You know who else invested in infrastructure? Autobahn spending was key to Hitler's consolidation of power

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/02/01/you-know-who-else-invested-in.html

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Aww, that’s not a fair comparison at all. Hitler actually got the autobahns built.

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You know who else invested in infrastructure? Barack HUSSEIN Obama, that’s who! Also every administration in my lifetime.

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And that Commie FDR!

Seriously though. Fuck this whole wall campaign - you want to spend billions of dollars building shit, go around and start fixing the worst bridges, damns, and other infrastructure that is literally crumbling in the US.

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If you’re riding on the Interstate, you’re riding with Hitler?

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The difference is Hitler built a new highway that changed the way people could move products and personnel around. Since it was new and more efficient, it changed the way the government could do things. He used it for control.

The infrastructure Trump would be investing in would be repairing and upgrading what we have, so while there would be improvements in scale, it would not be transformative.

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Hitler Ate Sugar.
Hitler was against Smoking
Hitler had a Dog.
Hitler wanted affordable cars for Germans.
Hitler was a straight white male.

To put blunt spending on infrastructure is something I am wholeheartedly behind. Spending on this fucking wall?

Nope.

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What it WOULD do is give jobs to people who desperately need them, and that can do a lot to enable cognitive dissonance to do the rest - “I mean, he’s paying us to build this wall, so we live a pretty good life in this upper-middle-class home in southern Texas and really it’s pretty good, so let’s keep it going, who cares what he says about Muslims?”

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I recall reading in ‘the rise and fall of the third reich’ that the german beauracracy was massively expanded during hitler’s reign on a continuous basis.

It absolutely makes sense of course. He gained power because of the economic collapse. Giving the (approved) people jobs was how he held popularity.

I guess its some cold comfort that the republican party is so ideological opposed to anything that would actually create jobs or improve the lot of the bottom 50%.

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Railways were still far more important right up to and during WW2. A lot of Hitler’s projects were window dressing intended to awe other countries and keep Germans on side.

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And sitting in his lap if driving a VW.

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Was any of the autobahn network constructed or used as toll roads?

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In one of his Cars of the Poeple episodes, James May points out the the KdF savings plan (5 Marks per week, 250 weeks, miss a payment and you lose the whole thing) ended up being appropriated for the war effort.

After the War, Volkswagen had to honor those orders

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“Adolf is my co-pilot.”

dunno, not that catchy.

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Link to the playlist?

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Umm, is anyone else getting an invalid cert warning when trying to follow the “via Marginal Revolution” link?

Call me paranoid, but I think the FBI is executing a MIM attack to find out what homeland dissidents are viewing anti-Trump propaganda. That or they just configured their cert wrong.

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I saw it on Amazon Prime.

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Sankyouveddymuch.

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That’s because Cory used an https:// for the hyperlink. If you go to http://marginalrevolution.com, you won’t get that error.

(Despite what google and others think, not every web connection needs to be encrypted.)

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Actually you’re sitting in Ivan Hirst’s lap. It’s the paradox of VW history that the Nazis never really got them into production, it took the efforts of a British major trying to find something for the locals to do after the War.
Ironically, it’s BMW that actually provides jobs in the UK, whereas VW likes to manufacture in former Fascist countries or ones the Nazis overran (Spain, Czech Republic.)

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