Word: rico
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Right after Ford's announcement came a second surprise, the publication of a poll conducted by Gallup in the United States, in which 59 per cent of the Americans interviewed said they favored statehood for Puerto Rico. Now the question was phrased as follows: "Puerto Ricans recently elected a pro-statehood governor. Do you favor statehood for Puerto Rico?" Only an enemy of democracy could have said no. And in other polls, about a fifth have said they favored independence, with an equal number who had never heard of the island. Many Americans do not understand, for example, that Puerto...
...Puerto Rico's Commonwealth status has worked in the interests of the United States. An outright colony from 1902 until 1952, it then became a self-administering colony inside American tariff walls and outside American tax laws. The idea was to postpone the decision about status, provide training in democratic self-government, and turn the island from a giant sugar plantation into an industrial paradise. All these projects, particularly the last, were fairly successful until the general depression hit Puerto Rico so hard that the government was reduced to advertising it as "Profit Island, U.S.A." in the Wall Street Journal...
...statehood would profit the rest of the United States. The system of tax incentives and cheap labor that has attracted investors up to now would have to go; there are no grounds for supposing the economy would improve, except through some massive welfare program. Per capita income in Puerto Rico is about $2300, while in Mississippi, the poorest state, it is over $4000. Though every state contains pockets of misery that are worse off, no single administrative unit is so depressed. The island's geographic isolation would make any renewed private investment unlikely...
...subsidiaries of the Rotary Club, of the pentecostal churches, of J.C. Penney's. The island has gotten just enough of the benefits of the American way of life to feel jealous of it and superior to the rest of Latin America. With the comforts of a consumer society, Puerto Rico has also gotten the problems: industrial society, highway proliferation, drug addiction...
...Federal welfare. There are hit songs about USDA surplus food allotments, and now about the food stamp program, which have done a marvelous job of ending hunger. The massive support that the food stamp program provides, which some consider just reparations for the wealth subtracted from Puerto Rico, is mostly perceived as the only difference between Puerto Rico and the rest of the Caribbean...