Puerto Rico is amazing in a million ways... Butttt, there is a lot of government corruption and misallocation of funds for infrastructure among other things. There is a burgeoning tech scene and a lot of well educated folks here to do the heavy lifting. The taxes on locals are too high and there is a massive hangover from government pensions of yesteryear.
The amount of grifting that goes on focusing on PR being a 3rd world hellscape for their own views/clicks/etc is insane.
Thank you for this comment! There are parts of Puerto Rico that are "3rd world hellscapes," but they are tiny and not the norm. It is a beautiful island with a ton of natural resources and hardworking people.
Where else can you drive 3 hours and go from dense rainforest to absolute desert, spend your morning snorkeling pristine reefs and your evening deep in the mountains, and see a mix of old and new everywhere?
But, do you want to go deep in the mountains? I lived in Morovis for about 4 months. I’ve never seen anywhere more infested with more cockroaches and rats in my life.
I live outside the metro area and there are definitely 4x4 only areas as far as transportation and it becomes quite rural pretty quick in the hills. Not to mention the chupacabra.
Jayuya is one of my favorite places in the world, but you are right the bugs are out of control. Especially at night, two screens on the windows and the buzzing all night.
> Where else can you drive 3 hours and go from dense rainforest to absolute desert
I've never been to Puerto Rico. Rainforest I can imagine, but where on that island is there a desert, even a relative one?! When you say "absolute desert" I'm imagining, I don't know, something like the Sonoran Desert.
Average annual rainfall of 24-39" is not exactly anyone's idea of a desert (I believe 10" a year is the typical definition), though looking at the photos it does appear to be more similar to the transitional area in Texas Hill Country, for example, with short trees and more shrubs. Certainly a far cry from the lushness that I expected to encompass all of Puerto Rico.
It's typical for Islands to have a wet side and a dry side. The wet side gets the brunt of the storms and rain carried by prevailing winds. And the dry side is in the rain shadow.
Offhand thought 24 inches in a hot climate doesn't go as far as 24 inches in a temperate one.
what struck me about Hawaii on my last visits though is the juxtaposition against Puerto Rico (the lost opportunities). Very similar in a lot of ways- but hasn't nearly leveraged the richness of its culture (history, music, cuisine, etc.) as much as Hawaii has.
Is it really like that? It sounds, truly, like paradise. There HAS to be a catch. How big are the mosquitoes, tarantulas, carnivorous ear worms, bees, ants, snakes, etc?
I grew up there in near rain forest area (just slightly short of the technical rainfall requirement). There aren't really any poisonous snakes on the island, just one type that has mildly irritating saliva (I caught and got bit by lots of these as a kid, barely noticed). Depending on which micro-biome you are in, there can be lots of mosquitoes, or not many at all. Where I grew up, there were very few probably because of all the predators (and most of the water was moving not standing). Caught a few tarantulas growing up, never got bit. There were some pretty giant centipedes where I lived but I rarely saw them, never got bit. A few bee stings, but nothing too bad- but wasps... hate those f**ers.
Lots of catches. Many places have bars on windows, those pristine reefs are surrounded by areas with unexploded munitions, tons of bugs, roads that are not necessarily safe for cars, etc.
Agreed, I was born and raised there and lived until my late 20's and it's comparable to most of the US in terms of services you get. The issue is as you get older you notice that salaries are lower, a lot of goods such as gasoline are expensive, you get regular power outages, and the government is fairly incompetent and corrupt.
Most people who leave do so because it's like living in a bottom 50 state like Mississippi or Alabama, why stay when your quality of life will improve significantly just taking a 2 hour flight to another state? I was able to attend a top engineering school in the US and most of my high school friends were also able to get great jobs elsewhere too. We would love to go back but the drop in quality of life makes it a difficult choice.
> focusing on PR being a 3rd world hellscape for their own views/clicks/etc is insane
Yep. I find it weird and annoying that Puerto Rico (and most of Southern and Central America and Mexico) are treated as 3rd world (read: "poor"/undeveloped). The only undeveloped countries (below 0.650 HDI) in the Americas are Haiti, Honduras, and Guatemala. It's just pure racism tbh.
Economic turmoil aside due to the shutdown of Naval Shipyards in the 90s, Puerto Rico is by every definition a developed country, and they are a massive player in both the financial and pharmaceutical manufacturing world.
P.S. Don't give me the pedantic Cold War 3rd world definition. No one uses that definition anymore
I can agree with you that Puerto Rico is an amazing place, but I really don't know what you mean by "heavy lifting" in this context.
The people in tech who live in Puerto Rico are practically a net negative for the locals and people who are actually from there. 90%+ of them are not local to Puerto Rico and rarely is anyone hiring locals for these tech jobs, they are working remotely or getting their more well off friends/family to come join them.
They outprice locals from living arrangements since they drive costs up but the amount locals make is nowhere near what these tech workers do. And in my opinion its even worse than what happens in mainland US, since they are stuck on an island uprooting and moving is even harder than what happens to people in the states.
There are a ton of locals that are born and raised here and are well educated and technically literate to do any tech work. Businesses relocating from abroad to pay 4% local taxes is not a net negative. A lack of real estate or extra foreigners is not the problem with Puerto Rico, there is a distinct lack of population and abundance of homes falling further in to disrepair. You are parroting political talking points by people who would love to push decades of failed policy and corruption on jake paul, and in doing so you're also managing to discredit the majority of professionals in puerto rico.
For much better reporting than a quick comment on HN, for anyone who really is interested, follow the documentaries by reporter Bianca Graulau who is doing a great job at building awareness of the problem.
I'm not sure where you get your information but it is quite true that well-heeled Americans have sold out on the mainland and moved to plush locations in Puerto Rico over the last ten years to escape not only taxes here, but also what they see as the coming social disruptions that will place them and their wealth and family's safety at risk. Several who previously ran their newsletter empires from DelRay Beach, Florida or similar locations based on the US's SE penisula. (LOL)
For them Puerto Rico is the perfect place to be to retain their American citizenship, eat fantastic food, enjoy an awesome lifestyle at a large discount, while avoiding tax liabilities.
Libertarians who operate investment newsletters have been touting the advantages of selling out here and moving to PR for years. They are not alone, as pastor_bob notes there are plenty of other people with the means and the opportunity to flee the mainland so they can watch it burn down from a distance while still enjoying the benefits of citizenship but in a more tax-advantageous location.
It was actually pretty funny reading their bitching about the state of things on the island after Hurricane Maria. Motherfuckers actually had to endure hardships getting their internet access restored so they could publish their rags and then they filled them with gripes about what a hardship it was dealing with the disaster even though they kept themselves isolated in their compounds so they never saw the true scope of the devastation that PR natives endured.
There are plenty of people who move and live in puerto rico for all, some or more of the reasons you listed. None of which detracts from the fact that puerto rico is full of people with more than enough education and technical knowhow to build things and prosper, there are also tech companies that are here and not just running jake paul crypto schemes despite the non-stop media and political talking points trying to place blame on decades of poor decisions onto a youtuber and foreigners.
Yes. I agree with this but wanted to point out that PR residency comes with attractive incentives for wealthy people and many have elected to take advantage of those incentives.
Puerto Rico also has had corruption problems that may or may not be linked to the classical problems of people appointing friends to positions, inefficient allocation of resources such that wealthier areas are better maintained and have more of the ear of the government when it comes to acquiring resources to keep things maintained. Nothing involving governments is ever totally perfect or fair so there will always be a situation where it is who you know that counts.
After Maria, the federal response to the destruction was inefficient and inadequate to restore things to their previous state. As you find in any disaster on the mainland, the cleanup operations failed to vet contractors to insure that those doing the work actually had experience managing a complex process like hurricane cleanup and as a result there was massive waste. That's become the normal condition for US post-disaster operations so this is not a knock on PR at all.
I would love to visit. I have read a lot about it. One day it might happen. Good luck to all who choose PR as their home.
The amount of grifting that goes on focusing on PR being a 3rd world hellscape for their own views/clicks/etc is insane.