Word: rico
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...industrial expansion of the 60s, they have remained on the margins of subsistence. Though Puerto Ricans have the highest per capita income of Latin America, 63.4 per cent of the population had incomes below the federal poverty level in 1970. The recent recession had a devastating impact on Puerto Rico: unemployment is officially 20%, but unofficially admitted to be 35%. Even when employment is available, the average industrial wage, $2.29, is half the comparable figure for U.S. workers. Despite this drastic crisis, those Puerto Ricans suffering the most have undertaken little organized protest, perhaps because welfare benefits and federal food...
...AMERICAN recession and the consequent decline in capital investment has exposed the debility of the "Operation Bootstrap" economic expansion plan, the foundation of Puerto Rico's economy. Begun in 1947 by the first elected government, Bootstrap and it's successor "Fomento" offered tax exemptions, government assistance, and cheap labor to attract runaway industry from the United States. At its onset, the Bootstrap program was the vigorous economic ideology of Puerto Rico's first mass reform movement, the Popular Democratic Party (PDP). The founders of the party saw Bootstrap as the way to make Puerto Rico's status as a self...
...first answer is an advertising campaign in the American financial press that touts the benefits of doing business in "Profit Island, U.S.A.": political stability, tax exemptions, and a very productive labor force. Beyond the advertising, the government's most important plan is a renegotiation of the relation of Puerto Rico to the United States that would preserve the colonial framework but allow some autonomy in setting wages, pollution controls, and tariffs. This "compact of permanent union", now before Congress, would permit the island government to "adjust" the climate for investment. Unfortunately, it seems that the possible "adjustments" would place...
...committed to industrial expansion, but in return for jobs it will ask the working class to lower its expectations for a few more years. This is not a new request. Sacrifice on the part of the working classes has been the fundamental source of Puerto Rico's spectacular growth in the past two decades. While salaries at the top of the scale are near those in the United States, wages at the bottom have been significantly lower. This inequality will continue as long as the Bootstrap philosophy of development determines economic policy. Puerto Rico cannot recreate the economic growth...
...Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP) calls itself a Marxist-Leninist party and proposes revolutionary socialism like Cuba's. They point out that economic growth cannot become self-sustaining because the profits of Puerto Rican industry are remitted to the United States, and association with the United States forces Puerto Rico to buy American products which are more expensive than those available from other markets. But the thrust of their argument is that only by freeing themselves from United States domination can Puerto Ricans create a socialist plan for development which would correct the unequal distribution of wealth that characterizes...