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You’re right it is not fair if that crossover occurs but keep in mind that the system hooks into international agreements the US has made and it’s not as if they can be overhauled for the little guy/gal.

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Speaking of ratchets, that's the purpose of such "international agreements" for patents, copyrights and so on. Countries A and B agree to accept each others "intellectual property". Then Country A says, well, for parity we ought to set X=10 in our law, like theirs, and since we're setting X=10 and we've always made Y ten more that X we should also set Y=20. Then in Country B they say oh, well there ought to be parity in our law too we should set Y=20 also, and we've always wanted X the same as Y so X=20. Back to Country A, there's just no choice, we have this international agreement but it wouldn't be fair unless we set X=20 like Country B did, and so now Y=30.

You can keep doing this back and forth forever as you have time, ratcheting up both variables forever and always assuring any concerned citizens that your goal isn't "really" to just make the variables go up and steal from them, it's just "international agreements" force your hand.

Nobody should fall for this.

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