Hacker News Reader

Comment by explorigin | Hacker News Reader

In short, money and influence. Puerto Rico is too poor. By giving it statehood, that opens it up to receiving a lot more federal money that is already hotly contended over. Puerto Rico doesn't have enough would-be voters to make a difference for either party.

View on HN

Puerto Rico is the 29th most populated state/territory in the country. They basically have the same number of citizens as Connecticut. It would _definitely_ make a difference for one of the parties - though it would likely be the Democratic Party. However, Puerto Rico has been voting on statehood for a very long time and has historically voted against it. In the past couple years they did vote for statehood - twice in fact. But they did so while republicans controlled congress and since republicans know giving Puerto Rico statehood wouldn't benefit them they will never prioritize it while in-power.

> However, Puerto Rico has been voting on statehood for a very long time and has historically voted against it.

That's not entirely true; pro-status-quo groups have boycotted all or part of ballots, or advocated voting for some other option than continued territory status to avoid clear wins for Statehood. That was true in 2017 where they boycotted the whole ballot, in 2012 where they boycotted the second (alternative status) part of a two part ballotmarking that called for a vote up or down on current status and then a separate vote on what the replacement status should be; in 1998 where they called for a vote for “none of the above” so their votes would be added to genuine NOTA votes.

It's true that Commonwealth (territory) status won in 1967 and, narrowly, 1993, but it's clearly been declining over time, which is why that faction has been trying to deny clear results since 1998.

For the sake of comparison, per capita GDP in Puerto Rico is $29k and in MO it is $43k. It is poorer than the mainland but not as destitute as this comment makes it sound (although things have been on a downward spiral for years).

It would, however, have two senators likely to be Democratic.

Yeah but not appealing to the government as constituted

You know Puerto Rico has its own political parties, right? I would hope you're also aware that the party in power is center right. If Puerto Rico were to join as a state you'd more likely than not find its politicians trying to retain their own party ties.

At least do some research.

> You know Puerto Rico has its own political parties, right? I would hope you're also aware that the party in power is center right.

The Democratic Party (well, it's currently dominant faction, at least) is also center right.

> If Puerto Rico were to join as a state you'd more likely than not find its politicians trying to retain their own party ties.

There'd be strong pressure to fuse with or be displaced by the national parties once PR was involved in Congress and, more importantly, Presidential elections; the days of states having distinct local major parties on a lasting basis likely ended when the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party aligned with the national Democratic Party, and the nationalization (and globalization) of the media, combined with the way electoral politics works means that's unlikely to change even with the admission of new states with pre-existing party systems.

You can find that Puerto Rican politicians already also have registrations/affiliations with the mainland political parties as well.

Besides that, it's really hard to believe that even Puerto Ricans with conservative views are going to break in significant numbers for a party that seems to be so hostile to them.

Puerto Rico isn’t “poor.” It’s GDP per capita is higher than Spain, and just below Italy.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

According to these sources it also beats South Korea, New Zealand, and Israel, which frankly surprised me a bit.

The PPP ranking reflects local cost of living, which is comparatively low in PR. In nominal terms, it's below NZ and Israel and just ahead of South korea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

Well, still, nobody thinks of South Korea as a poor country, right?

Also, in nominal GDP per capita, Taiwan is ranked right next to Slovenia. Which doesn't accurately represent the real standard of living in the two places.

Is this number adjusted for cost of living?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com