parties, and doing creative work...

Or they're not bothering to do basic observational research around how normal people live.

For example, you can buy KLM Air france for less than $3B.

It is a profitable business that does $30B in sales and $1B in profit. (and has been profitable since for the past 4-5 years)

cracks me up. I once leased a BMW for 3 years. By the time I returned the car, I still didn't what all the cryptic buttons for HVAC and other controls. They just refused to follow established automotive ergonomic conventions.

Anyway, my father used to do business with Germans for a long time. He had many interesting stories to share, but one that has always stayed with me is, his disdain for how cheap / penny pinching his German companies and their employees were when doing deals. This was in the 90s, so definitely passed the West Germany glory days.

My take is, in the era of global competition, Germans didn't know how to strike the right balance and effective allocate resources. Where to compromise, and where not to. I don't know if it's sheer stubbornness or they're just wired differently.

With state sales tax of 8% where I live, the base would cost me $648.

So not a huge difference.

For example, up until MacBookPro M2, MacBookPro M2 came with M2 Pro chip.

However, starting with M3, Apple lowered the MacBookPro MSRP to $1599, but its base configuration was downgraded to M3 chip from M3 Pro. To get the M3 Pro, you had to pay $1999. There's substantial performance between the two.

Same with M4. To get the M4 Pro chip, you had to pay $1999.

Now to get M5 Pro chip, it's $2199. Still a good value, but just saying it's a deviation from the trend.