Trump not the 1st to send troops to Mexican border; Bush and Obama did it too - Polidicks

That's the free market at work. Minimum wage actually hurts everyone because it forces employers to higher fewer people. With the american public demanding higher wages for low skill work, businesses will turn to automation since a robot can't complain about robber barons or MUH ONE PERCENT. Why does it matter if a few people are very wealthy? Successful people reap the rewards of their labor and accumulate wealth. Now if they accumulated it through exploitation or fraud is one thing, but why should Tim Cook have to give up his wealth to some street 99% bum who has done nothing with his life? And if you really cared about a habitable planet you would advocate the China tarrifs or at least advocate a conflict with China or any third world country because they are the ones polluting the planet, not us. You think China ACTUALLY stopped using CFCs & other environmentally harmful substances?

With the military budget we have, we should be deploying some military assets along the border. The cartels and gangs in Mexico are not some pushover groups. They are paramiltiaries that create their own state within Mexico. Even if the assets we put on the border are more just about giving extra manpower to US Border Patrol, or aiding them with military grade sensor equipment, we should be doing it. Another thing which seriously needs to happen is that the UNSC needs to open up dialog regarding creating an auxiliary force to help the Mexican government deal with the cartels. They cannot simply fight them on their own. Mexico needs some form of outside help.

What concrete things has Tim cook done to earn that money

Alternatively, put that money into border patrol agencies? You know, the guys actually trained to do it

Border Patrol are notoriously hard to get hired into.

That's the problem. We have 1000's of openings for Border Patrol, and no one wants too join the ranks. Either because the job is some of the most mind numbing shit possible, or can end with you in the crosshairs of the cartels. The last time the United States government made a serious attempt too fill the ranks, it ended up in disaster. We ended up having cartel infiltrators taking over several key areas, and using their position to smuggle narcotics and ignore any incidents of violence against American citizens. If we are serious about dealing with the cartels, we need to treat them as the paramilitary group that they are. Deploy state National Guards to aid with the monitoring of border areas, have the US Army Corp of Engineers go about setting up monitoring systems which will lower the work load on BP agents, and finally... Actually intervene in Mexico with the approval of the Mexican government. Our country is so wrapped up with dumb shit in the Middle East, that it neglects to look at the war just South of us, which currently has claimed over 110,000 lives, and displaced 1.3 million people. At this moment in time, the Mexican cartels actively go into towns and kidnap hundreds, only too later execute them in mass graves. Is this not the type of thing we have US troops on the ground in Syria/Iraq in military aide/asset roles? Is it not similar to the stuff that lead to a troop surge in Afghanistan this year? We need to help the Mexican government deal with the cartels, and likewise, we need to protect ourselves from them. Putting the US Military on our border is not some overkill. It's having the right type of forces at the ready to aid Border Patrol when that need comes.