The reason for the first is that the US has a much, much better environment for conducting business, compared to Mexico. This is on many levels, starting with education, continuing along to infrastructure, but also things like “low levels of official corruption” and “effective and consistent application of the rule of law,” especially least where business is concerned. For all our troubles (you needn’t raise them, I know) chances are that no one you know will ever be stopped by a cop claiming you were speeding and asking for a bribe; this would be business as usual and fairly unremarkable in Mexico.

It would be good if Mexico could improve and avoid these problems. Until it does so, trapping the Mexican laborer in Mexico to earn his wage, when he could go elsewhere, is like making a farmer farm in the desert.

It is not a natural-resource ownership allocation problem like you allude to with Norway.

> It is not a natural-resource ownership allocation problem like you allude to with Norway.

This is false in the general sense but also you can just ignore the natural resource ownership allocation problem and still use Norway as an example, or a different country (the Netherlands? New Zealand? Japan?).

The answer someone has to provide is why an everyday American barista can't wake up and move to Switzerland, Norway, etc.

> Trapping the American laborer in America to earn their wage, when they could go elsewhere, is like making a farmer farm in the desert.

Japan is notoriously xenophobic with regards to matters of immigration. Many analysts speculate that this attitude will cost them dearly as their demographic trends continue and the population ages, or expect attitudes to change. The same is true for much of East Asia. Some recent coverage from within the past week: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/07/06/the-new-asian-f...

We don’t need to be stuck in a rut of malaise like Japan. We could prosper instead.

It's not even close to the same amount of work, the construction worker in Mexico has to be far, far more resourceful than his American counterpart because things that we take for granted in the states like having on-site power, a constant supply of water, porta johns, working power tools, safety equipment and padding, nearby air conditioned restaurants and other public spaces to cool off in after the job or on lunch breaks, transportation to and from the site are largely absent in most Mexican construction circumstances. Things like sawbucks and and jigs for bending and shaping rebar are almost always just improvised on site.

The concept of the US style planned development (fraccionamiento, very loosely the MX counterpart) where basic service infrastructure is laid down first, and construction happens afterward, is very much the exception there, and most work is done ad hoc using whatever tooling happens to be available in the nearest small town.

Also Mexican construction is almost entirely cement and cinder block standards due to relatively little native timber, and those things are all hauled around the site manually with occasional wheelbarrow assistance. None of this tilt up, balloon frame stick built business we have here.