Puerto Rico-- benefits of being a commonwealth(of the USA) country?

Question

Puerto Rico-- benefits of being a commonwealth(of the USA) country?

Answer 1

THE ADVANTAGES and benefits of a common wealth its having certain "rights" and benefits as any other american citizen

THE DISADVANTAGES- government and some puerto ricans abusing it and causing financial crisis to our island when this could avoided and great benefits for the real needy things in the island, such as:

a. better public schools(materials and reconstruct damages) and education for students. higher pay for public school teachers along with evaluations so they wont earn the money for the heck of it, but to put heart and effort to their students education, maybe higher pay will give them more insight.

b. better laws and human rights, and eliminate bureaucracy in offices and stop over paying employees that just do one task instead pay one employee to do multitasks and the government will not abuse that money.

c. do something about the drugs and drug addicts, put more ideas into how they can better this situation, starting by eliminating giving them government money because thay have "mental problems" when real disabled people needed. and open more offices where they can be treated with some sort of substance medicines and not money.

d. enforce laws in the streets to avoid prison over board crowdness and this affects financial needs.

e. reduce government luxury, such as security guards, diets, ect. that the government its taking away money for their personal use and living expenses, while needy people need materials and kids need more financial attention.

f. we definetly need alternative schools, i dont see any! and this is one big priority in education, specially for the young girly's who are coming out pregnant at 14, 15, 16 and 17.

g. be more lawful about sexual offenders within the family and help prevent incest or sexual abuse for children and teens at home.

h. more recreational centers, and more activities for the future genration(not fake it with offices, but really do it and work for it).

i. put those prisoners to work in community service for goodness sake, they can clean the dirty filthy streets and beaches and get something to prise them in return.

j. welfare control (only for low income single mothers or fathers) and not give food stamps and medical health to all that comes along and lie about not having a man at home. how to do this? just like mystery shoppers, but  mystery welfare agents. have a limit to it, but at the same time PLEASE have a decent unemployment office, not some scam that does not help people get jobs (no wonder everyone goes to welfare) in unemployment agencies suck, employees there get paid for free, while mothers and fathers could be more attended and helped at getting jobs, sometimes people need help getting them, and this could be a huge help.

k. more headstarts and longer hours, for those parents that need 2 jobs, also the government should pay certain percentage for private childcare (like the states do) they have private childcares that accept government checks and pay certain part and the parent pays half or less depending on their income. I DONT SEE THAT IN puerto rico.

L. better medical plans. and stop with the: "u need a primary doctors this and that in order to do this medical procedures in labs and blah blah" all bull. if u need to do an ultrasound, save peoples time and money by not going to the trouble of having the: go to the office and wait all day and then make them got to a lab and then back to the primary for another lab and so on. better plan for medication coverage(the most important thing) and definitely better organization in office appointments: people need to make an appointment(get one 2 months later) which is ridiculosly late and also sign a waiting list at 5 in the morning even if u called for an appointmet, i mean where is the mentality seriously. either u get an appointment or sign a walk in list: whats the use of waisting time and doing both when u have to wait all day anyways and come at the same time as anyone else(to me thats not an appointment) and this happens in both private and public clinics and offices. where are the 24 seven walk in clinics any way, other than the hospitals? ive never seen one in puerto rico.

m. do something about abandoned animals, omg. whats up with the splat open rotten dogs in the middle of the street for months until the sun fries them and make them powder. come on pick up the accidents and avoid people looking and smelling such tragic, and better animal shelters for godness sake. HELLO, animal control.

n. does theme park ring the bell, not a disney, but at least something breath taking and entertaining for the kids and family, instead of those little scam abandoned parks(example: parque de las ciencias) is a scam and half of the park its dirty and closed. instead of wasting money in golf parks and stupid monumets(bayamon has lots of those stupid monuments that dont make any sense and costs billions) use it on big theme parks.

o. WE NEED BETTER PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND LIBRARY BOOKS,DVD's,CD's, AND ALL KINDS OF ACCESS TO GREAT TECHNOLOGY. also public schools need this things.

p. better transportation: expand train island wise.

q. we need to fix public phones or more of them, not eveyone has a cell phone yet.

This country needs a reality check and i dont see progress with or without benefits. what i see is stupidity and bad money management, and a sucky political government (both democratic and republicans) havent done no good in this country and i dont mention independence because thats not going to work either. what is going to work is less selfishness, less bureacracy, less wasting time and making jokes at jobs, but really work and government investing in the people that need help, not on them and their perfect luxury lives. they are all scums and no good for our beautiful country. WHAT A SHAME, what an awful shame!

monuments and make believes does not impress tourists, cleanless and order does. about the community parties, its good to have those, its  for the people.

Answer 2

We are an organized and unincorpored territory of the USA

Benefits:

* US citizenship

* Not pay federal income taxes (with a few exceptions for example federal employees in PR pay taxes to the IRS), but we pay SS related taxes.

* USA provides the military (and we participate as well in all USA wars since WW I).

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Disadvantages

* Not allowed to vote for the President

* Only one Resident Commissioner at the House (Congress) with limited rights to vote.  If the vote of our Resident Commissioner proves to be desicive in a vote at the floor that voting is cancelled and all Representatives vote again without the Resident Commisioner's participation.  Bottom line the voting right is symbolic and not effective; it does not matter if our Resident Commissioner participate in the vote or not.  If we were a state, we would have 2 senators like every other state, and due to our population totals and density, about 6 or 7 Representatives to the House.

* Benefits from the Constitution are  valid in PR provided the Congress approves them to be

* Social Security funds assigned to PR are considerably less thanin the states, however we pay full SS taxes from our pay checks as people in the states do.

* Other federal aids programs are also limited in PR

* We are subject to use USA commercial cargo ships to bring everything we import.  We are not allowed to do contracts with a marine cargo company of other country that may provide better prices.  (no mather if USA has excellent relations with such other country). This impact the cost of goods in PR be higher than they could be.

Answer 3

All the benefits of living in any other State....You don't pay Federal taxes  and  You don't get to Vote for the President...

Answer 4

Puerto Rico is not a country.  It is technically a federal enclave of the US.  Puerto Rico calls itself a "Estado Libre Associado" which roughly translate to commonwealth in English.  The term commonwealth has no meaning in US federal law.

As an enclave of the US, Puerto Ricans are US citizens with all the rights of citizens on the mainland except representation in congress and being able to vote for electors for president.  Puerto Ricans (as well as all US taxpayers) also enjoy federal tax benefits for income earned on the island, although they do pay into social security and medicare, of which they do receive.  The US provides for military defense.