HOW TO BUILD "THE WALL"

Donald Trump has proposed building a wall on our Southern border with Mexico.  There are several problems to be overcome.   The estimated cost of this wall is $150 billion, a sum maybe too small.  At any rate, I doubt that the wall will be built, but , if we are serous, there are several problems to be overcome.  I am no expert at this so there may be more problems than I can think of.

For one thing, contracts used to get the property to build the 700 mi. fence may have to be renegotiated to put a wall in rather than a fence and access of ranchers to water will be even more difficult.  I will use 1,800 mi for the length of the fence for convenience in calculations.

A second problem is the remaining 1200 mi. of the border over which there is not now a fence so contracts will have to be negotiated to obtain the property for building "The Wall," plus there are no doubt difficult problems in putting the wall over the terrain encountered, as there were with the fence.

Then what materials will be used to build "The Wall?"  I've heard steel mentioned.  No doubt the steel industry would like that, but I am sure there are other materials that can be used, presumably at lower cost.  Probably the best material will be reinforced concrete, and, if so, will the wall be poured in place or will prefabricated pre-stressed concrete slabs be used?  In this event, how many factories would have to be involved? And where would they be built (I assume no factory is ready to make these slabs.)?  I suspect that the slabs would be cheaper, but I really don't know.  If the wall is to be poured-in-place, sources of concrete will have to be found reasonably close to the site being poured.  Actually to pour in place, would have the maximum effect on local industries.

Now about the cost.  When taking care of the problems mentioned above, clearly the wall will not be built in one or two years.  Besides that sum of money would be too costly, so let's stretch the building of "The Wall" over 30 years.  That would mean that there would be 1,800mi/30yrs or 60 mi. of wall be built, on average, every year, at a cost of ($150billion/30yrs)/$150 billion or $5 billion per year.  Though $5 billion/yr is a large sum, it should be able to fit easily into the Federal budget.  Oh, that's right, the Mexican government is to pay for it.  Well lots of luck with that.

Just think of the boon to employment for relatively high paying construction jobs.  Lots of new labor would be needed because the construction industry is near maximum employment so the program would decrease the unemployment figures.  To get maximum benefit from this jobs program, pretty much the same crews would have to be used for the 30 yrs to have maximum effect on the education of their children.*  Shorter periods of time would just lead to boom and bust periods of work for the workers and have no lasting effect. Also a problem would be the need for transient workers moving every two or three years.

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2015/08/increasing-workers-wages.html