Last July I wrote about the inequity of prize money between women and men who play at Wimbledon. The twist is that women play the best of three sets, while men play best of five. So women champions spend much less time on the courts:

Over the past five years (2001-2005), Wimbledon Men’s Champions - usually Roger Federer - have played 53% more sets (and 66% more games) en route to the championship than the women’s champions during the same period. If the averages hold up for 2006, the Gentlemen’s Champion will have earned $51,376 per set played while the Ladies Champion would take home $75,126 per set played at Wimbledon. There you have it: women earn 46% more than men at Wimbledon.

Yesterday, Wimbledon announced that it will pay equal prize money to men and women. While I support equal pay for men and women, I also support equal play. Women should play best of five sets just as men do. It makes for some of the most exciting, suspenseful tennis matches on the men’s side. And too many women’s tennis matches are lopsided 45 minute affairs - hardly ideal for the TV ratings. Introducing the stamina factor might even out the women’s field.

There is no physiological reason that female tennis players couldn’t pull through a grueling five hour match as some men do. Women run the same marathons that men run, play on the same sized soccer fields, and work the same 40 hour week that men work.

But what if the Wimbledon standard were applied to life? What if equal pay could be earned by someone even though it only required 66% less work? Or put another way, what if women paid the same amount but received 51% more in services or products? Courts would be smaller, hoops wider, bank lines shorter, sandwiches more delicious. The world would certainly be easier (I especially support the new Wimbledon holidays and the longer Wimbledon hot dogs), but would it be fair?

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In the Saturday Op-eds, The Washington Post again called out the Bush administration for falsely claiming that tax cuts pay for themselves. Tax cuts pay for themselves in much the same way that a ten cent coupon pays for a can of soup. Yes, some tax cuts help stimulate the economy, but no study has found that tax cuts are self-funding.

Estimates range, but a sample of three non-partisan studies indicates that income tax cuts do not pay for themselves - not even close. Most studies indicate that tax cuts do increase personal income and consumption, resulting in a very moderate economic stimulus. But this minor boost in economic growth does not replenish government coffers. For every $100 lost to tax cuts, the government only recoups between 10% to 28% due to economic growth. Even former chairman of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors, Gregory Mankiw’s most rosy estimates demonstrate that tax cuts lose 50% of their value.

So tax cuts cost the government money. End of story. Unless you’re the president writing an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal:

It is also a fact that our tax cuts have fueled robust economic growth and record revenues. … The bottom line is tax relief and spending restraint are good for the American worker, good for the American taxpayer, and good for the federal budget. Now is not the time to raise taxes on the American people.

Tax relief has benefited the American worker - as long as you’re talking about the American worker in a household making more than $100,000 per year. According to a study by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, last year’s tax “relief” amounted a whopping $68 to the 125 million households making less than $100,000. Meanwhile the 20 million earning more than $100,000 received an average of $2,861 per household, 42 times more tax relief than those at the bottom of the income scale.

Indeed, now is the time for Democrats to end Bush’s tax cuts for the rich.

And if you have to pour over tax policies in great depth, I would recommend Tim Hecker’s album Harmonies in Ultraviolet (number 14 on Pitchfork’s best of 2006): ambient static and dissonance for blogging in the middle of a rainy night.

*Mankiw: Income Tax Cut measured with dynamic scoring

Sources: Washington Post, Congressional Budget Office, Wikipedia, Tax Policy Center

Throughout history, walls have been built primarily for the purpose of defense (The Great Wall of China), politics (Berlin), religious separation (Northern Ireland), ethnic divide (Cyprus), or some nasty combination of all four (Israel). But rarely are walls built purely to rebuff wage invaders.

Illegal immigration is an economic issue, thus the rules of supply and demand apply. If the demand for illegal workers is cut, wages for illegals will fall, and the supply of immigrants will fall as well. Right now it is a challenge for employers to verify the legal status of some workers (although, our policy of turning a blind eye doesn’t help).

The immigration bill currently in Congress addresses this by adding $1.6 billion for a computerized system to verify the eligibility of applicants for lawful employment. Once this is in place, fines could be increased for employers caught employing illegal immigrants. Voila, demand for illegal immigrants falls and so would the number tempted to cross an open border.

But the immigration bill directs twice as much money to the Department of Homeland Security. DHS is being authorized to spend $3.3 billion on border defense that consists of 370 miles of fencing and 500 miles of vehicle barriers that will only cover 47% of our border with Mexico. Construction of one foot of the fencing alone will cost $568.

Israel has spent billions of dollars on walls, trenches, even a proposed sunken highway. Meanwhile, smugglers between the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza spent just $76 per foot to tunnel underneath. We should count ourselves lucky to only have impoverished day workers trying to cross our border (I discount the terrorism threat - terrorists could more easily cross our 5,500 mile border to the north).

By employing a historically military tactic to a primarily economic issue, we will spend ourselves into a hole.  At least there will plenty of illegal immigrants to help us dig it.

Sources: Sunken road: Cornell University, The Current; U.S. Mexico Border Fence: Congressional Budget Office estimate; Isareai Wall of Separation: Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network; Fourth generation of Berlin Wall: Berlin Wall Online; Smuggling Tunnels: Defense Update; Vinyl Picket Fence: Hoover Fence, Co.

Notes: According to Berlin Wall Online a 3.957 foot wide segment of the Berlin Wall cost 359 East German Marks in 1975. Because this was not a freely traded currency, historical exchange rates are hard to come by. However, as a note of comparison, Berlin Wall Online mentions that a loaf of bread cost 1.04 East German Marks at the time. Thus the store of value in a segment of the wall is equivalent to 345 loaves of bread. In 2006 in the price of a loaf of bread in the U.S. averaged $1.30, so each 4 foot segment of the Berlin Wall was valued at $448.75. It’s not perfect, but you get the idea.