Puerto Rico?

[L_F_Miranda]

[[size="4"]B]Here is a shameful fact that Puerto Rico's politicians should ponder:

Over the past two decades, of all the 50 states, income inequality increased the most by far in Puerto Rico —

Although the gap between the rich and everyone else in Puerto Rico keeps widening, in most other states, the poor have made at least meager gains since the late 1980s. But not in Puerto Rico. From 1987 through 2006, income in the bottom fifth of the state’s families fell by 17.4 percent. Over the same period, the top fifth saw their income rise by 44.8 percent. So what’s going on?

Over the last 20 years, Puerto Rico has lost a third of its manufacturing jobs, replacing them with lower paying service-sector jobs. Virtually no additional jobs have been created.

Puerto Rico's schools are big underperformers. The gap between the educational performance of low-income and middle- and high-income pupils is the widest in the nation. Only one-third of poor and minority children in elementary schools meet the state’s goals for mastery of reading, writing and math.

The loss of manufacturing jobs, coupled with an achievement gap, is a recipe for perpetually worsening poverty.

Education in Puerto Rico must be improved. But even with better education, the shift from a manufacturing economy to a service economy will continue. So steps must be taken to ensure that service-sector jobs are a road into the middle class, the same as manufacturing jobs once were.

Puerto Rico has a minimum wage $5.85 an hour. That is well below the minimum of the the high-cost Northeast. Puerto Rico must also extend its social safety net, beginning with unemployment compensation for all service workers, many of whom are not eligible because their wages are too low or their work schedules irregular. Even the eligible, the average weekly benefit is far too low. Like every other state, Puerto Rico desperately needs universal health insurance.

Puerto Rico's residents should demand that it's territory's leaders address these problems. When it comes to income inequality, first out of all states is shameful.

__________________________________________________________________________

Puerto Rico? Not really. This editorial titled, Down and Out in Connecticut was published in the NY Times on May 9, 2008. It was not referring to Puerto Rico but to Connecticut, the richest state of the union. I just changed a few words here and there to adjust it to Puerto Rico.

Think:

If this is Connecticut, what might the poorest state of the union be like? Mississippi?

And Puerto Rico, having a third of Mississippi's GNP, might be placed in another galaxy far, far away.

Is Statehood around the corner?

Like they say in Buffalo: YEAH RIGHT!