I can tell you why I oppose the wall Trump has proposed for the current period (now and the next several years), but I won't go so far as to say I'd oppose every wall proposal. As goes "Trump's wall" and implementing it currently, the basis for my opposition is strictly that nobody has produced any data that shows it's economic to build and maintain the damn thing and the cost of building and maintaining it is too great to spend that much money and not know whether doing so is economic.
Quite simply:
- Starting Premises:
- The current situation is that:
- We have no "Trump Wall"
- Illegal immigration happens; thus we have illegal immigrants in the U.S.
- Illegal immigrants have a net economic impact (gains minus costs) on U.S. GDP.
- There are ~10.5M illegal immigrants in the U.S. now.
- The point of the wall is to reduce illegal immigration.
- More GDP is better than less GDP.
- The U.S. GDP, that is the U.S. economic productivity, earnings, etc. is a function of the net contributions (gains minus costs) of citizens and non-citizens.
- Some non-citizens are legally present and some are not, but the net contribution of both classes of non-citizens nonetheless comprises part of U.S. GDP.
- Analysis:
- It's been shown -- by Borjas, the "darling" immigration economist of conservatives and liberals, no less -- that the net contribution of illegal immigrants is positive, roughly $400B dollars, perhaps a bit more.
- "Illegal immigrants increased GDP by $395 to $472 billion." (Source)
- Explanatory notes re: my citing the distillate source above:
The above finding is fully exposed in Immigration Economics. There one will find the methodology, data, etc. that describes how Borjas arrived at the noted range of GDP increase. If I knew of a link for a free version of that text, I'd point you to it. Sadly, I don't know of such a link. (Lord knows I've looked for one.) The best I currently can offer is the summarization found at the "Source" link in the bullet above. Some of Borjas' studies are available for free on the Internet; however, they don't isolate the net economic impact of illegal immigration. (Two are listed below) AFAIK, the only one of his publications that does so comprehensively is the book linked above.
- The Economic Analysis of Immigration -- This covers immigration as a whole, but has no express detailing of illegal immigration. It's Borja's chapter from in a 'textbook" on labor economics graduate economics students and economics professionals use as a reference for a variety of reasons. Insofar as measuring illegal immigration's net economic impact is merely a matter of isolating illegal immigrants from all immigrants, one can use the methods described in this chapter to measure, confirm, analyze illegal immigrants' net impact on an economy. That's the closest I can get you to the methodology in Immigration Economics.
- The Economics of Immigration -- This is a review and analysis of economic literature and findings (as of Dec. 1994) on immigration. Again, no specific coverage of illegal immigration. This is essentially the literature review Borjas performed in advance of his research that led to Immigration Economics.
- Using "back of a napkin" analysis, one can estimate (using $433.5B), on average, each illegal immigrant in the U.S. has a net economic impact/contribution of $41,285.71 ($433.5B/10.5M) to US GDP.
- Assumption: I assume that the illegal immigrants who'll arrive in the U.S. will have substantively the same net economic impact as do the illegal immigrants already in the U.S.
- Inference: Because illegal immigrants have a net economic impact on GDP that constitutes an increase to GDP, each illegal immigrant denied entry corresponds, on average, to $41,285.71 not contributed to U.S. GDP.
- The cost to construct the wall is between $10B and $70B, and, using current valuations, ~$150M/year to maintain.
- Economic Analysis (based on the info above and that noted below):
- How many people illegally enter the U.S. along the Southern border?
- 2016 --> 388,163 people
- 2017 --> 310,531 people
View attachment 183905
- Is the trend of illegal crossings generally decreasing or increasing?
- What is the cost per illegal crosser that the wall, were it in place in 2016 and 2017?
- Wall cost = $10B
- 2016 --> $25,762.37 per illegal crosser.
- 2017 --> $32,202.90 per illegal crosser.
- Wall cost = $18B
- 2016 --> $46,372.27 per illegal crosser.
- 2017 --> $57,965.22 per illegal crosser.
- In 2017, at at a wall construction cost of $10B, the net reduction to U.S. GDP -- the sum lost because the illegal isn't allowed into the U.S. + the cost per illegal the wall stops from entering the U.S. -- is $41,285.71 + $32,202.90 ==> $73,487.71.
- So how is the wall supposed to pay for itself? Hell, U.S. median income isn't even $73K/year, it's not even near that.
- As the number of people stopped by the wall increases (i.e., the quantity of people crossing illegally decreases), the cost of the wall increases.
- Well, sh*t. Why not just identify ~300K needy citizens and do a one-time dole to them of $32K each? In the context of this conversation, I don't much care how the money is given -- cash, rent reduction/mortgage assistance, tuition funding, food, a new car, clothing, etc.
- How much did the illegal crossers at the Southern border contribute to U.S. GDP?
- 2016 --> 388,163 crossers x $41,285.71 (from above) = $16,025,585,050.73 (~$16B total)
- 2017 --> 310,531 crossers x $41,285.71 (from above) = $12,820,492,812.01
- So at a wall construction cost of:
- $10B --> Were the wall to have been built in 2017, we'd have spent $10B to realize $12.8B less GDP than we would have were we to have not built the wall.
- $18B --> Were the wall to have been built in 2017, we'd have spent $18B to realize $12.8B less GDP than we would have were we to have not built the wall.
- Conclusions:
- It is currently uneconomic to build Trump's wall because.
- As the quantity of illegal immigrants crossing at the Southern border decrease, the cost of building the wall becomes more uneconomic, and the quantity of illegal immigrants crossing into the U.S. along the Southern border has for over a decade been steadily decreasing.
- As the cost of the wall increases, the the cost of building the wall becomes more uneconomic.
- The cost of building the wall becomes economic when illegal immigrants' net economic contribution to GDP is negative.
That is why I oppose the damn wall. I don't give a damn about illegal immigrants' status as illegals. Indeed, were they instantly made legal, their net contribution to GDP would be the same. Similarly, I don't have a problem with building a wall; I have a problem with building an uneconomic wall.
As goes public policy whereby the federal government is going to spend a share of the whole population's tax dollars, I care about US GDP because those GDP dollars are the ones that will be used to pay for the wall. The dollars just happen to be the ones paid to the federal government as income taxes rather than the ones kept in yours and my pocket. I'm not griping about paying the taxes; I'm simply saying that the way the government spends tax dollars must have the potential to be economic. Look at the analysis above; the wall -- even just constructing it, to say nothing of maintaining it -- doesn't have that potential from "square one."
Discussion:
There's a "dirty secret," if you will, that all politicians (well, maybe not Trump) know about the relationship between GDP and population size and that they (most assuredly conservative pols, and perhaps liberal ones too) won't dare state openly because they think, based on what they know about the general public's attitudes re: foreigners, most folks would be pissed to hear it. That "secret" is this: GDP and population size are directly proportional, but not unlimited.
What that means is that the relationship between the two is shaped like a parabola that opens downward. Put another way, until one reaches the vertex of the parabola [1] [2], as long as a nation keeps increasing its population, the nation's GDP will increase too; however, at the vertex (the vertex point is the limit), the nation's productive capacity is reached, and each additional person added to the population reduces GDP. That's not unique to the U.S.; it's like that for every nation. All that changes is how wide or narrow and how tall be the parabola for a given nation/economy,
i.e., the population size at which economic capacity is reached and the sum that is the maximum productivity/GDP maximum.
Look at the above parabola, taking GDP to be the Y-axis and population size to be the X-axis. (You can try swapping the axes, it won't alter the outcome.) You can see that as population size increases, so does GDP, to a point. When the population on the graph above reaches four (
f(4) ), GDP is at its maximum. For population size greater than four (
f(>4) ), GDP is reduced. What that indicates is that the net returns to GDP for each additional person added to the population are negative,
i.e, it costs more to have that person present in the economy (in the population) than it does to not have them in the economy.
I can't say just where the US is on that parabola, but because it's clear that people who aren't "supposed" to be in the U.S. are in the U.S.
and their presence increases GDP, and we're at full employment, it's clear that our economy hasn't finished "climbing" the left side of the "mountain." Until it does, that wall Trump wants will remain uneconomic.
Because the relationship between GDP is a function of population size, and because GDP and population size are directly proportional, an economy can increase its GDP by increasing its population. There are two ways to increase population: giving birth and immigration. Thus, for a nation to continually boost its GDP, it must also grow its population. If the birth rate isn't enough to obtain the desired growth rate, the most peaceable alternative is immigration. [3] Now the thing that makes immigration appealing is that it's possible, in fact it's rather easy, to identify the quantity of new people needed in the following year to meet a given GDP goal that is below the GDP maximum.
Note:
- It actually looks more like a bell curve than a parabola, but that distinction isn't relevant for this discussion as the "tails" are relevant only for greatly underdeveloped economies and greatly depressed ones.
- Don't conflate what I said with something I didn't say. I said the relationship between GDP [size] and population size, not the relationship between GDP (size) and population growth rates, and not the relationship between GDP growth rates and population size. They each are very different things.
- A country can try to annex or conquer another nation, but that probably will go over less well than does immigration, even considering all the acrimony currently swirling around immigration policy and immigrants. I suppose too a nation could, as Mao did, require people to have kids, but I doubt that'd go over well either. Additionally, boosting birth rates has a host of "externalities" accompanying it, not the least of which is lead times -- what's the economy supposed to do, sit substantively stagnant for 15-20 years while it awaits newborns becoming workers who can contribute to GDP?