Simply put, they can command it. US GDP per capita is ~1/3 higher than in Germany, as is the median income. It's why companies like Softlayer or Rackspace, with relatively high prices, built such substantial businesses in the dedicated space years ago: US businesses could afford it.
The underlying cost structure is also more challenging in the US for most dedicated hosts. Building a data center in the US, as with most infrastructure, costs more than it does in Germany.
When you account for the higher cost of infrastructure and the higher productivity (economic output), a $80 Hetzner server becomes a $120 or $140 server in the US.
It's the same reason housing in Australia is so expensive (their incomes have skyrocketed over the last 15 years), or why the cost of living is so high in Switzerland (very high incomes). If you cut US GDP per capita from ~$57k-$60k down to $28,000 (just as an example) - dedicated hosts in the US would not be able to command the same high prices, the market would not bear that.
That doesn't explain why OVH can offer servers in Canada for about the same price (via soyoustart.com or OVH). Electricity in Quebec is cheap but parts of the US are similar (OR, WA). Perhaps many US companies don't trust European providers so that they have to win on price?
Why doesn't it? Canada isn't the US and Quebec isn't New York. What doe the electricity cost of some regions of the US have to do with the costs where data centers actually are like New York? The GDP per capita in Canada is $46.000[1] and in the US it is $57.400[2].
> What doe the electricity cost of some regions of the US have to do with the costs where data centers actually are like New York?
I'd expect electricity to be a major cost item for data centers. GDP per capita is not a good proxy for the cost of running a data center. It is only loosely related to labour costs and not at all to cost of infrastructure projects and regulation.
So I still don't completely understand why US data centers are more expensive, esp at locations like Kansas or Oregon where energy is cheaper than in most/all of Europe.
The underlying cost structure is also more challenging in the US for most dedicated hosts. Building a data center in the US, as with most infrastructure, costs more than it does in Germany.
When you account for the higher cost of infrastructure and the higher productivity (economic output), a $80 Hetzner server becomes a $120 or $140 server in the US.
It's the same reason housing in Australia is so expensive (their incomes have skyrocketed over the last 15 years), or why the cost of living is so high in Switzerland (very high incomes). If you cut US GDP per capita from ~$57k-$60k down to $28,000 (just as an example) - dedicated hosts in the US would not be able to command the same high prices, the market would not bear that.