Inflation adjusted wages in the US are pretty much unchanged for over a decade as well. Yet, the US has a massive current account deficit whilst Germany, a welfare state, has a current account surplus even with China, a low wage export oriented economy. So wages cannnot possibly be the reason for their success.

I don't deny at all that there are many short term effects and flucuations that have nothing to do with productivity. But we're talking about the different speeds of European economies and those different speeds correlate very well with different levels of productivity.

And look at the Greek stock market. The biggest non financial companies there are a Coke bottling company and the lottery. The biggest German listed company (I believe) is Siemens, which makes high tech industrial equipment like power plants or health care equipment. The Chinese want that. They need energy, they don't want to play in the Greek lottery and they can bottle their own Coke. That's the reason for the two speed economy.