The long-term costs of building the wall

Differential cost is the change in cost that results from adoption of an alternative course of action. You already know there are almost always “cost-differentials” between a current problem cost and when the problem is solved. Remind yourself that any advance, whether from reducing the societal cost of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, drug abuse, energy costs or some other human problem, is a savings, often huge. Before and after cost-accounting is not a skill widely shared. Sadly, too many in the media join politicians in thinking of any newly found money as easy money to be spent, not money to pay past promises or fulfill cultural, political, financial and personal goals of future growth.

As one example, the White House estimates that the economic cost of the U.S. opioid crisis is approximately $500 billion dollars annually. It is estimated that 60 percent of that problem enters over the U.S.-Mexico border. Sixty percent would be $300 billion of that problem annually. If a border wall could stop 10 percent of that inflow, about $30 billion, the proposed wall would be paid for in months. If a border wall could reduce the traffic at a rate of only 1 percent annually, about $3 billion, it would pay for a wall in just a few years.

But that’s not all the money. Added to the immediate solved-problem savings would be the huge lifetime value of the more than 70,000 lives saved each year, the extended treatment of addicts and the value of not having long-term tax costs for illegal immigrants also prohibited entry by the wall. The annual savings of each of those problems would be added “cost-differential” savings. All savings beyond the actual wall costs could reduce the national debt.

Whereas many nations in the past have used the fact that they are lines drawn on a map as a protective approach, diplomatic differentials might take a current diplomatic “sovereignty” approach. There has been a shift toward “sovereignty as responsibility.” There is little question that any nation would not permit another to intentionally send killer disease germs into its own, particularly when that weapon killed and damaged the citizens of the targeted nation. The same applies to other bad things (drugs, illegals, slaves, terrorists, criminal gang members, etc.) sent deliberately to a third-party nation or nations. Knowingly sending illegally grown narcotics to harm another nation’s citizens is certainly not protected by a “sovereign” shield. WALTON COOK

Boalsburg, Pa. The writer is a former resident of Aspinwall.