Renewables are one option for massive investments without massive long term costs. The important thing is to subsidize them upfront rather than subsidizing their income stream or you get high electricity prices.

However, the idea of stimulus makes basic assumptions that the economy can sustain a higher level. That economic article of faith may inherently be flawed in many cases.

Another option for developed countries is rather than trying to stimulate the economy instead focus on increasing efficiency. Japan’s workforce increased 1% in the last 22 years. Long term stagnation should be expected in countries like Japan with stagnant and aging populations. Even 1% growth assumes the economy will double every 70 years. Relative stagnation isn’t inherently bad as long as the economy is still doing all the things an economy should be doing.

> electrical cars, house insulation).

Those are very regressive, you’re taking money away from the less well-off (through higher fuel taxes, for example) and giving it pretty much directly to the way better-off middle-classes who can afford those new EVs and those houses which to insulate. It’s pretty much a return to the 1770s-1780s France, when “la gabelle” was in full force.

That's one of the main complaints I have about all those measures that are being taken currently to become green.

Government officials are also talking about using tax money to rebuild all houses for the people affected by the recent floods that were without flood insurance. It's a huge middle finger to all those people who can't afford a house.

There are so many tax exemptions that exclusively apply to the rather well-off that I'm surprised that these issues are not coming up regularly when talking about social issues.

Examples include offices at home are only deductable if they have a door (applies to larger-than-necessary apartments or houses), you get money for driving to work rather than living nearby and walking (0.35€/km), a more expensive hybrid company car costs the employee a lot less than a privately owned ICE car, and many more.

Please stop spreading misinformation. Yes, the classical "Arbeitszimmer" must be a separate room and, by the letter of the law, must have no private function. No, that does not apply for 2020-style home office. And no, you don't "get" 0.35€/km. You can deduct that amount from your income taxes. And that's totally in line with everything else you can deduct because you do it to earn the money in the first place.

Also, building a modest-sized house in Germany costs about 200k€ - this sum is affordable by the average German couple (average income is around 36k€ per year).

Germany is not California and especially not the Silicon Valley. Just because you may have chosen to rent an extremely expensive, 130 year old apartment 5min from your workplace that does not mean it is the lifestyle for the majority in the country.

Ha, 200,000€, you'd be lucky to get even land for that. Have you looked at housing prices recently? You can maybe get this in Saxony in a village somewhere where you need to drive 20km to the next supermarket or doctor. In my city you don't even get a 60m² apartment for that.

The Arbeitszimmerregelung is only valid for 2020 and 2021 and only up to 120 days/year. You typically work 220 days a year. In 2022 it's back to door-or-bust.

I live in a big city, I can walk to work and pay a relatively high rent for a small apartment, I can claim 0.35€ per day, about 77€/year. Meanwhile a friend of mine commutes over 50km, living in a big house. They are quite happy each year to get about 4,000€ back. It's government funded pollution.

Please don't tell me I spread misinformation when you yourself claim things that aren't true.

I wrote "building" a house, not buying the land. But if you need to know, I could recently have bought a 6000qm plot for about 100k€ about 1.5h by train from Berlin.

Also, again, your friends do not "get" anything. They pay way more than that for getting to work. They recover some of the financial burden of commuting, while you don't pay that in the first place and safe the time. Why should society help you in your insane quest to live in an ever denser environment, compete for square cm and minutes of time with literally hundreds of competitors while the countryside just rots away?

Your singular perspective about the big city life being the only true path is exactly what makes the city so expensive. If one day you cannot pay the rent anymore this has been partly because of this ideology. Don't complain when you have to move into some crappy apartment in nowhere when you retire and the young guns with 15times your income just pay ridiculous rents for your apartment.

> Also, building a modest-sized house in Germany costs about 200k€ - this sum is affordable by the average German couple (average income is around 36k€ per year).

This must be very modest and without any special necessities like a cellar. Current prices for a cold cellar alone are already 80k.

More realistic construction costs currently are rather between 300k and 400k - for a modest house. You'll only come down to 200k if you do lots of the work yourself.

Source: I'm currently trying to build a house and have gathered bids for weeks now.

I don't think so. First and foremost, house insulation can also be done when you rent out the apartments (but often the landlord has little incentive to do it). Second, electrical cars are expensive, yes, but they don't subsidize the well-off because they would have bought expensive gasoline cars otherwise. Who really profits from the subsidies is the middle class: You can lease small electric vehicles quite cheaply and if I am not completely mistaken, you can buy an electric Dacia for 10k€ after subsidies. So yes, this is not for the working poor. But the working poor hardly invest anyways, so it is really difficult to setup an incentive program for them.

One thing worth noting in this is that, at least in the US, a lot of the "infrastructure spending" that has been talked about recently is, in fact, maintenance.

We have roads, bridges, and buildings that were built decades ago, then the funds that should have gone for their maintenance spent on tax cuts instead, so they're limping along with stopgap solutions.

The US talks about infrastructure and then nothing happens because of political impasse on Capitol Hill. Biden is no Deng Xiaoping and the Democrats are no CCP.

Maybe it's time for radical political reform to end these deadlocks?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ySL82WbcvU

Germany is one example where a long-term infrastructure investment strategy makes a lot of sense as the infrastructure is crumbling: https://www.dw.com/en/german-infrastructure-begging-for-over.... Not all could be spent in a short time as you mention, but for economic recovery, long-term funding is probably better anyways.

To close the pension gap, Germany could also buy ETFs on borrowed money, or borrow to create a national investment fund, but that would be much too eccentric for an extremely risk-averse country.

> you literally cannot spend an arbitrary amount of money even for absolutely obvious ideas.

Is there a good way to measure what potential productive capacity of infrastructure investment is? I wonder what percentage of the limit we're at right now? Could the market efficiently react to a doubling or even 10x-ing of federal infrastructure investment?

I think there is: Count the applications for the infrastructure projects that you actually do. I doubt most companies can do more than one at a time. So if you have five applicants you can maybe do 3 projects in parallel before the price raises absurdly.