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Reconcile this....

jnug said:
Good, let Donald's administration make an actual formal proposal to Congress for what he wants Appropriations for instead of [foisting them upon] Hill Leadership or trying to bootstrap them to a CR all against the backdrop of a Shutdown that Trump owns. Coercion and subversion of process are not governance. They are Tyranny.
Click to expand...

FWIW, the rebuttal to the lines to which your above post is a reply:

  • "Trump is trying to get out of Congress isn't solely for building a wall. It will also be spent on other items important to border security, such as more agents, more detection equipment, more immigration courts, etc."
    • This point is ingermane to OP; however:
      • Congress passed legislation that provided funding for border security measures besides the wall. The wall is the only border security measure Congress, including the GOP-controlled 115th Congress, has been unwilling to fund.
        • H.R. 695 -- The pre "Ann Coulter" version included $1.6B in border security funding. The post "Ann Coulter" version included $5.7B in wall funding. Trump refused to sign the former version, and McConnell refused to bring the latter to the Senate floor, mainly because he'd gotten the former passed unanimously and Trump refused to sign it, whereafter McConnell declared that he wouldn't bring any funding measures to the Senate floor until he knew precisely what Trump wanted. Subsequently, several Trump Admin. and legislators, including the VPOTUS and the "Trump Whisperer," have proposed ideas that Trump has rejected.
  • "...that Harvard study...which, btw, is six years old..."
    • That would be relevant were the quantity of illegal immigrants in the US, thus contributing to GDP, materially different now than it was when Borjas wrote that report.
    • If one wants more current information, one may read Borjas' text, Immigration Economics
  • "[The report] gives a figure, by their own account an estimate, of $400 Billion.
    • Of course, it's an estimate. You don't think someone's going to obtain every tax return, bank statement, purchase receipt, etc. from every immigrant so that the specific contribution each of them can be measured directly, and, in turn aggregated, rather than estimated using a statistically sound methodology, do you?
    • The report discusses direct measurement of the impacts. The studies that did so (see the references noted at the end of the report) didn't measure the whole effing population of immigrants.
  • That's all fine and dandy, but that study doesn't mention any of the costs to our government, to the taxpayers or to individual citizens. (except insofar as illegal aliens take jobs away from citizens)
    • Were one to have read Immigration Economics, one'd find that the noted costs, as well as the gains, thus the net impact, is included in the modeling used to arrive at the conclusions found in the report linked-to in the OP.
  • If one accepts the President's numbers, illegal drugs cost our country $500 Billion. This figure, alone, negates any economic contribution we might get from illegal aliens. So...if we were to spend, say, $25 Billion on border security...which would build a wall AND increase border security across the board...we could get close to saving $75 Billion ($100B - $25B). If we then used that savings to increase border security even more, we would save the American citizen...and taxpayer...even more.
    • One cannot attribute the costs of illegal drugs wholly to illegal immigrants, or to immigrants in general.
    • Even if the $500B were attributable to illegal immigrants, that still leaves one to justify, among other things, spending $25B + ongoing maintenance to attenuate a phenomenon that's without spending anything more than than we have been has been dramatically and continuously trending downward, per Trump by some 75%+, without our spending $25B+ to reduce it.
    • As noted in the DEA linked-to study, no wall is going to impeded the importation of the vast majority of illegal drugs because they enter at ports of entry rather than between them. Thus the only share of the alleged $500B (if that figure even be accurate)
As noted in the OP, the burden Trump, Trumpkins and other wall supporters is not that of refuting any single fact/phenomenon noted in the OP, but to reconcile the impact of all of them -- because all of them are "in play" regarding the wall's erection and ongoing maintenance.


Red:
Yes, that's something that's yet to happen, and that needs to happen.

That notwithstanding, that factor disregards the substantive points the other member broached. A debate is discourse that directly addresses topically germane points, not discourse consisting of parties simply throwing disparate points at one another.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
If the addition of "undocumented" foreign nationals with HS or less education who cannot speak, read or write English and will work for very low pay in unsafe/unsanitary conditions is a net benefit to society then why do we spend so much on education and "safety net" programs? We could easily create our own underclass (for the alleged economic benefit?) and let them work and live without benefit "safety net" programs or the ability to report labor law violations.
Click to expand...

Because it's population growth that drives the benefit (among other things).
Your alternative doesn't grow the population.
 
Mycroft said:
sigh...

How easily you forget. You give truth to my sig.

We've been through this "appropriation process" before. Back then, Chuck was actually willing to give Trump $25 Billion in exchange for Dreamer relief...until his own Dems slapped him upside the head.

Now, Chuck just says no.
Click to expand...

And there were four bills up for floor vote in the Senate at that time. The only one Trump supported was DACA, Millers draconian Legal Immigration Policy for $25B in border security over a 10 year period. That bill attracted only 39 yes votes, the fewest of the four offered in a GOP majority Senate. It got 60 Nays, the only one of the four to hit that mark. The only DACA for $25B in border security bill offered as a straight up trade got the most Yea votes, 54 before Donald stepped in, called in some chits and got enough remaining GOP against to kill it. It was not Dems that killed that Bill, it was Trump that killed it!
 
Xelor said:
FWIW, the rebuttal to the lines to which your above post is a reply:

  • "Trump is trying to get out of Congress isn't solely for building a wall. It will also be spent on other items important to border security, such as more agents, more detection equipment, more immigration courts, etc."
    • This point is ingermane to OP; however:
      • Congress passed legislation that provided funding for border security measures besides the wall. The wall is the only border security measure Congress, including the GOP-controlled 115th Congress, has been unwilling to fund.
        • H.R. 695 -- The pre "Ann Coulter" version included $1.6B in border security funding. The post "Ann Coulter" version included $5.7B in wall funding. Trump refused to sign the former version, and McConnell refused to bring the latter to the Senate floor, mainly because he'd gotten the former passed unanimously and Trump refused to sign it, whereafter McConnell declared that he wouldn't bring any funding measures to the Senate floor until he knew precisely what Trump wanted. Subsequently, several Trump Admin. and legislators, including the VPOTUS and the "Trump Whisperer," have proposed ideas that Trump has rejected.
Click to expand...


        • However the key point is that Trump is trying to bootstrap his Wall to a CR when it needs to go through an Appropriations process. I have not actually investigated the other elements of border security in that CR as once you are trying to subvert the Appropriations process by bootstrapping one element to a CR, I care not about what else is there and won't care about it until Trump and the GOP stops trying to subvert the Appropriations process for his Wall. I am most incensed by Trump in this latest edition of this nonsense attempting to subvert the Appropriations process AND coerce the Congress via Gov Shutdown to get it done. Its still tyranny no matter how you cut it.
 
Mycroft said:
"the Appropriations process"?? What appropriations process? Trump is the President. Appropriations is the responsibility of Congress. They own the "process". Blame Congress for the "appropriations process".

Trump has only one function: Decide if he's going to sign a bill that's given to him or not. He has told Congress he isn't going to sign if they don't give him the money he wants for border security. He told them how much he wants and what he's going to use it for. Chuck and Nancy haven't looked at any of that. They've only said no.


shrug...

Perhaps Congress should do their job an appropriate money, eh?
Click to expand...

So you don't think an Administration has any role to play in Appropriations. That is either naive or monumentally ignorant.

The Executive Proposes and the Legislature Disposes. That is particularly true when the Executive has made a particular proposal requiring Appropriations a key part of his campaign and was elected based on the notion that he had any earthly idea what he was talking about, what he wanted and where he wanted it.

The administration never went through or even made an effort to go through Appropriations for this stupid wall, never even provided Ryan and House Bill Floor Managers with anything that would allow them to make a case for it which is why Ryan slipped the July 2018 House Bill that included new Wall funding out of the voting schedule. He had no reason to believe it would pass and nothing from the Administration to help him move it through Appropriations.

So another of your "shrugs" proves meaningless. In fact I have grown used to the idea that when certain posters offer "shrug" in a post its a sure sign that they don't have an argument to make.
 
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jnug said:
However the key point is that Trump is trying to bootstrap his Wall to a CR when it needs to go through an Appropriations process. I have not actually investigated the other elements of border security in that CR as once you are trying to subvert the Appropriations process by bootstrapping one element to a CR, I care not about what else is there and won't care about it until Trump and the GOP stops trying to subvert the Appropriations process for his Wall. I am most incensed by Trump in this latest edition of this nonsense attempting to subvert the Appropriations process AND coerce the Congress via Gov Shutdown to get it done. Its still tyranny no matter how you cut it.
Click to expand...

Red:
That may be the "key point" of some other thread. It's not at all, or even near so, the key point of this one.
 
Xelor said:
Red:
That may be the "key point" of some other thread. It's not at all, or even near so, the key point of this one.
Click to expand...

It was the key point in arguing the contention of post #9 which was entirely irrelevant in trying to make the case that since there were other border security elements that Trump was trying to advance, we should accept his Wall!

I recognize the point you are trying to make. However when a poster tries to justify tyranny, and uses a nebulous to irrelevant post to do it, I have no choice but to respond.
 
Off-Topic:

jnug said:
It was the key point in arguing the contention of post #9 which was entirely irrelevant in trying to make the case that since there were other border security elements that Trump was trying to advance, we should accept his Wall!

I recognize the point you are trying to make. However when a poster tries to justify tyranny, and uses a nebulous to irrelevant post to do it, I have no choice but to respond.
Click to expand...

Red:
I'd ask that if someone attempts to do so in one of my threads, just ignore his/her remarks, unless, of course, the topic is tyranny of some stripe. By responding to them, one dignifies them and makes them, in the mind of the poster, something that warrants others' notice, thus they'll keep posting BS and off-topic comments of a similar sort.

Trust me...I've been in enough meetings where someone introduces an ingermane idea. I and the other meeting participants simply look at them, look around the table and then move on with the discussion without ever responding to the off-topic comment. The only ideas that get indulged are those that are truly relevant; they don't have to be brilliant, just relevant was enough. Why? Because nobody has time for or interest in bantering down the proverbial "rabbit hole." If and when, in a different meeting/conversation, the formerly irrelevant idea is apropos, hopefully the person will raise it again. (I sometimes would prod the person, if they found themselves in a new discussion wherein their formerly irrelevant idea is "now" relevant to the new topic, to reintroduce the idea they untimely shared and that wasn't pertinent to the topic of that discussion. That's how I'd handle relevant ideas presented in the wrong settings/time frames.)

One, we, cannot stop folks from posting "BS," but we don't have to respond to and/or indulge it.
​
 
Xelor said:
Red:





  • Contributions to GDP, as calculated in Borjas' book that the linked content summarizes, are net sums.
  • From that same source, the allocation of the GDP net increase is apportioned between:
    • the immigrant workers themselves in the form of wages and benefits associated with their employment
      • No shock this. This is what happens for everyone who earns a wage.
    • immigration surplus, i.e., private sector business profit, returns to capital
  • Accordingly, the US as a whole, immigrant workers and business realize a net gain as a result of immigrants.
  • Borjas distinguishes the returns to natives from those to immigrants; however, he disregards the fact that the vast majority of immigrants sell labor at rates for which refuse to sell labor. That is natives' choice, but it doesn't alter the fact that the price at which the labor is sold is the price buyers of that labor are willing to pay.
    • One cannot force a buyer to pay more for anything than the buyer is willing to pay. One can force a buyer to purchase goods/services from suppliers who sell at lower prices than one does. Buyers that are firms also can and do choose to shift from buying one type of production resource(s) to another. That shift can be from labor to capital or from one type of labor to another. Firm buyers can also choose to exist the market in which they can no longer obtain, at a sufficiently profitable rate, a given supplied resource, in this case labor.
Borjas uses the fact of the apportionment to denigrate and qualitatively/normatively, rhetorically discount the contribution immigrants/immigration plays in the US economy; however, the fact remains that the US economy is boosted by 11 percent as a result of immigrants/immigration.

Thus were one to assume that all immigration/immigrants' net contribution to the US economy removed "overnight," the US economy would suffer an 11% drop. By how much has GDP grown? Nothing even near to 11%, yet wall advocates would spend $25 billion to build a wall, even though their doing so would decrease the very economy they aim to enhance by doing so. Last I checked, it's financially imprudent to spend any sum of money if doing so is going to effect an enduring net loss. Simply put, rational folks spend $25 billion on "X," the wall, if doing so effects the loss of $35B, $400B or $1.6T that one would have earned had one simply not spent the $25 on "X."


All the above notwithstanding, the central fact -- that immigration/immigrants increase GDP by $1.6T -- remains so, no matter the classification of the recipients of that GDP increase. Remove from the economy the parties who produce that $1.6T increase and GDP is correspondingly lowered.


Blue:
The so-called wage losses are permanent on an individual level; however, in terms of the US economy, they aren't losses. The money in question resides in firms' balance sheets/income statements. Accordingly, and insofar as the very same folks who most ardently supported the corporate tax cut using supply-side lines of argument also are the wall's most ardent supporters, those individuals cannot gripe about a happenstance, immigration, that contributes to firms' bottom lines more so than would abating that same happenstance.
Click to expand...

If most of that is simply their own wages and they in turn drive down already existing wages with a cumulative effect, no less, where is the inherent benefit to anyone? Should employers and businesses benefit from government not doing its job at the expense of American workers?

As for your comment from red, don't be asinine.
 
OpportunityCost said:
If most of that is simply their own wages and they in turn drive down already existing wages with a cumulative effect, no less, where is the inherent benefit to anyone? Should employers and businesses benefit from government not doing its job at the expense of American workers?

As for your comment from red, don't be asinine.
Click to expand...
Pink:
I addressed that in the post to which you've above replied, as did Borjas in the document I referenced and that you presumably read.


Tan:
What aspect of the government's job are you intimating it's not done?


Blue:
Do you or do you not have a coherent rebuttal to those comments, each of which is consistent with (an application of) the standard textbook model to which Borjas referred?
 
Xelor said:
Pink:
I addressed that in the post to which you've above replied, as did Borjas in the document I referenced and that you presumably read.


Tan:
What aspect of the government's job are you intimating it's not done?


Blue:
Do you or do you not have a coherent rebuttal to those comments, each of which is consistent with (an application of) the standard textbook model to which Borjas referred?
Click to expand...

As Borjas himself noted the primary benefit is to illegals themselves.

Border security.

I must have a coherent rebuttal, you are dancing around my comments like a game of dodgeball.
 
OpportunityCost said:
As Borjas himself noted the primary benefit is to illegals themselves.

Border security.

I must have a coherent rebuttal, you are dancing around my comments like a game of dodgeball.
Click to expand...

Red:
As goes cash receipts at an individual level, yes. As goes the national benefit, GDP net increase, the returns accrue to those from whom the immigrants purchase goods and services. As goes the economy, it matters not whether immigrants (illegal or not) purchase the goods/services or whether natives do.

You seem focused on "specific" individuals. I'm focused on the national economy. Why? Because immigration, building the wall is something that must be purchased collectively, not by specific individuals.


Blue:
You just keep thinking that....It's not my problem that you don't realize that I've directly responded to the specific elements of your post 6.

Hell, I don't really know why you don't realize GDP is itself a net figure, thus any phenomenon that provides a contribution to it (as opposed to a reduction to it) must necessarily be a sum that itself is a net figure. Even as I don't know why you think that, I can see damn well that's the nature of the calculations implicit in your post 6 comments.


Lastly, although you've posted remarks that align with no form of accounting for gains and losses accruing from the summation of immigrants' presence in the US, your remarks about that one factor doesn't at all make for a reconciliation, as requested in the OP, of the totality of the five factors, nor does it reconcile them individually against the $25B + ongoing maintenance.

For example:
Individual level reconciliation pertaining to point C in the OP:​

  • How do you reconcile (economically/financially) bidding the country to spend $25B + ongoing maintenance for a southern border wall intended to reduce the rate of illegal immigration when, by Trump's own assertion, in but six months after his inauguration, that rate fell by 78% as a result of spending nothing beyond what the 114th Congress had appropriated for border security, a sum less than the entirety of CPB's budget of $13.9B?
    • What is the annualized decremental rate of illegal immigration you expect to realize? What's the methodology for your determination of that rate?
    • Over what term of years will that decrement be realized?
    • What is the net gain or net loss to the US economy and that results from that rate decrement?
    • At what point does the cost of maintaining the wall outweigh the returns from doing so?
    • There're other components of the analysis for "point C," but those are some with which one can start.
Individual level reconciliation pertaining to point E in the OP (Here, I've only noted the high level reconciliation question; readers can deduce the detailed ones on their own):​


  • [*=1]How do you reconcile (economically/financially) bidding the country to spend $25B + ongoing maintenance for a southern border wall intended to reduce the rate of illegal immigration when, by the Trump Administration's own analysis, the preponderance of illegal immigrants entering the US do so by walking through a port of entry, not by secreting across the southern border at points between ports of entry, and overstaying their visa?
The above are but some of the questions that one must answer to reconcile, or put another way, to present a strong "business" case for building the wall. AFAIK, nobody who supports erecting the wall has presented any sort of case for the wall. All any of them, any of you, have done is bitch about immigrants and assert that we need to stop/reduce their flow into the US.

Now, I don't personally give a damn about immigrants or their presence in the US, and in principle, I'm fine with impeding the flow of illegal immigrants into the US. I'm not, however, willing to assent to spending $25B+ to do so, on a wall or anything else, without first being presented with a solid "business" case for the respective uses of that money. I'm damn sure not keen to spend $25B+ of the country's money to reduce the size of the nation's economy because immigrant or native, the money is still in the US' "coffers" rather than some other nation's. That matters to me more than whether any specific dollar is in my pocket, yours or another person's who's in the US.

So don't sit there speciously attesting to what you think I'm "dancing around," when the fact of the matter is you've not even addressed the basic question posed in the OP.
 
Off-Topic:
jnug said:
Good, let Donald's administration make an actual formal proposal to Congress for what he wants Appropriations for instead of shoving them across a WH table at Hill Leadership or trying to bootstrap them to a CR all against the backdrop of a Shutdown that Trump owns. Coercion and subversion of process are not governance. They are Tyranny.
Click to expand...

Red:
Trump's Administration, specifically DHS, did do that (See also CBP budget justification); however, AFAIK, there's no publicly available "business case" justifying non-incremental increases and/or deltas from the prior year's budget request for CBP. There is some rationale included to explain how DHS/CBP arrived at the various pecuniary sums requested, but not a case showing, as a business principal would do and as his/her superiors would demand, the merits (projected returns over projected costs and the methodology for arriving at them) of new initiatives.

Pursuant to that budget request, regardless of whether DHS/CBP submitted a classified detailed "business case," the 115th Congress appropriated $!.6B in border security funding, and then the House subsequently amended the bill and "appropriated for ‘U.S. Customs and Border Protection—Procurement, Construction, and Improvements’ $5,710,357,000 for fiscal year 2019, to remain available until September 30, 2023;" however, the thus altered bill never made it out of reconciliation, mainly because McConnell wasn't willing to allow the Senate to vote on it. The 115th Congress ended and the bill thus "died on the vine."

That bill sloughed around and through Congress for two friggin' years, and even having majorities in both chambers, Trump/Congressional Republicans couldn't get it passed and onto Trump's desk.​
 
Xelor said:
Red:
As goes cash receipts at an individual level, yes. As goes the national benefit, GDP net increase, the returns accrue to those from whom the immigrants purchase goods and services. As goes the economy, it matters not whether immigrants (illegal or not) purchase the goods/services or whether natives do.

You seem focused on "specific" individuals. I'm focused on the national economy. Why? Because immigration, building the wall is something that must be purchased collectively, not by specific individuals.


Blue:
You just keep thinking that....It's not my problem that you don't realize that I've directly responded to the specific elements of your post 6.

Hell, I don't really know why you don't realize GDP is itself a net figure, thus any phenomenon that provides a contribution to it (as opposed to a reduction to it) must necessarily be a sum that itself is a net figure. Even as I don't know why you think that, I can see damn well that's the nature of the calculations implicit in your post 6 comments.


Lastly, although you've posted remarks that align with no form of accounting for gains and losses accruing from the summation of immigrants' presence in the US, your remarks about that one factor doesn't at all make for a reconciliation, as requested in the OP, of the totality of the five factors, nor does it reconcile them individually against the $25B + ongoing maintenance.

For example:
Individual level reconciliation pertaining to point C in the OP:​

  • How do you reconcile (economically/financially) bidding the country to spend $25B + ongoing maintenance for a southern border wall intended to reduce the rate of illegal immigration when, by Trump's own assertion, in but six months after his inauguration, that rate fell by 78% as a result of spending nothing beyond what the 114th Congress had appropriated for border security, a sum less than the entirety of CPB's budget of $13.9B?
    • What is the annualized decremental rate of illegal immigration you expect to realize? What's the methodology for your determination of that rate?
    • Over what term of years will that decrement be realized?
    • What is the net gain or net loss to the US economy and that results from that rate decrement?
    • At what point does the cost of maintaining the wall outweigh the returns from doing so?
    • There're other components of the analysis for "point C," but those are some with which one can start.
Individual level reconciliation pertaining to point E in the OP (Here, I've only noted the high level reconciliation question; readers can deduce the detailed ones on their own):​


  • [*=1]How do you reconcile (economically/financially) bidding the country to spend $25B + ongoing maintenance for a southern border wall intended to reduce the rate of illegal immigration when, by the Trump Administration's own analysis, the preponderance of illegal immigrants entering the US do so by walking through a port of entry, not by secreting across the southern border at points between ports of entry, and overstaying their visa?
The above are but some of the questions that one must answer to reconcile, or put another way, to present a strong "business" case for building the wall. AFAIK, nobody who supports erecting the wall has presented any sort of case for the wall. All any of them, any of you, have done is bitch about immigrants and assert that we need to stop/reduce their flow into the US.

Now, I don't personally give a damn about immigrants or their presence in the US, and in principle, I'm fine with impeding the flow of illegal immigrants into the US. I'm not, however, willing to assent to spending $25B+ to do so, on a wall or anything else, without first being presented with a solid "business" case for the respective uses of that money. I'm damn sure not keen to spend $25B+ of the country's money to reduce the size of the nation's economy because immigrant or native, the money is still in the US' "coffers" rather than some other nation's. That matters to me more than whether any specific dollar is in my pocket, yours or another person's who's in the US.

So don't sit there speciously attesting to what you think I'm "dancing around," when the fact of the matter is you've not even addressed the basic question posed in the OP.
Click to expand...

I am not reading all that bull**** in response to 3 very short lines. Learn how to be succinct, just because its long and wordy, its not going to make you correct.
 
OpportunityCost said:
I am not reading all that bull**** in response to 3 very short lines. Learn how to be succinct, just because its long and wordy, its not going to make you correct.
Click to expand...

You don't need to tell me that you won't read a post of mine; simply not replying will do. That's adequately succinct. On the other hand, if telling succors your psyche, well, then I guess you need to share that "pearl." C'est la vie.
 
Xelor said:
You don't need to tell me that you won't read a post of mine; simply not replying will do. That's adequately succinct. On the other hand, if telling succors your psyche, well, then I guess you need to share that "pearl." C'est la vie.
Click to expand...

Still not addressing the downward wage pressure or how the overall wages from the immigrants results in lower wages more so than legal immigration would. Then there are the government benefit and costs, education, healthcare on and on.

But hey, make it as wordy as you possibly can, keep trying to prove you are the smartest guy in the room, no one will ever accuse you of being the wisest...
 
AliHajiSheik said:
When it your term paper due? I want to give a worthy response and need more time.
Click to expand...


Probably when the day comes you have an major life changing epiphany and realize being a smart ass doesn't help your argument.
 
OpportunityCost said:
Still not addressing the downward wage pressure or how the overall wages from the immigrants results in lower wages more so than legal immigration would. Then there are the government benefit and costs, education, healthcare on and on.

But hey, make it as wordy as you possibly can, keep trying to prove you are the smartest guy in the room, no one will ever accuse you of being the wisest...
Click to expand...


Isn't being snarky so much fun?
 
Xelor said:
Given the combined implications and existentiality of following:

A. Customs and Border Patrol Budgets:​

  • [*=1]Materials:

    • [*=1]$8.7 billion in concrete (97 percent of the materials)
      [*=1]$3.6 billion in steel (3 percent of the materials)
    [*=1]Labor:

    • [*=1]$12.3 billion
    [*=1]Land Acquisition:

    • [*=1]$200 million
C. Trump assertion:
​

  • [*=1]"You know, the border is down 78 percent. Under past administrations, the border didn’t go down, it went up. But if it went down 1 percent, it was like this was a great thing. Down 78 percent....In fact, the southern border of Mexico, we did them a big favor -- believe me. They get very little traffic in there anymore, because they know they're not going to get through the border to the United States."
    -- Donald Trump, July 28, 2017 (Transcript)

  • [*=1]Legal immigrants/immigration --> ~$1.2 trillion
    [*=1]Illegal immigrants/immigration --> ~$0.4 trillion ($400 billion)
E. Behaviors, per Trump Admin. DHS, accounting for new illegal immigrants' presence in the US:​
F. Terrorists are not entering the US via the southern border:
G. Illegal drugs mostly enter the US at official ports of entry, not via unbarriered sections of the southern border.
H. Human trafficking does not avail itself of southern border porosity between ports of entry.

Please, if you believe the US should spend taxpayer money to build a wall on the southern border, provide a sound/cogent case illustrating the preponderance of pecuniary benefits over pecuniary costs of doing so.
Click to expand...



Why exclude other factors, why limit it to pecuniary benefits ? There are other important dynamics to consider.
 
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OscarLevant said:
Why exclude other factors, why limit it to pecuniary benefits ? There are other important dynamics to consider.
Click to expand...

Because this is an Internet discussion forum and the five key factors for which I've requested wall-supporters to reconcile are the easiest ones to reconcile because they are the most easily quantified discriminants. As you've likely noticed, no wall supporter has even done that.
 
Xelor said:
Given the combined implications and existentiality of following:

A. Customs and Border Patrol Budgets:​

  • [*=1]Materials:

    • [*=1]$8.7 billion in concrete (97 percent of the materials)
      [*=1]$3.6 billion in steel (3 percent of the materials)
    [*=1]Labor:

    • [*=1]$12.3 billion
    [*=1]Land Acquisition:

    • [*=1]$200 million
C. Trump assertion:
​

  • [*=1]"You know, the border is down 78 percent. Under past administrations, the border didn’t go down, it went up. But if it went down 1 percent, it was like this was a great thing. Down 78 percent....In fact, the southern border of Mexico, we did them a big favor -- believe me. They get very little traffic in there anymore, because they know they're not going to get through the border to the United States."
    -- Donald Trump, July 28, 2017 (Transcript)

  • [*=1]Legal immigrants/immigration --> ~$1.2 trillion
    [*=1]Illegal immigrants/immigration --> ~$0.4 trillion ($400 billion)
E. Behaviors, per Trump Admin. DHS, accounting for new illegal immigrants' presence in the US:​
F. Terrorists are not entering the US via the southern border:
G. Illegal drugs mostly enter the US at official ports of entry, not via unbarriered sections of the southern border.
H. Human trafficking does not avail itself of southern border porosity between ports of entry.

Please, if you believe the US should spend taxpayer money to build a wall on the southern border, provide a sound/cogent case illustrating the preponderance of pecuniary benefits over pecuniary costs of doing so.
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Great post

This has been my argument all along. Trump has had 2-years to authorize a study on the Walls effectiveness, and nothing! Not one damn study to determine if the wall will do as he says and its cost effectiveness. Everytime I suggest a study be authorized Trump supporters scream its a delay tactic. Seems like the party of financial restraint does not want due diligence on that 5 billion, why ?
 
Xelor said:
For some reason in quoting the OP, "Given" has become "given," and "Please" has become "please."
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He wrote in all caps. If too much of a post is in caps, the software replaces all capital letters with lower case.
 
yankintx said:
Great post

This has been my argument all along. Trump has had 2-years to authorize a study on the Walls effectiveness, and nothing! Not one damn study to determine if the wall will do as he says and its cost effectiveness. Everytime I suggest a study be authorized Trump supporters scream its a delay tactic. Seems like the party of financial restraint does not want due diligence on that 5 billion, why ?
Click to expand...

Red:
Let me be clear: the OP is not an argument of any sort. It is an exhortation and an opportunity.

The opening post presentes a set of facts/observations, and it bids wall supporters to present a coherent case, one that accounts for the noted facts/observations, for building Trump's wall. The facts/observations presented are merely the main ones that must be addressed in a sound "business case" that ends with the conclusion "therefore it is to our advantage to build the wall on the southern border."

I've merely put the observations/facts in one place, my OP. Because "build the wall" is one of the positive assertions of the illegal immigration debate, the burden of proof to show the net merits (expressly quantitative ones and qualitative merits that one, using some sound methodology, converts to quantitative merit so the two can be aggregated) rests on they who would build it as opposed to on those who'd continue to use extant means and methods to manage illegal immigration. That should come as no surprise:
  • He who wants to undertake an initiative is the person who must make the case for doing it.
  • He who wants to stay the current course, a tack which necessarily has already shown its merits and demerits, is the person whom the initiative proposer must convince by showing the initiative rationally augurs to provide greater returns than doing nothing other than what has been going on.
As my former staff can attest, I'm very convincible, but only by a rigorous/empirical case. Why? Because once I approved an initiative, I was going to measure its performance (during development and after implementation) against the case I was shown. Even as the managing partner in my firm, I too was subject to the requirement for there being a rigorous case for initiatives I felt we should pursue.

Sometimes there was a positive case for my ideas and sometimes there wasn't, and when there wasn't, even though I could have simply ordered that we undertake it anyway, I didn't do that because the case for doing it didn't exist. When there wasn't a sound positive case for my idea and there was one for an alternative approach/idea, we pursued the alternative. It wasn't a matter of who was "right or wrong;" it was a matter of our choosing the better of the ideas/initiatives we had identified and that were available to us.

I see no reason why the decision making process for building the wall should be differently handled/considered than as I've described above. Accordingly, my OP essentially, to wall supporters, says, "Okay, you want to build a wall. Show me a sound case for doing so, and, in developing/presenting it, here are some existential elements you'll need to be sure that your case overcomes."

Observations about some posts prior to yours:
Now that doesn't mean that the way to overcome those factors is to try telling me that what I know to be existential isn't. Yet that's exactly the approach one or two members (I forget which) have tried. Lord only knows why they pursued that tack, but why matters not to me. I already know it is and I know what makes it be so. Accordingly, while I'd forbear, welcome even, their positing a rational (not summary or jejune) adjustment of the magnitude of the verisimility using the methodology by which it was determined (see also: "Does Immigration Grease the Wheels of the Labor Market?," "The Economics of Immigration,". and Immigration Economics), I'm only going to but so much indulge their puerile/summary declaration of nonexistence. (At this point in the thread, they've already exhausted my forbearance....at some point one has to simply acknowledge that the person with whom one is interacting lacks the preparation needed for the matter under discussion. That is what it is, but I'm not going to magisterially spend my time continuing to engage with him/her.)

So my OP, then, also tacitly indicates that though I have done a good deal of "homework" on the matter and thus understand a lot about the economics of immigration, if one who is equally well informed has a different presentation/analysis of extant findings such that one's presentation overcomes extant ones, I'm willing to consider one's ideas. If, however, one hasn't any such case/presentation to offer, I'm not interested in what one has to say.
 
spud_meister said:
He wrote in all caps. If too much of a post is in caps, the software replaces all capital letters with lower case.
Click to expand...

TY. I didn't know the software would do that. TY for the explanation.
 
yankintx said:
Great post

This has been my argument all along. Trump has had 2-years to authorize a study on the Walls effectiveness, and nothing! Not one damn study to determine if the wall will do as he says and its cost effectiveness. Everytime I suggest a study be authorized Trump supporters scream its a delay tactic. Seems like the party of financial restraint does not want due diligence on that 5 billion, why ?
Click to expand...

Thank you.

Red:
True that. And of all the organizations one'd expect to have developed such a case, the friggin' government is THE one, if no other, from whom we citizens, taxpayers should be able to obtain such a justification for the use of our goddamned tax dollars. Not even the CBO, AFAIK, has been by the GOP Congress asked to produce such an analysis.


Blue:
That's just their BS because they don't have such analysis, aren't going to produce it themselves (not surprising), and, I suspect, know damn well that it should have been provided given the sum involved and nature of the divergence from extant policy.


Pink:
It does seem that way....It does because they don't. What they want to do is appease, pander to emotions, not to reason.
 
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