Pay to the Order of Puerto Rico: The Cost of Dependence

Rating:
Summary: Fails to deliver
Review: Bought the book on the hopes that it would somehow be the one to reach large American audiences and shake them off their "Puerto Rico, where do I take the bus to get there?" attitude. Yet it was not meant to be.

The book (or books I should say, since chapters by Mr. Laffer proved to be an economic treatise far too technical for my expertise and thus skipped) fails to enrage Americans so as to get them to pick up their phones and call their Senators or Congress reps.

What it does do is try to convince the reader of the benefits of statehood, something the average American taxpayer already accepts and the average Puerto Rican has rejected time and again.

While it is laudable work, and a great measure of gratitude must be afforded the author for his interest and efforts on behalf of Puerto Rico,it is also abundantly clear that as a foreigner he misses the subtleties of our culture.

Certainly, until our people come together, as we did in the case of Vieques, our status will remain essentially the same.


Rating:
Summary: It is time to wake up! This a great book to start.
Review: After reading " Pay to the order of Puerto Rico"., I was shocked to see how the pharmaceuticals take advantage of our territorial status in order to make billions in profits while keeping Puerto Rico's economy in shambles. If I was a resident of the mainland US I would be outraged at how the Island costs US taxpayers $22 billion a year while it remains the drug transshipment and money laudering capital of the world. Mr. Odishelidze and Mr. Laffer do an excellent job of presenting this terrible burden being borne by mainland Americans just so the big pharmas could reap their profits, while 4 million Puerto Ricans are kept in poverty and as second class US citizens. The authors have really captured the essence of Puerto Rico and our people.

Rating:
Summary: To understand Puerto Rico you MUST read this book
Review: Many people in the United States mainland do not understand the Puerto Rico quagmire and the implications of the colonial status of the island. But what is worse is the cost to the American taxpayer of corporate welfare and its cost in the self determination of Puerto Rico. Odisheldize and Laffer put hit the nail right in the head. Any responsible U.S. taxpayer need to read this book. And any self respecting Puerto Rican needs to read this book and understand what is our reality.

Rating:
Summary: RADIOGRAPHY OF THE OLDEST COLONY IN THE WORLD
Review: Puerto Rico had been a colony of the United States for more than one hundred years. It is also a lucrative investment site for American business, but at what cost to the American taxpayers. Here you will learn and will be amazed by how much. The book is a real radiograph of the cost to maintain the oldest colony in the world, where no federal taxes are paid.

Rating:
Summary: Unbelievably misleading and so factually flawed it's useless
Review: This book is not about a relationship between Puerto Rico and the USA. If that's what you are interested in, this is the wrong book to read.

What this book is about is the fact that you can prove anything, as long as you get to make up the facts and decide which half-truths are OK and which ones are not.

For example, the book is chock full of references to the fact that residents of PR do not pay federal taxes, but it never once mentions that this is so due to a MUTUAL agreement between the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the Congress of the United States. It also doesn't make mention of the fact that residents of Puerto Rico not only pay higher taxes as a percentage of their income. One of the most glaring omissions is a lack of an analysis of what the cost would be to the average taxpayer if the IRS code were to be applied to residents of Puerto Rico. A very simple analysis of the tax base of the island results in a conclusion that the vast majority of residents of Puerto Rico who pay income tax to the commonwealth coffers would wind up not paying a dime to the IRS, but would qualify for even more money from the US government, in the form of things such as the earned income credit.

Another thing the authors do in this book is talk about how much money comes from the US to Puerto Rico, but they carefully gloss over or minimize the fact that in the majority of the examples they mention, the same amount of money would be flowing to the island economy from US coffers if the island were a state. However, they don't tell you that the outflow of money would be even higher under that political formula, with zero guarantee of an offset from the application of the IRS tax code.

The book is full of references to current 2003 and 2004 events, and mentions IRS Section 936 time and time again as a failure because it didn't create jobs, but the authors conveniently leave out that more than 10,500 direct jobs have been lost in the past two years prior to the book being publised, specifically due the phasing out of Section 936. The consequences of this totally irresponsible and politically-motivated action are causing deep repercussions in the island. How exactly can Puerto Rico attract manufacturing and other jobs to the island without offering incentives to the corporations that create these jobs?

Where would these pharmaceuticals be if they were not in Puerto Rico? Where would all the money that goes into the development of these manufacturing and research facilities go? Certainly not the United States mainland -- there is no incentive to do that. And why is Puerto Rico being blamed for pharmaceutical profits, when in fact the huge lions share of profits comes not from manufacturing tax breaks but rather from price gouging of the American consumer, and particularly the American senior citizen?

In my opinion, Odishelidze should have stuck to the story of his life, and his escape from communism to capitalism. That part of the book was very interesting, even though he couldn't seem to keep his dates straight.

The biggest problem with this book is clearly Arthur Laffer, one of the co-authors. This person claims to be the father of the Reaganomics and supply-side economics, two clearly failed schools of economic thought that result in the highest deficits and increase in public debt in the history of the country.

Years after Reagan left office, we're still uncovering more and more consequences of this irresponsible economic policy. The fact that this book tries so hard to tell half-truths and mislead about Puerto Rico and its relationship with the US seems to be another expression of the mind that created that mess of the 80's.

If you really want to learn more about Puerto Rico and its relationship with the US, both political and economic, you will need to look elsewhere, because you will not find what you seek in this book.