Isn’t it weird that if walls are a good idea, literally no country for 2000ish years has ever walled their whole border?
That sort of sends up a red flag to me.
Trump says the wall will cost 8 billion.
The GAO’s actual accounting for the cost to build the existing fence is about 2.9 million a mile. The 670 miles of existing fence are in areas serviced by roads. The un-serviced outliers trump wants to wall could cost as much as 5 times that a mile. For fencing.
Now, as an east coast contractor, thriving in private industry and all, maybe Donald feels that underbidding and running over is SOP but I think just on the numbers, the wall stinks like boondoggle.
the washington post talked to an estimator who put it at more like 25 billion to build, not counting the cost to design, to acquire or condemn private land (which any real conservative would be fighting), and then surveil, maintain, arm and staff it upon completion.
Here, an engineer goes into detail about the practicalities of walling the border:
http://www.nationalmemo.com/an-engineer-explains-why-trumps-wall-is-so-implausible/
Trump himself compared it favorably to the Great Wall, seemingly ignorant of the schoolboy history that the great wall took 4 centuries of slave labor in a monarchy with near total taxation.
It was literally more practical for the Chinese to wait for the mongol empire to crumble on its own than to count on a complete great wall, which ultimately failed totally at its purpose of protecting china’s western border, *in a time before airplanes, explosives, and heavy equipment*
This issue – this conversation – is actually 100 percent not about civil engineering or economics for trump and his supporters. It is nothing more or less than a method of signalling virtue and searching for it in others:
“Will you believe dumb things even if impractical?”
“Yes, I will!”
“Great, take a pamphlet. Follow me on twitter”