More Americans Support Aid When Told Puerto Ricans Are U.S. Citizens | Hacker News Reader

More Americans Support Aid When Told Puerto Ricans Are U.S. Citizens

fivethirtyeight.com

42 pointsjohnny31351 comments

This shouldn't surprise anyone. It's basic psychology that should be taught in school.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-group_favoritism

Edit: And it's something to keep in mind with politics. The other side is not nearly as evil or stupid as you think they are, nor is your side as righteous or clever.

Edit 2: It also fuels racism and xenophobia.

Edit 3: Which reminds me, PG's essay on identity: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

Or maybe it's as simple as dividing responsibilities. If they believe Puerto Rico is not part of the US then obviously other priorities take over. Kind of like on the airplane where you are supposed to put your own oxygen mask on first.

> This shouldn't surprise anyone. It's basic psychology that should be taught in school.

Sure, but maybe they should also teach that Puerto Rico is part of the US in school?

One wonders how that number would change if informed that Puerto Ricans don't pay federal personal income tax?

They do pay other taxes though. And they're missing many benefits that they'd get if they were a proper state.

And they have had opportunities to begin the process to fully opt in and haven't done so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rican_status_referendum...

We should help because they are people hurting but lets not mischaracterize the dynamics of PR/USA relations.

What? Your link shows they voted for statehood, so I don't understand your point.

According to your link, in the 2012 referendum, the majority (61.11%) of votes were for statehood, but congress decided to ignore the referendum because of the large number of blank ballots (500k).

Both referendums were widely boycotted for various reasons by no voters. The only people who voted were the small minority who wanted to become a state.

edit: Thanks for the corrections. The boycott was only a factor for the June 2017 referendum https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/11/us/puerto-ricans-vote-on-...

It looks like approximately 1.8 million people voted on the first question, and 1.36 million people voted on the second. And in 2016 Puerto Rico was estimated as having a population of 3.4 million. In light of that, 1.8 million votes on the first and 1.36 million votes on the second seems fairly similar to the normal voter turnout in the U.S.

So no, it doesn't sound to me like a "small minority" of people were voting.

EDIT: This is talking about the 2012 referendum.

EDIT 2: It occurs to me that 3.4 million isn't the voting population, it's the total population. So the voter turnout is even better than it looks initially.

The 2012 election had 78% turnout with valid ballots in the question of whether or not to continue the current status, on which a majority voted to reject the current status, and 56% turnout on the question of alternative status, on which a majority chose Statehood.

On either question, the turnout was better than several US Presidential elections (and on the first better than any recent Presidential election.)

There were significant boycotts of the 2017 referendum because of the wording of the title, but in any other US election, we don't ignore election results because people choose to abstain.

A small minority of Americans voted for Trump. Should we have ignored the results of the election because only a small minority of sour grapes shouldn't make that important a decision for the rest of us?

The article you links to reports that Statehood won the 2012 referendum (majority voted no to current status, and Statehood got a majority of votes for the alternative status), which Congress chose to ignore, and overwhelmingly won the single-stage 2017 referendum.

So, no, the issue is not “they have had opportunities to begin the process to fully opt in and haven't done so”.

The 2017 """referendum""" was a push poll, not a binding referendum or even a fair and objective opinion poll.

What do you mean it wasn't fair or objective?

Opinion polling put Statehood at 52%, with a 3.2% margin of error. Sounds close, but the referendum had 3 choices, and neither were very close.

It seems like those opposed to Statehood realized they'd lose as they split the vote, and ran a boycott campaign, effectively turning it into a yes/no vote on statehood, with the fringe benefit of claiming all non-voters as on their side, which going by 2012, is a free 20 percent of the vote.

For better or worse, there's not really an objective way to evaluate this state of affairs =/

We could do what we do with every other election, and treat nonvotes as irrelevant to the validity of the outcome unless they result from people being improperly prevented from voting rather than voluntarily abstaining, whether in protest or otherwise.

Obviously "what we do" is influenced by Congressional makeup and how PR alters it, but that's pretty much what the diff between a binding and non-binding referendum means in practice.

And maybe forcing the issue is a bit too colonial, optically.

Yeah, it would be a bit “too colonial” to respect the results of either of the last two status referenda, or the multiple requests of the elected governing bodies of PR to abide by the previous one; clearly, maintaining Puerto Rico’s subject status with no vote in the federal government that it is subject to despite all those things is the non-colonial thing to do.

Or...maybe that's the exact opposite of what is going on.

None of the referenda have been binding referenda (which Congress could provide for, but has not) and most of them except the 2012 two-stage one have been structured, (often at the direction or request of the US federal government) to avoid a clear win for any option other than status quo (including the 2017 one, which had an additional option added at the request of the Trump administration to split voters opposed to the current status.)

Of course, the 2017 referendum was only held at all because the Statehood won by the terms of the 2012 referendum, and the federal government ignored it and the requests by the elected bodies of the government of Puerto Rico to abide by it.

The idea that Puerto Rico is not a state because the people of Puerto Rico have not availed themselves of the opportunity to choose to become one is false.

And they don't play for USA in Olympic games: https://www.olympic.org/franklin-gomez-matos

Or in so many words: "They don't even pay federal taxes. Fuck 'em."

Meanwhile:

The mayor of San Juan lashed out at Trump administration on Friday, decrying its relief effort in the wake of hurricanes Jose and Maria and saying if it doesn’t solve the logistics “what we we are going to see is something close to a genocide”.

“We are dying here,” Carmen Yulín Cruz said at a press conference, speaking with tears in her eyes. “I cannot fathom the thought that the greatest nation in the world cannot figure out the logistics for a small island of 100 miles by 35 miles. So, mayday we are in trouble.”

Cruz appealed directly to the president, saying: “So, Mr Trump, I am begging you to take charge and save lives. After all, that is one of the founding principles of the United States of … America. If not, the world will see how we are treated not as second-class citizens but as animals that can be disposed of. Enough is enough.”

And:

Earlier in the day, Cruz was strongly critical after acting homeland security secretary Elaine Duke said the relief effort in Puerto Rico was a “good news story”. “Dammit, this is not a good news story,” Yulín Cruz told CNN. “This is a people are dying story. This is a life-or-death story.”

Cruz implored Duke to visit the ravaged island. “This is a story of a devastation that continues to worsen because people are not getting food and water,” she said. “When you’re drinking from a creek, it’s not a good news story. When you don’t have food for a baby, it’s not a good news story … I’m sorry. That really upsets me and frustrates me.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/29/san-juan-mayor...

Another fun twist would be to see what effect there would be if you mentioned that no one from Puerto Rico voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

Yet the US gives generously to multiple disasters around the world. We send aid, money, and often the US military to help out. This little study is done by Morning Consult, where the 80% study was done by Pew - so I'm a little confused by a direct comparison. I wonder what the exact wording of the questions was (personal vs government money perhaps)?

I wonder if a european country can become a US state one day. You know joining the US as an alternative to the european union.

I can't think of any European country that would wish that fate on their citizens.

It is uthinkable by many and it is a very hypothetical question. I am not even sure if the US would want to have a soil so far away from the “mainland” :-)

French Guiana is part of the EU as a part of France, and closer to the US than to Europe. So if we're talking things like that, it becomes more thinkable.

Well, there's already Guam. Not to mention Palau, though I don't fully understand the arrangement between that nation and the US.

Guam is way further away than Europe and Hawaii is almost as far away.

The nearest bits of Europe aren't that much further from the US mainland than Hawai’i is. (Ireland to Maine is a hair farther than Hawai’i to California.)

And the US certainly has non-state territories even further away.

i can imagine a uk/us (re)union, in theory, if brexit goes really poorly.

Haha. Only if the US agreed to go back to being a colony!

but why would we? we’re bigger, richer, stronger, and (hypothetically) being asked to accept outsiders

I'm saying that's the only conceivable scenario in which the UK would agree to "reunion" with the USA.

Short lived effort, but some in Sicily wanted to, after WWII: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/51st_state#Sicily_.28Italy.29

I propose a straight trade.

Europe gets coastal CA and everything less than 20mi West of I95 from Boston to NYC. 'murka gets the Soviet republics.

This way the people who look at Formula Off Road and think "I wish they had that in my country" don't have to put up with the people who look at it and think "that's needless pollution and destruction of the environment"

Maybe one of the Baltics. Although Russia might take grave exception that that prop.

Only if Palin can be the governor so she can see the other end of Russia from her house.

When can we start investing again in education...

apparently after a few thousand years of experimentation we've concluded that there is no mutual benefit in cooperation, only a perpetual tragedy of the commons.

Yes but only for them, I got mine and it’s all good here.

And because it’s previously caused strife when left off - /s.

Anyone have a good estimate the total amount of money spent in the name of education in the U.S. in the last 50 years? I'd be interested to see the total pre-k through university graduate school, including both public (local, state, federal) and private.

Not a direct answer, but as someone working in this space, I'd like to also mention that while more money in education is probably good, I doubt it does anything. There are structural and cultural problems in the education system in the United States that cannot be solved with money.

I'd suggest looking at the cost per student. Otherwise, your results are going to be pretty influenced by population trends.

I don't have the numbers you are looking for, but here is the closest I know off the top of my head for my town. Back in the mid 70s, my town was spending right at $1,000 per student. That is a bit over $4,000 in today's dollars. Today they are spending a bit more than $12,000 per student. The $12,000 seems pretty typical for many of the school systems I've seen.

If wages grew as fast as our spending on education, the average wage in the US would be over $110,000 instead of the roughly $40,000 I think it is today. (That $40k may be high. I can't remember if it is household or individual income.)

We spend more on education than almost any other country. I believe per K-12 student we spend second in the world per student after Switzerland. Not sure if that is exactly accurate but you can look it up for details.

U.S. Citizens with their own baseball team?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rico_national_baseball_...

With US passports.

Plenty of U.S. citizens have their own baseball team. Mine is the Seattle Mariners (and they STINK).

I wasn't rooting against the Mariners in the world baseball classic.

Seriously, I think it was literally USA vs. Puerto Rico. They also compete against USA in the Olympics. Now I'm not saying don't help them out, I'm just saying..

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