It’s a progressive paradise.
Public employees get 30 vacation days a year. Anyone who works over eight hours in a day gets paid time-and-a-half. Employees have strong rights.
The minimum wage is high: 77 percent of the median wage.
Environmental regulations are settled beyond the pressure of local economic interests. The forests and mountains are pristine destinations for ecotourism.
Energy costs are kept high, pushing consumption down to a level deemed “socially beneficial”. Utilities have strong public backing and provide jobs to thousands.
Union jobs in shipping are protected from outsourcing to cut-rate foreign competitors.
The social safety net is buoyant and provides a solid working-class standard of living. People who are injured can rely on disability insurance to maintain their income.
Student-to-teacher ratios are very low so that every child gets the very best.
The flagship research institution is a well-funded public university. Just ten years ago, the university was linked to downtown and the suburbs by a newlight rail line.
Best of all, richer people living far away pay most of the taxes. This little paradise has open access to large export markets and is part of a major currency union.
The government borrows at low interest rates and runs large deficits when output is below trend and does not give up on stimulus after a few years.
But economic output, oddly, is always below trend.
Puerto Ricans have lived through decades of this left-wing utopia, and they are fleeing it.
……….and all the first floor windows have bars on them to keep the happy Proletariat from breaking in and stealing whats not nailed down.
Wait a minute, the minimum wage is 77% of the median income? It’s been about 40 years since I took a statistics class, but how is that possible?
I haven’t been to 3rd world hellholes in Africa but I have been to PR and there I’ve seen some of the worst poverty imaginable. I’ve traveled through central Mexico and that’s bad, PR is worse. Haiti is probably much worse but I can’t say.
Too bad because it’s stunningly beautiful. REgressives will fuck up a wet dream as the saying goes.
PR PR are PR lately.
And the chickens are coming home, to roost!
Socialists NEVER learn.
It’s called liberal math.
Another example of Utopian imperialism…All of Europe (especially Greece), Cuba, North Korea, Russia, Iran etc.
Obama in conjunction with the UN (and those pulling his strings) has us high on the list to be included soon as well.
had a layover in pr. what a dump! a close second to tijuana, my neighbor.
in 2012, 54 percent did not want us to have territorial rights.
probably more today.
i say we give them what they want.
When I visited PR, the people were very unfriendly. I was simply visiting an old fort, minding my own business, when I was accosted and insulted. If they want to benefit from tourism, they need to treat people decently.
Give it back to Spain. Or let it form a confederation with Cuba. It’s a lead weight tied around America’s neck – just like Detroit, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Gary, Memphis, St. Louis, KC, Boston, LA, San Francisco, Boulder, Portland, and Seattle.
We can’t give them back, but we CAN give PR back.
America First. America Only.
I don’t recall whether I read it here or elsewhere a couple of days ago, apparently their educational results are beyond atrocious. So much for low student/teacher ratio.
Uhhh, this is decidedly un-PC, and for my Trump-esque candor I must apologize in advance, but the Puerto Ricans struggle because, as an admixture of native islanders, Africans, and Spaniards, they ain’t all that smaht.
“Puerto Rrrrico. My hearts devotion. Let it sink back in the ocean. Always the hurricaines blowing. Always the population growing…and the money owing…and the sunlight streaming…and the natives steaming…”
Steven Sondheim from West Side Story.
Red
Nobody captures the essence of the Puerrrrt-O Rrrrreeecan experience better than gay Jewish artistes, in my view.
Funny this comes from the ‘Hawaii Free Press’, a paper from another ‘Progressive Paradise’
I was there (unfortunately) for a 2 hour lay-over once. It’s neither progressive OR a paradise. Fuckin’ dump if you ask me, is soap and deodorant precious there or something?