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Got the question of the economics of independence a lot. People ask it as if it was check mate. But there’s a key dishonesty in not asking the same thing about statehood. Thread. 1/20
The pro-statehooders specifically have not been able to answer the basic question: what is it that statehood would bring that would fix the economy? 2/20
For decades, the economy of PR has depended on being a very precarious enclave on the periphery of the US. Look into it and you’ll find the basic idea was development through tax incentives for US industry. 3/20
When the tax breaks were federal (phased out by 2006) it kind of worked. That was the period of the famous section 936 that started in the 1970s. 4/20
But globalization and deregulation made that strategy increasingly useless: the activities that could profitably be located in PR consistently diminished and neoliberalism supplanted the semi-protectionist logic behind it. 5/20
Look at the story of PR’s manufacturing since the mid-20th century and you see the island lose industry after industry, from textiles and petroleum processing to pharmaceuticals and high tech. 6/20
Then, when the tax breaks became local the model completely unraveled. Look at almost any economic indicator since 2006 and you find constant decline. This is even before the “debt crisis” started. 7/20
Since then, both pro-statehooders and pro-commonwealth have been in power. Neither has come up with a viable project for economic development. 8/20
Both have been involved in heavy austerity and regressive policies that have actually worsened the situation. They’ve failed so bad that hundreds of thousands have left the island, even before the hurricanes. 9/20
Beyond fear, when asked why statehood, the most its proponents come come up with is increased federal funding: “When they admit us to the Union, we’ll get billions more.” But they know that’s a dead-end argument in DC. 10/20
Republican’s recent answer to the question of statehood summarizes it: ranging from “fix the economy before you ask for anything” when they are gracious, to “statehood is a socialist plot” when they are vicious in their honesty. 11/20
Democrats, on whom statehooders have had an effect by coding their reactionary politics in the language of civil rights, have also indirectly disproven the necessity of statehood by proposing funding parity. 12/20
This not only betrays statehooders’ fearmongering, but it also displays the utter lack of imagination on the part of Dems: in the context of what ails PR, the things they come up with, like extra Medicaid funding, are risible proposals. 13/20
So what’s the best that the statehooders came up with, beyond privatization/austerity, as an economic strategy when they still had a say (ie. before the Junta)? Lure several hundred rich Americans with promises of tax breaks. 14/20
What used to be an industrial incentive policy became an individual incentive policy. But if this strategy failed when the idea was to set up factories that employed thousands, how isn’t it going to fail when it aims to set up mansions that employ a dozen servants? 15/20
And none of this takes into account that the precarity of PR’s situation is not only due to its location on the periphery of the US economy, but also due to its specific vulnerability to climate change, alternating between catastrophic draughts and hurricanes. 16/20
Statehood by itself means nothing: there’s many states that face the same effects of global transformations, de-industrialization, and general unpreparedness for climate crisis. 17/20
Moreover, when you look at how minorities fare inside the US, even when we are full citizens, you have to accept the clear segregation of economic prosperity. 18/20
It’s a fantasy to think that PR would be admitted and suddenly it would profit as if it was full of rich white people. 19/20
In short, statehood is a colonized ideology complicit in the destruction of PR’s economy, as well as an utter lack of imagination about its future. Let statehooders answer what their economic program is beyond begging for crumbs. 20/20
