An Economics-Trained Marketing Researcher's Musings on Issues of the Day

Research and analysis skills come in many forms, including purely qualitative applications, purely quantitative ones, and many mixed projects that employ both skills.  Once developed, a researcher with these skills sometimes can't avoid drawing upon them in other aspects of daily life - at least I can't.

Just for fun, this blog will demonstrate analytical thinking to practical matters and public policy issues of the day - well outside the marketing realm of my client work.  Being manifestations of nothing other than my own reflections and observations, and being wholly in the public sphere, these musings are free of confidentiality restrictions. Thus, they're open for sharing - please pitch in and join the conversation.  Here's the first one:


Missing Key in the Mexico - USA Immigration Debate

How is it that an indispensable and inescably essential element of the Immigration Debate is overlooked in the popular conversations and debates?  

The scene is Mexico and the ignored fact of life - a pearl of wisdom - is that there is such a thing as taxes that are too low.  During a one-week vacation visit to Mexico (an internal town: San Miguel de Allende) a couple of years ago, I noticed a few curious things:

• Real estate taxes (such as they are) are low and/or can be fairly safely ignored
• Public facilities, e.g., elementary schools and libraries, not endowed by much public funding may (if lucky) be beneficiaries of voluntary donations and fund raising events that enable an occasional, modest program or expansion
• Street maintenance operates at a basic level 

...all of which led me to conclude that in Mexico taxes are TOO LOW! 

Compared to Canada and the USA, the corporate and personal rates and the tax take as a % of GDP there are all much lower in Mexico than both Canada and USA.  (Check it out.)  Now, how does that relate to Mexican immigration into the USA?

Well, with low taxes - too low - the public sector is starved for funds, leading to poorer (public) schools, a weaker public sector with fewer (good) jobs and those it does offer pay less and provide advancement opportunities for relatively few people.  The result?  A lean middle class amid a slow growth economic environment leading, naturally, to outward immigration to any nearby region (that would be the USA) where good jobs are abundant (prior to 2009, that is) and pay much better, all of which accompanies a higher standard of living.  A beacon that beckons!

So, yep, it's true - there is such a thing as taxes that are too low.  Until that is fixed in Mexico, so that its public sector rises along with it, I'm saying that the Mexico/USA immigration problem will remain.  But why is this inconvenient item not even discussed in the immigration discussions and debates that we have?