Tear Down That Wall! (Part 1)

America has an immigration crisis, but it has precious little to do with “open borders” and Fox News’ nightly cavalcade of alleged “illegals” flooding across the Rio Grande. And it won’t be resolved by Joe Biden’s pathetic admonition to immigrants, either:

Do not just show up at the border.

Actually, what America really needs is for a lot more people to “show up” at factories, shops, warehouses and other places of work to relieve the supply-side labor drought that is grinding the US economy to a halt.

In fact, the chart below is far more informative than a posse of GOP operatives like Governor Abbott braying at the border-crossers or Fox journalists equipped with night vision tracking illegals through the bush in the pitch darkness.

In a word, the prime age civilian labor force (age 25-54 years) stopped growing 15 years ago when it peaked at 104.7 million. By contrast, that same metric doubled from 50.7 million to 104.7 million between 1970 and 2007.

The fact is, upwards of 50% of US GDP growth has been accounted for by increased labor hours, with the balance consisting of productivity gains. So when the growth rate of the prime age labor force crashes from 2.00% per annum during 1970 to 2007 to just 0.01% per annum since then, you don’t need a PhD in economics to figure out the implications.