Replies

<< American jobs are crossing that river into Mexico and setting up shop in factories along the Mexican side of the border. >>

Cowplop!.

Sorry, Bubbah but you lost me right there.

How are the jobs leaving? By rail, maybe? Or by the shipload and backloading 747s like the ones flying off to "china" and sailing away to India?

<< With the figures given, that would be $1,000 per truck per crossing. Set the Transit Security Fee at 25% initially, or $250, with the possibility of raising it if the twin problems continue to get worse. The Fee would be recalculated annually with respect to all foreign nations. What would be the logical results of this? >>

Be a totalitarian and make every one a criminal until he proves otherwise, you mean!.

And impose yet another direct tax on the Americans who would thus be forced by your taxes to pay more for the goods we buy.

A tax surely and certainly, like every other totalitarian's tariff/tax, to cost the jobs of the millions of Americans otherwise freed to do other than the tedious factory jobs their fathers and grandfathers graduated into.

From picking lettuce.

Just close the bloody borders, as we have proven with the USSR and North Korea and every other tyrant state we have ever opposed that we have the unmatched competency to do -- and begin the deportations!

Best ones -- Brian

Nothing I am talking about makes anyone "a criminal." Taxes and fees are all civil matters, not criminal ones. And nothing that I suggest would directly cause anyone not to cross a border. Instead, it is designed to get the Mexicans to start paying attention to what's happening on THEIR side of the border.

One point you make is correct. What I suggest would cause the price of goods in the US to rise. The reason is that more Americans would be employed at American wages to produce goods, rather than America being awash in the cheapest possible goods -- but produced overseas.

Alexander Hamilton, in his seminal work "On Manufacturing" recognized just such a process for the purpose of protecting American businesses and jobs. We cannot continue to have it both ways -- cheap foreign goods without limit, plus protection of American jobs. More of the former necessarily means less of the latter. This is a basic, public policy choice that Congress has, so far, avoided making.

John / Billybob