Germany has been a frequent cudgel in recent fights over the American economy. When Germany has grown faster than the United States, stimulus skeptics like to point across the Atlantic Ocean and say that austerity works. When it has grown more slowly, people who think the American stimulus made a big difference - including me - return the favor.

But the full story is more interesting than any caricature. In the last decade, Germany has succeeded in some important ways that the United States has not. The lessons aren't simply liberal or conservative. They are both.

With our economy weakening once again - and with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany visiting the White House this week - now seems to be a good time to take a closer look.

The brief story is that, despite its reputation for austerity, Germany has been far more willing than the United States to use the power of government to help its economy. Yet it has also been more ruthless about cutting wasteful parts of government.

The results are intriguing. After performing worse than the American economy for years, the German economy has grown faster since the middle of last decade. (It did better than our economy before the crisis and has endured the crisis about equally.) Just as important, most Germans have fared much better than most Americans, because the bounty of their growth has not been concentrated among a small slice of the affluent.

Inflation-adjusted average hourly pay has risen almost 30 percent since 1985 in Germany, the kind of gains American workers have not enjoyed since the '50s and '60s. In this country, hourly pay has risen a scant 6 percent since 1985.

Germany also managed to avoid a housing bubble, unlike the United States, Britain, Ireland, Spain and other countries. German children have stronger math and science skills than ours. Its medium-term budget deficit is smaller. Its unemployment rate is like a mirror image of ours: 6.1 percent, well below where it was when the financial crisis began in 2007. Our rate has risen to 9.1 percent.

I'm not saying that the United States should want to become Germany. Americans remain considerably richer. We have the innovative companies - Wal-Mart, Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter - that make other countries swoon. We remain the world's immigration Mecca.

Yet for all the strengths of the United States, almost nobody claims that the economy is in especially good shape. It so happens that our current out-of-town guests could teach us a few things.

David Fuller's view Many western countries could learn from Germany's intelligent, incentivised welfare reforms and reduced incentives for early retirement. It takes longer to improve the undergraduate educational system, and realise the benefits, but this is essential for a modern economy. Significantly, Germany has an export rather than consumer based economy.