Germany has the economic strengths America once boasted Reporting from Elz, Germany - Every summer, Volkmar and Vera Kruger spend three weeks vacationing in the south of France or at a cool getaway in Denmark. For the other three weeks of their annual vacation, they garden or travel a few hours away to root for their favorite team in Germany's biggest soccer stadium. The couple, in their early 50s, aren't retired or well off. They live in a small Tudor-style house in this middle-class town about 30 miles northwest of Frankfurt. He's a foreman at a glass factory; she works part time for a company that tracks inventories for retailers. Their combined income is a modest $40,000. Yet the Krugers have a higher standard of living than many Americans who have twice that income. Their secret: little debt, frugal habits and a government that is intensely focused on high production, low inflation and extensive social services. That has given them job security and good medical care as well as well-maintained roads, trains and bike paths. Both of their adult children are out on their own, thanks in part to Germany's job-training system and heavy subsidies for university education. For instance, Volkmar's out-of-pocket costs for stomach surgery and 10 days in a hospital totaled just $13 a day. College tuition for their son runs about $260 a semester. Germany, with its manufacturing base and export prowess, is the America of yesteryear, an economic power unlike any of its European neighbors. As the world's fourth-largest economy, it has thrived on principles that the United States seems to have gradually lost. It has tightly managed its budget and adopted reforms - such as raising the retirement age - that some other Eurozone nations are just now being forced to undertake. And few countries can match Germany's capabilities for producing and exporting machinery and other equipment, or its infrastructure for research, apprenticeships and financing that support manufacturing. "German industry is strong," said Volkmar, speaking in halting English as he occasionally looks up translations on a laptop. People work good. That's why the German economy is best in Europe. Indeed, Germany was the only major Eurozone nation to escape the credit downgrades that have hit its neighbors. And the country continues to anchor the continent's economy. Still, Germany has its share of challenges. Income inequality, while less pronounced than in the U.S., is rising. Most workers, including the Krugers, have seen little or no real wage gains in recent years. And the nation's population is declining. And now, with Europe on the ropes, Germany faces both a declining market for its exports and the prospect of having to cough up tens of billions of dollars more to help bail out profligate Eurozone neighbors. Even so, German business and consumer confidence has held up well. The nation's jobless rate fell last month to a two-decade low of 6.8%, considerably lower than in much of Europe and the U.S. And though its industrial production is starting to soften, Germany so far has maintained an impressive trade surplus with the rest of the world, including China. Germany's economy looks like that of the U.S. a generation ago. In 1975, manufacturing accounted for about 20% of the United States' economic output, or gross domestic product, about the same as in Germany today. Since then, U.S. manufacturing's share of GDP has slid to about 12%. In 1975, the U.S. budget deficit was a manageable 1% of the economy, about the same as Germany's now. Last year, the U.S. deficit was about 10%. American families in the 1970s and early '80s typically saved about 10% of their take-home pay, about the same as in Germany today. The U.S. savings rate these days is in the low single digits.