Is German capitalism any different from American capitalism ?
Not much, but there are subtle differences.
Is there a better spread of wealth across its population....
We were hit by the crisis almost as hard as other nations.
But the
spread of wealth across the population indeed seems to be a wee bit more equalized than in many other hit countries.
So much that the biting effects haven't yet been sensed by the majority,
also thanks to a maybe more tightly woven social net and to the circumstance that many cuts and austerity measures had been taken in the years before the bubble burst.
Are their rich so much poorer than the American or the UK rich
Seems that the upper and lower ends aren't that pronounced.
Capitalism is now a world system the Americans are just part of it...
A great contributing factor to the financial meltdown can be found in the totally unregulated markets of Anglo-American provenience for collateralized debt obligations and other highly obscure derivatives that allowed to hide those subprime mortgages.
Excruciatingly, some of our federal state banks (i.e.
Landesbanken) had the hubris and effrontery to speculate on these papers and in the aftermath needed to be bailed out by billions of tax payers' Euros.