Puerto Rico Ping! Please Freepmail me if you want on or off the list.
Posted on 05/02/2016 10:27:48 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Later this week or next, Congress will take up legislation to rescue the commonwealth of Puerto Rico from its financial crisis that is getting worse by the day.
Puerto Rico faces more than $70 billion of debt and the government is already in technical default on many of its bonds. Billions more come due in weeks ahead and the government says they are out of money to repay.
These debts don’t even include an additional $43.2 billion of unfunded pension liabilities. Add it all together and the debt reaches at least 150 percent of GDP. That’s a lot of weight on the shoulders of the Puerto Rican people. All the government has done is raise taxes, with the sales tax recently hiked from 7.5 to 11 percent. Tragically, Puerto Rico has become the Detroit of the Caribbean.
By law Puerto Rico can’t declare bankruptcy but the territory is in de facto chapter 9 already.
Republicans in the House have drafted a rescue plan that would allow the island to restructure its debt and delay payments as it attempts to rebuild its shattered economy. The statistics are heartbreakingly bleak: almost half the residents are in poverty (and more than half of all children), only about 40 percent of adults are even in the workforce, half of families collect welfare benefits, and more than 10 percent of the island’s residents have left for Florida, Texas, New York, or other safe havens.
Puerto Ricans are American citizens whose lives have been turned upside down. The U.S. government has a moral, if not legal, obligation to help. But as a territory Puerto Rico needs to agree to help itself.
Here is what shouldn’t happen: a financial cash bailout from U.S. taxpayers. Puerto Rico is 100 percent responsible for all of its taxes and spending
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
During some time off on a business trip in Honolulu, we drove to the top of Oahu and hung out at a local beach for a while with a bottle to kill some time. A bunch of locals were having a party about 100 yards away. We kept to ourselves. I got a little concerned that they might have a problem with haoles nearby but they had to drive by us coming and going and every one of them gave us the shaka (hang loose) sign going by. Maybe it was because they saw us drinking out of the trunk... I would not do that in PR.
I went to the ex-bombing range areas - You can just drive onto the ex-base there. The beaches are pristine and the overall environment there is very clean, and it is that way solely because Americans prevented the Ricans from polluting and destroying it for the last 50 years, like they do to every other thing or place under their purview.
The British first.
Puerto Rico Ping! Please Freepmail me if you want on or off the list.
Bullshit.
Sorry, I did not intend to offend; merely pointing out a cultural difference between Americans and the criminality of Puerto Ricans.
That's exactly right: too many Puerto Ricans on too little land. Around the world all leftist hot spots have one thing in common: very high population density. But like NJ more people are moving out than are moving in, so Puerto Rico is headed in the right direction. But that outflow causes government Ponzi schemes to implode.
Big difference btw Asians and Puerto Ricans—just in IQ alone. Culture. Mindset. Ability to defer gratification. Work ethic.
Agee! Puerto Rico is one of the most beautiful islands in the Caribbean. If Puerto Rico wants to become the Hong Kong of the Americas, go for it. It is not a bad idea. It’s up to Puerto Rico.
Someone is going to have to figure out some kind of industry that would work in your island. What happened to the pharmaceutical industry? You may notice a dip in visitors based on the new entrant to your west. I'd start with a deep business analysis and do a Michael Porter “5 Forces of Industry” analysis. PR has to have some competitive advantage others have overlooked. Young Puerto Ricans can't all immigrate to the mainland...
The Puerto Rico crisis is a government crisis. Yes, business is hurting but we do have a very diversified economy. Pharmaceuticals were big at one point and they still are to some extent, but our services sector, for example, has the right fundamentals and potential for growth if the government just got out of the way.
Um, I just put it in my checked baggage.
Why, was that illegal?
I had read many years previous that PR had a preexisting gun culture.
Actually, I read that when Major League Baseball did some exposition games there, the umpires had to flee under police guard because there was a risk the angry crowd might shoot them.
This was during the umpire strike, and the vignette was contained in a book by one of the strike-breaking umps.
The reason I will again go to PR but not any Caribbean country or Mexico is that PR, as part of America, has no customs. Last time I was there, in Vieques, I broke off small pieces of you exotic plants and mailed them back to myself with no trouble.
Hey, if it fits, it ships.
Whether its true or not, some people have felt that NAFTA hurt Puerto Rico by giving Mexico an advantage, which combined with Mexico’s geographical advantage removed much of the reason a company would locate in PR.
I noticed at the time I was there that most of the refineries had shut down, simply because shipping finished products to the mainland had become uneconomical. And, in fact, at the time they were bringing in finished gasoline from Venezuela, which competed with gasoline refined on the island. It was like a one-two punch that left a lot of people out of work.
I liked PR quite a lot. I probably saw it with different eyes; I had worked in various parts of Latin America and wasn’t expecting Cincinnati. I found basically what I like about latin America without most of the disadvantages. And I generally like people, I speak Spanish, so that makes a difference I suppose.
I believed that in a Tenth Amendment country, all states would have the kind of autonomy that Puerto Rico ought to have. PR has an odd mix of autonomy and dictatorship from Washington. I wasn’t really there long enough to make any real generalizations, though. I used to check the real estate websites all the time, though, thinking about making it my home base.
You know, a lot of people and companies are relocating outside the US for two reasons. One is to get clear of the Leviathan, all the heavy restrictions imposed by Washington. The other is because they can; the cost of shipping has dropped, and the cost of the transfer of information has dropped to almost nothing. People (and companies) are able to work remotely and do it all the time. How many companies are off-shoring their work to India and the Philippines, for example, thanks to the magic of broadband. A lot of people are moving to Central America, Panama, and points further south simply because its not nearly so remote as it once was, but its outside the US.
Puerto Rico has the advantage that it is US, and not US. They need to refine their relationship with the US to capitalize on the desire people have to “eat their cake and have it too”.
A key piece of this is, of course, personal security and economic freedom. That is one thing Singapore and Hong Kong offer that Mexico cannot offer, for example, which is personal security for your execs, that you don’t have to worry about street crime or kidnappings. PR already is free of federal income tax, but Island tax is almost as high. And people do worry about crime, though I honestly didn’t see much (again, compared to Latin America, I don’t think PR is that bad). I personally felt perfectly safe.
I shouldn’t be opining about something I know so little about, but I like the place and on FR, not knowing about something never stops me from having an opinion. :)
“Why, was that illegal?”
It was illegal if you:
Didn’t notify the airline of the checked gun.
Didn’t notify the Puerto Rico Police upon arrival.
If you didn’t have a Puerto Rico weapons license and didn’t turn it in to an Armory for custody while you processed your permit.
I notified the airline of my checked gun.
I did not do any of that other stuff.
I never brought it out of the case the entire time I was in PR. It was just insurance for when bad people kicked in my door.
So, does the government of PR really believe that people are children unable to attend to their own safety?
A “Weapons License”? Really?
Do all the criminals have weapons licenses too?
I’m not saying that I agree with the law, just what the law is. If caught your insurance would have landed you in a Puerto Rican jail for a very long time.
Puerto Rico: 84.
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