Obama has asked for $3.7bn to help secure border controls and to fund programs to deal with the flow of immigrants from Mexico.

Now I don’t know the ins and outs of border security costs or even how many staff are employed or how much they get paid but if we were to add say 200 extra staff at $50k per year a head that’s only $10m. Even doubling that for other incidental costs doesn’t even scratch the surface of $3.7bn.

In a time when the average US citizen daily spend is $91 it’s also hard to work out how it costs the US $252 per day to look after immigrant children.

This isn’t a post to bash immigration but just that every time I see a cost for something, be it here, Europe or the US, it’s all in the billions and most of the time I just can’t fathom it. Even the most mundane things come out with ridiculous costs.

Maybe I’m entering the time of life where I start moaning about the price of everything (god I hope not) but the numbers just blow my mind sometimes.