Freedom for $5.30…and This Time Mexico Really is Paying for It – CounterPunch

Photograph Source: U.S. Customs and Border Protection Public Domain

Back in 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump promised that Mexico would pay for his proposed border wall. Turns out Mexico wasnt interested, so Trump eventually resorted to declaring fake emergencies and illegally misappropriating money from the military budget.

Hes spending tens of millions of taxpayer dollars per mile on a barrier that, Samuel Lovett of the Independent reports, migrants are scaling with $5.30 ladders (when the wind isnt blowing it over for them, making ladders unnecessary).

Yes, based on the price of rebar at a local hardware store on the Mexican side of the wall, $5.30.

What a refreshing lesson! No matter how much money politicians like Trump spend trying to restrain and impoverish the people they stole it from, those seeking freedom and prosperity find ways to win through and to do so for far less.

The wall was always a dumb and evil idea.

Dumb, because it was never going to work. The US has 95,500 miles of border and coastline. If people want to get in, theyre going to get in, even if every member of the armed forces and every sworn law enforcement officer in the country is re-assigned to nothing but securing the border. The only reliable way to keep people out is to turn America into such a crappy place that nobody wants to come here. Which, admittedly, is something our politicians are always hard at work on.

Evil, because even if it DID work the result would be less freedom, a slower economy, and worse lives for everyone on both sides of it. Capital including human capital, aka labor naturally flows to where it can be most profitably invested. If that flow is impeded, were all worse off.

Well, not all of us, I guess. The corrupt politicians doing the impeding, and their crony corporate welfare queens, make bank at the expense of the other 99% of us. Which is as good an explanation as any, and better than most, for Trumps wall fetish.

Those $5.30 rebar ladders are, a huge practical benefit to their direct users. But theyre of double benefit practical and political to the rest of us.

As a practical matter, the immigrants who come over, under, around, or through the wall make our lives better.

As a political matter, the ease with which theyre exposing Trumps multi-billion-dollar boondoggle for what it is makes it less likely that future politicians will waste our money on similar idiocy.

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Freedom for $5.30...and This Time Mexico Really is Paying for It - CounterPunch