[lispm]

> Nope German infrastructure is in ruins.

Yeah, sure. I happen to live in Germany and I don't see to many ruins. Actually the city where I live invests a billion $ into a concert hall and 1.5 billion $ into a new X-ray research laser facility.

[tiatia]

Sure, Bozo, I am German _AND_ American and live in Asia. I know a few places.

German universities? Third class.

Transport system? Bad. Don't even think about how slow the ICE trains in Bavaria run.

Bridges? Many are overdue for reconstruction.

I would have to look up in how many years (hint: very few) Germany expects a doubling of cargo freight traffic. Impossible without massive investments in infrastructure. Look at many train stations. Offenbach, Heidelberg, Wuerzburg. OMG!

Internet? Slow because bad infrastructure. (China is different there. Regarding the internet they like shooting them-self in the balls)

Energy? Stupid investments in solar infrastructure instead of research. They subsidize Chinese manufacturing and take the money from the poor (high costs for electricity). Wind energy? Produced there, where it is not needed.

Last but not least, the 1 BILLION into a concert hall for rich people that was supposed to costs 35 or 70 MILLION is a sign of stupidity and corruption but not a sign of a "healthy infrastructure investment"

[omnibrain]

I live in germany and the infrastructure is rotting away. The bridge Schiersteiner Brücke is only the latest and biggest example. You only have to look into your local newspaper to find other examples.

Since 2003 the invest into infrastructure is net-negative: https://www.kfw.de/PDF/Download-Center/Konzernthemen/Researc...

[lispm]

Surprise: Germany could not build up East Germany and keep the West German infrastructure at the usual levels.

Next surprise: we have a lot infrastructure and it is expensive to maintain. Look how many airports we have nobody needs.

Next surprise: in places we need more infrastructure. We are for example investing a lot of money into the energy system. Or transport.

[vnglst]

It's not in ruins, but Germany's highways are definitely not as good as they used to be. Especially if you compare them to the roads in France or The Netherlands, for instance. The internet infrastructure in Germany needs work as well: It currently ranks below Russia and Hungary, far below countries like Sweden, Netherlands and the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_c...

[rbehrends]

> It's not in ruins, but Germany's highways are definitely not as good as they used to be.

It's not the highways themselves. It's primarily bridges and side roads that are affected. Schierstein Bridge, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schierstein_Bridge

> The internet infrastructure in Germany needs work as well: It currently ranks below Russia and Hungary, far below countries like Sweden, Netherlands and the US.

That's extremely misleading. Average download speed not only is a very poor metric for infrastructure, but depending on which chart you look at, you may be getting pretty much the opposite results. For example, check out Netflix's internet speed report [1].

In practice, the internet infrastructure in German is generally excellent in cities and metropolitan areas. The primary problem (same as in many other countries) is coverage in rural areas. The issue here is not lack of government investment, however, but forcing ISPs to invest money in these not very profitable markets. Despite subsidies and incentives, this is still facing obstacles. That said, the situation has improved considerably over the past years [2]:

"Germany remains above the European average in all technology combinations, with noteworthy improvements in overall NGA coverage recorded in 2013. Near-100% coverage of overall broadband and 97.5% coverage with fixed technologies were reported in 2013 as well. NGA access rose through the year, ending the period on 74.8% of households (21.3% in rural areas) – nearly 9 percentage points higher than the previous year."

[1] http://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/

[2] https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/study-broadband-...

[lispm]

> It's not in ruins, but Germany's highways are definitely not as good as they used to be.

Go to East Germany. They got the new roads. Brand new autobahns.

I live in West Germany and an Autobahn is not far away. First class. The surface has just been renewed with a more silent asphalt.

[Luc]

You're right of course, though I'm not sure you can call it investing when they pay four times as much as planned for a concert hall :)

[lispm]

Why not? The money gets spend and we get a very luxurious concert hall - more than originally planned.

[tiatia]

It is factor 10.