[Blood of Tyrants]

How bad does the mismanagement have to be for a territory smaller than Connecticut to get $72 BILLION in debt?

[Kozak]

A fully owned and operated subsidiary of the Democratic Party

[SeekAndFind]

RE: How bad does the mismanagement have to be for a territory smaller than Connecticut to get $72 BILLION in debt?

Puerto Rico’s GDP is $103 Billion. See here:

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=wHAT+IS+THE+GDP+OF+PUERTO+RICO%3F

Their debt is $72 Billion Over $30 Billion LESS than their GDP and they can’t pay.

Now think about the USA.

The GDP of the USA is $17 Trillion.

Our Debt is $18 Trillion as of June 2015 ( and counting ). HIGHER than our GDP!

The difference is we can PRINT money.

But then, What makes people think we won’t eventually go the way of Puerto Rico whose debt is SMALLER that its GDP?

[livius]

Part of it is because they have a bizarre system that puts them partly between independent and US state. And of course, another part is leftwing politics, since the Dems have been romping around PR for ages now.

They had a very good GOP governor a couple of terms ago who did a lot to stabilize their finances and start working on making it a productive place. It has everything it needs: not only is it a beautiful vacation spot, full of history, but most of its residents speak English and Spanish, and it also has the potential for small manufacturing, production of certain tropical crops (vanilla, coffee, etc.) and even perhaps being a Caribbean financial hub.

The thing that defeated the good governor, btw, was the presence of the civil service unions (yes, SEIU), since he wanted to reduce government employment and in fact make government jobs and benefits just like any other jobs, paying on the basis of skills and promoting on the basis of merit. The Dems don’t like that because probably about 50% of their constituency is composed of government employees or lives from government income.

[from occupied ga]

How bad does the mismanagement have to be for a territory smaller than Connecticut to get $72 BILLION in debt?

This is how.

[sten]

compare it’s debt to its gdp...

gdp: $103 billion (2013)
debt: $72 billion
per capita: $20,281 (3.55m people)

that puts their gdp to debt ratio around 1 : 1.43

meanwhile, for the US federal govt:

gdp: $17.7 trillion
debt: $18.3 trillion
per capita: $57,366 (319m people)

that puts its gdp to debt ratio around 1 : 0.96

the US federal government is in MUCH worse shape.

MUCH, MUCH worse.