Statistics: Part Two

Click on this here link.

Go ahead. Then scroll and find "Puerto Rico" (if it doesn't appear on the graph.) Check the box next to it. Then sit back and let the gap between the yellow line representing Us and the carmine line representing the U.S. (of part of A.) You might even see a blue line representing Florida, just for perspective.

What does this graph mean? That We have a subservient--slave--economy to that of Uncle Sam.

Strong words, Jenius. Back 'em up.

At its most basic, the unemployment rate is the comparison between the number of eligible employable people and the number of jobs available in the designated market. The space for fudging the numbers in that comparison is huge (governments measure and compare what they want, not the actual base numbers.) But what can be seen as legitimately reliable is the overall trend the numbers reflect.

In the case of Our 20-year sample, the relationship between the yellow and red lines shows a prominent consistent gap. If you check out the blue line (representing Florida, in this case) you will notice something the yellow line never does: the blue line dips below thee red line, meaning that during that period, unemployment in Florida was lower than the overall national rate.

How often has that happened in Puerto Rico's shared history with Uncle Sam? Never. Not once. Not even close. By and large, Our unemployment rate has been roughly double or even triple the rate of the U.S. of part of A. Despite the billions poured in as "investment." Despite the billions poured in as "social support." Despite the billions poured in by "visitors." How can it be that after billions and billions of dollars are funneled into Our economy, We continuously have an unemployment rate that sucks bull balls?

Because there are even more billions pulled out of Puerto Rico. Way more than what's put in my "investment,' "government support" and "visitors." Way. More.

Let's go back to the basics. Unemployment compares eligible candidates and available jobs. When there are too many candidates, they either have to leave or more jobs need to be created, preferably both. We had that scenario in the 1950s and 1960s, when Puerto Rico's island  population was growing slower because migration was reducing the number of eligible workers locally, while Operation Bootstrap and the Fomento Miracle were ramping up Our economy at historically high rates. But not even then did Our unemployment rate come down to Stateside levels.

And how was it expected to ever do so since then, with the eventual gutting of Our economy by Congress, aided by local idiots, morons and cretins--most of them statehooders, but from other local parties as well--who argued, nay demanded, that the economic props We had be kicked from underneath Us, ostensibly to "strengthen" Our economic potential? That's like pinching the oxygen tube of a guy whose head is encased in a plastic bag, ostensibly to "strengthen" his resistance to suffocation.

For an economy to truly reduce unemployment, it must have at its disposal the policy tools that allow for job creation, increased trade and cost controls. Cost controls? Yes. Imagine a government hiring people left and right (or in Our case, red and blue) in order to simulate job creation. How could they afford to do that for decade after decade when each new employee represents a huge cost to the public coffers and taxing the natives has reached its limit? They had--and have--a Sugar Daddy. The U.S. of part of A. as Sugar Daddy. And just how free is the person (synonym: skank) kept by a Sugar Daddy?

Trade and job creation are both closely linked, involving as they do foreign investment, access to foreign markets and competition. Guess what area Uncle Sam reserves for himself concerning Puerto Rico? Uh-huh: Trade. We are "free" to trade with a-ny-one in the world...provided Sugar Daddy approves. Gee, if I'm only "free" to the extent someone else says I am, then I am...not.

Guess who ranks as one of the largest consumers of U.S. goods in the world, year after year after year after year? Uh-huh. We do. We rank up there with Canada as a buyer of U.S. goods, a country that not only shares a border with Uncle Sam, it also has 8 times Our population. The fact that We buy so much from the U.S of part of A. and that--being an island--practically every thing has to be brought in by ship, guess whose ships are the only ones We are allowed to use, not only for importing, but for exporting whatever We make? Right again.

If you are not free to make your own decisions, if you are beholden to another as to practically what you buy, how you get it and how you can share it, and the monies given to you come with dozens of strings attached, then you, as an economy, are a slave to that other one. There is no other term to accurately define such a relationship. We are a slave economy. We see it in unemployment and in Our consistent inability to make serious inroads against it.

And We continue to put up with it, with some of Us longing for the day when Sugar Daddy gets to screw Us more often.


The Jenius Has Spoken.