[l2ridehd]

I have spent a lot of time in Puerto Rico and the USVI. I kept my sailboat in PR at Marina Puerto Del Rey. Largest marina in the Eastern Hemisphere. The islands problem is mostly self inflicted. 60% of the working population works for some government entity. Not a sustainable model. The majority of the population does not want to work and it's impossible to get things done. Nobody shows up for work on time.

Examples. You go to a store or restaurant that has posted hours of opening at 8:00 AM. Your lucky if folks show up by 8:30. And that includes places like Sears and Walmart. In order to get work done on my boat I had to always pay cash under the table. If you didn't it would take months for very simple things.

So IMHO there needs to be a significant change in their work ethic, a change in their government employment model, and I don't see how those things happen without some major overhaul.

There is a reason why they had so much infrastructure damage during the hurricane. It is because they have spent no money on it for the past 30 years because all money went to paying people on the government payroll. It was terrible long before the hurricane. And the main reason why the storm did so much damage.

Another major problem is corruption. In the marina which had 1200 wet slips and over 5000 dry slips, there was $100's of millions of dollars of yachts. Mostly owned by local people who had found a way to rip off the government. These boats were bought to hide cash. So they also have a huge problem of the 1% haves and the 99% of the have not's.

I am afraid PR has lots of problems that need to be fixed. But most of them are self inflicted by greed and lack of work ethic. So I would never support them becoming part of Florida or a US state until somehow the mess is cleaned up.

I finally gave up and sold my boat mainly because it was so hard to get even minor things done there. So every time I went down to sail I spent half my time doing the work myself because it was impossible to hire it done. There were a few exceptions with very small operator owned businesses where you dealt directly with the owner and they were the one's doing the work. Again it was a pay by cash arrangement. And most of them were working to get out of the country. Their biggest business issue? Couldn't hire good help. I heard that over and over. You had to wait until they could do the work themselves.














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