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Puerto Rico is paradise. Beaches, lush mountains, and a rich culture. But beneath the beauty, something is very wrong. In 2006, nearly 4 million people lived here. By 2100, it'll be 1 million. That is insane. Puerto Rico, a US territory but not a state, is the poorest, most unequal part of the United States. And it's in free fall. A 20 year economic crisis, austerity, hurricanes, earthquakes and a pandemic hit the island hard. And instead of help rebuilding, Puerto Ricans got skyrocketing costs, privatized services, and mass displacement. But here's the thing. Puerto Rico isn't poor. It made American tycoons rich off sugar. Then it became a shining star of development. One of the richest
places in the Americas. The Caribbean's manufacturing powerhouse, pumping out life saving medicines and medical equipment. But all that wealth was drained off the island. Since 2006, 15% of Puerto Ricans have left. Puerto Rico now has the seventh oldest population on Earth. The tax base is shrinking as young people flee, while more and more people enter retirement. Puerto Rico's birth rate is the seventh lowest in the world. It's lower than Japan's. Nearly half the population lives below the poverty line. And despite paying more for electricity than anywhere else in the United States, rolling blackouts frequently plunge Puerto Rico into darkness for weeks, if not
months at a time in order to resolve its $123 billion debt. Since 2016, Puerto Rico hasn't even been ruled by its own government. An unelected fiscal control board nicknamed La Junta, hand picked by the US President calls the shots. And Puerto Ricans, despite being US citizens, can't vote for the president that appoints them. The local government has sold out the country as a paradise for the ultra rich. Dorado Puerto Rico. And I bought this $16 million house. Now real estate tycoons, YouTubers and crypto traders have flocked to the island in their thousands to live in a sunny US Territory while paying no taxes.
A Puerto Rico without Puerto Ricans is arriving fast. And this is the story of how we got here. The timeless surf pounds this Caribbean shoreline of what Christopher Columbus dubbed El Puerto Rico. This is Puerto Rico called Boriquen in the original Taino language, which is why Puerto Ricans call themselves Boricuas. Now you might be wondering why this island all the way over here is part of the United states. For over 400 years, Puerto Rico was a Spanish colony with no political autonomy. But by the late 1800s, things were changing. In 1897, growing anger with Spanish rule fuelled independence movements in Cuba and Puerto Rico. Faced with mounting resistance, Spain finally caved, granting both islands
limited self rule with elected parliaments. Puerto Ricans finally got a taste of freedom. Just a few months later, the US declared war on Spain. Spain, which was an old, decrepit and dying empire, quickly lost the war and in the 1898 Treaty of Paris handed Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines to the United States, while Cuba became an independent country under strict American oversight. From that moment on, Puerto Rico would be an American colony, a valuable military outpost in the Caribbean. In Washington, lawmakers weren't exactly sure what to do with Puerto Rico.
Should they grant it independence, make it a state or keep it in limbo? Eventually, limbo won out as American lawmakers didn't want to grant equal rights to savages addicted to headhunting and cannibalism. The insular cases, a series of Supreme Court rulings, cemented Puerto Rico's status as an unincorporated territory that belonged to but was not part of the United States. This allowed the US to rule over Puerto Rico without granting its people full constitutional rights. Puerto Rico was forbidden from negotiating trade treaties with foreign nations or setting its own taxes and tariffs. Puerto Ricans were subject to US taxation. Without representation in Congress, the island was
forced into the U.S. tariff system. There was now tariff free trade between Puerto Rico and the United States, making Puerto Rican sugar highly profitable for American refiners as it could enter the US tariff free, unlike sugar from a foreign country like Cuba. But this destroyed Puerto Rico's other industries. The island's main export was coffee grown by self sufficient farmers who had exported their beans to Europe through Spain. But now its exports were subject to tariffs Europeans placed on US goods cheaper. Brazilian beans rapidly took over the market and Puerto Rican beans couldn't compete in the US market which was already dominated by Brazil. Puerto Rico's coffee industry, once the fourth largest in the world, collapsed along with the
livelihoods of thousands of farmers. In 1900 the US appointed Charles Herbert Allen from Massachusetts as Puerto Rico's governor. As governor, he raised taxes on Puerto Ricans and denied them loans to develop their own industry while subsidizing American owned farms. And he handed over tons of government offices to high paid Americans. Hurricane San Siriaco devastated the island's coffee crop in 1899. A year later, Allen refused to distribute relief funds. Then in 1900 the US brought in a property tax on the value of property. American banks decided the value of the property American owned land was appraised low, meaning those owners paid almost no tax. Puerto Rican farmers, well their Land was appraised high and their tax bills exploded. The farmers,
reeling from the hurricane and penniless, were forced to sell their land. And guess who bought that land on the cheap American sugar companies. Governor Charles Herbert Allen spent just 17 months setting this all up in Puerto Rico. Then he resigned and he went straight to Wall street and started building a sugar empire. He and his business partners snatched up the ferry land he had helped seize from Puerto Rican farmers. And he got lots of help from all those men he had placed in positions of power. By 1920, Allen and US bankers had converted nearly half of all arable land in Puerto Rico into sugar plantations owned by American corporations. Thousands of once self sufficient Puerto Rican farmers were kicked off their land. Now they worked as landless
wage labourers, paid starvation wages on plantations on the land they had been displaced from. While Wall street made millions. Sugarcane workers on the island earned just 75 cents a day, less than half of what they made under the Spanish. What was once land used to grow a diverse range of crops and food was transformed into a sugar monoculture for export. Hunger became rampant. By 1907, Charles Herbert Allen's American Sugar Refining Company was the largest sugar syndicate in the world. Today it's called Domino Sugar. The profits from Puerto Rico's sugar industry flowed directly to the United States, with no reinvestment in the local economy. The work of Puerto Ricans helped to develop the US While their home remained stagnant. Without capital,
Puerto Ricans couldn't build their own industries. A local middle class never emerged and the island remained economically stunted. This was a textbook colonial economy. Puerto Rico's entire economy was redirected to produce what it did not consume, sugar and was forced to import everything else from its coloniser. The island existed solely to fuel American industry and to purchase American goods. As it was put in 1929, the American flag flies over a prosperous factory worked by slaves who have lost their land and may soon lose their guitars and their songs. Puerto Rico is now a land of beggars and millionaires. In 1917, Puerto Ricans were granted U.S. citizenship. But there was a catch. They couldn't vote in US elections, but they
could be drafted just in time for the United States to enter the First World War. In 1920, the US imposed this the Jones Act. It mandates that any goods shipped between two US ports must travel on vessels that are built in the us, owned by US citizens and crewed by US residents. A ship can transport goods from Santiago, Chile to Miami. But if it wants to pick up more goods in Miami to bring to New York, which is the most economical thing to do. It would have to transfer everything to a US owned ship.
Puerto Rico is right next to major shipping routes. The logical way to get goods there would be for cargo ships to stop on their way to the mainland. US drop some stuff off and pick up new stuff. But because of the Jones act, ships dropped their goods off in Jacksonville, Florida. Then four US shipping companies who monopolised this route and were convicted of price fixing jack up the prices before sending those goods to Puerto Rico. Shipping a container from the US east coast to Puerto Rico on a Jones act ship costs about $3,000. Shipping that same container to the Dominican Republic right next door on a non Jones act ship costs $1,500. The Jones act inflates prices across the island where people earn a third of the mainland wage. This also makes
Puerto Rico's goods more expensive to export, making them less competitive. The Jones act costs Puerto Rico $1.4 billion a year, and that might be a low estimate. The nearby US Virgin Islands are exempt from the Jones act and goods there cost half as much as in Puerto Rico. After the US Systematically dismantled Puerto Rico's agricultural sector, the lush, green, fertile island now imports nearly all of its food from the United States. Food in Puerto Rico costs twice as much as it does in Florida. And now about 40% of Puerto Ricans are estimated to be food insecure, four times the national average. Now you may be wondering, if this law is so bad, why
doesn't the US Congress just repeal it? Well, lobbying groups for American shipping companies have a lot more influence over Congress than Puerto Ricans who have no political voice. During the 1930s and 1940s, the United States brutally suppressed Puerto Rico's independence movement through massacres, the criminalization of the Puerto Rican flag and the arrest of thousands of Puerto Ricans and the murder of independence leaders. To quell dissent, the US Government collaborated with anti independence groups to enact limited reforms. In 1952, the colonial status was modified to become the Commonwealth, a free associated state.
Under the Commonwealth, Puerto Ricans can elect their own legislature, but the laws passed in Puerto Rico can be overturned by the United States Congress. These measures though, did not grant real sovereignty. The island remained a U.S. territory. It was not allowed to become a state, and they still couldn't vote in US elections, and they still can't today. After World War II, global sugar prices collapsed. Puerto Rico, one of the poorest places in the Caribbean, had to radically transform its economy. In the 1940s, they started Operation Bootstrap. Eliminating all corporate taxes to encourage U.S. investment in order to industrialize the island. This triggered a massive influx of American businesses that set up factories to
benefit from extremely cheap Puerto Rican labour. With tariff free access to the US market and no tax bill, Puerto Rico rapidly industrialized, turning into a hub for manufacturing garments, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, machinery and electronics. Between 1950 and 1971, per capita income rose by over 400%. Illiteracy was largely eliminated and life expectancy jumped from 46 years to 70 years. In 1976, the US Congress brought in Section 936 which allowed these US companies to repatriate all of their profits back to the US Tax free. Puerto Rico became one of the world's leading producers of pharmaceuticals and still is generating billions in profits for American firms. But this industrial boom came at a terrible
cost. American pharmaceutical companies used Puerto Rican women as test subjects for unapproved contraceptive drugs without their consent. At the same time, American eugenicists pushed for the mass sterilization of Puerto Rican women as part of a plan to reduce the population problem on the island. By 1974, one in three Puerto Rican women had been sterilized, many against their will. So common is the method that it is simply known as la operacion. What's wrong with sterilization and what has been wrong in the way it's been done in Puerto Rico is that very often women have not been informed. 42% of the women working in one factory outside San Juan were found to have been sterilized. Puerto Rico
had the highest sterilization rate in the world. Meanwhile, the island was poisoned for profit. Puerto Rico became riddled with over 500 super fund sites. Super funds are toxic sites filled with chemical waste. Companies like Abbev, Merck, Pfizer and Upjohn dumped toxic chemicals like carbon, tetrachloride, chloroform and acetonitrile directly into the soil and water. While the US military used Puerto Rico as a testing site, leaving behind napalm, Agent Orange and depleted uranium, Residents of the island of Vieques have a 20% higher cancer rate than the mainland. US children born near these Superfund sites suffer from higher rates of leukemia, seizures, learning disabilities and neurological
damage. Puerto Rico's transformation stunned the world. Countries like Ireland and Singapore looked at Puerto Rico's rapid industrialisation and took notes. They studied how the island attracted foreign investment. They saw how manufacturing and tax incentives could fuel an economy. But there was one huge difference. Ireland and Singapore have sovereignty. They can control their own economic policies. As a colony, Puerto Rico couldn't. For example, they couldn't repeal the Jones act to make themselves more competitive or to make prices on the island lower. Puerto Rico can't make trade deals with other independent countries. They can't even hire or lower the minimum wage because that's set by the US Congress. Ireland and Singapore
kept much of the wealth they produced. They reinvested it to create better jobs, to improve infrastructure and to develop new industries. Puerto Rico couldn't turn this system into genuine economic development. This system simply used Puerto Ricans as permanent low wage labour for US corporations, improving their global competitiveness. Since Puerto Rican firms didn't get the same tax benefits, they also couldn't compete with US Firms. The profit created by Puerto Rican workers drained out to the United States. US corporations extracted $334 billion in profits between just 2008 and 2017.
Puerto Rico is one of only three places in the world that lose more than 30% of the income generated within their territories. The other two are Equatorial guinea and Iraq. In 1996, Bill Clinton and Congress ordered the phase out of Puerto Rico's tax exemptions and set them to expire by 2006. Around the same time the United States signed the NAFTA and CAFTA trade agreements. One of Puerto Rico's key advantages has always been that it has tariff free access to the US market. But NAFTA and CAFTA extended tariff free trade to other countries in the region with much lower wages, erasing Puerto Rico's
competitive advantage. The impact was devastating. Thousands of factories closed and hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans were left jobless. The economy collapsed. Desperate to cut costs around 2009, they've hiked sales taxes, corporate taxes and income taxes. Utility rates are up dramatically. Some water bills have doubled. And to cut costs, government workers have been laid off, their retirement benefits cut sharply. But these austerity measures weren't enough. The island simply didn't have the cash to continue to pay for basic services. Unlike an independent country, Puerto Rico, who uses the dollar, can't print more money. They can't restructure
their economy, and they can't borrow money from international financial institutions like the imf. Puerto Rico did, however, have bonds. Bonds are essentially an IOU sold to investors with a promise of repayment plus interest. Since 1917, Puerto Rican bonds have been unique. They are triple trust tax exempt, which means they have no federal, no state and no local taxes, which makes them extremely attractive to investors. Even as Puerto Rico remained in a deep, deep recession, Wall street investors continued to buy more and more Puerto Rican bonds. They felt extremely secure in their investment because in 1984, the US Congress quietly passed a law that made it illegal for Puerto Rico to declare bankruptcy. Investors assumed that they
would get paid no matter what. As the 2008 financial crisis hit, Puerto Rico's economy continued to nosedive. And the government issued more and more bonds just to cover basic expenses. And their debt was beginning to crush them. For example, in 2011, Puerto Rico sold $1.1 billion in bonds, of which 850 million was used to pay previous debts. In 2017, they raised their 7% sales tax to 11.5%, making it the highest sales tax in the United States. And every single cent of that tax went to paying debt. By 2017, Puerto Rico's debt had skyrocketed to $74 billion, or $123 billion, including pension obligations. Wall street, knowing that Puerto Rico had limited options, was extremely predatory with the loans they offered. A huge chunk,
about 37.8 billion of that 74 billion dollar debt came from capital appreciation bonds. These are essentially the payday loan version of bonds. The original principal on those loans was just $4.3 billion. The remaining $33.5 billion is pure interest. In 2014, Puerto Rican bonds were declared junk and the island lost the ability to borrow any more money. In 2015, Puerto Rico tried to pass a law which would allow it to restructure its debt. The U.S. supreme Court struck that law down. And so the economy continued to crash. On June 28, 2015, a debt repayment bill of $58 million was due. Puerto Rico couldn't pay it. The governor was forced to publicly declare the debts are not payable. And let me put this
very clear, we are out of cash. As Puerto Rico spiraled deeper into crisis, vulture funds swooped in. Vulture funds are firms that specialize in profiting off financial collapse. They buy a country's debt for pennies on the dollar from bondholders who have written it off as a loss. They then drag the indebted country into court, almost always in New York, to demand full repayment. Squeezing massive returns from crippled economies. Vulture funds have infamously drained Greece, Argentina, the Congo and other indebted countries of billions. The investor, Paul Singer of Elliot Management, known as the Doomsday Investor, sued Argentina and won a 1,380% return on their original investment in the war torn Congo. In order to collect $10
million worth of debt that he bought, Singer started seizing about $400 million worth of the poor nation's assets in Peru. In the year 2000, as their president, Alberto Fujimori, fled charges of corruption and human rights abuses, Paul Singer offered him a private plane to escape on. But first he had to transfer $58 million from the nation's treasury to Singer, which he did. In 2015, Puerto Rico proposed a bill to the US Congress asking them to allow some of their public corporations, like the island's power authority, to declare bankruptcy. This would give the island some breathing room by allowing it to restructure about a third of its debt. Even some of Puerto Rico's creditors agreed with this, thinking that it would free up some cash to pay back
the rest of the debt. But the vultures wanted every last cent. These funds were already making huge donations to the Hillary Clinton, the Chris Christie and the Marco Rubio presidential campaigns, alongside lobbying other politicians. The calls came in and the bill died. After this, the vultures started buying up even more Puerto Rican debt. Forbes reported that in 2015, these vulture funds controlled nearly 50% of Puerto Rico's debt. In 2016, to ensure that creditors got paid, the US Congress passed PROMESA, which imposed on Puerto Rico a Fiscal Management and Oversight Board, an unelected, unaccountable board whose only mission was to get Puerto Rico back to repaying its debts and back into a position where it
could borrow money. It's known locally as La Junta because the board has absolute power and can overrule any Puerto Rican law. La Junta's seven members are handpicked by the US President with no input from Puerto Ricans. Despite being imposed by the US Congress, it is Puerto Ricans who will foot the $1.5 billion bill for La Junta. La Junta's executive director earns $625,000 a year, which is about 30 times the median Puerto Rican household income. Many of the people assigned to La Junta have connections to the financial world, many of whom helped to create the debt crisis in the first place. Now their job was to extract every last cent from working Puerto Ricans for the next 40 years. To ensure that Wall street and the vultures got paid, La Junta imposed
a brutal austerity program on Puerto Rico that hiked tolls, water and electricity costs, lowered the minimum wage, cut labor protections and removed sick days, slashed education funding, which led to mass school closures, gutted pensions and health care, cut infrastructure funding, and restricted access to food assistance. Puerto Ricans already tried austerity in 2009 and 2010. It only made things worse, forcing more Puerto Ricans to leave to the U.S. shrinking the economy even further. The way out of economic Decline tends to be growth and investment, not cuts. La Junta, however, insisted on driving down costs and
prioritizing faster debt repayments, especially to vulture funds. All while Puerto Rico rotted away. You have to evacuate, otherwise you're going to die. Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm, winds of at least 155. Category 5 with sustained winds of Hurricane Maria. And as you heard one official saying, the island is destroyed. I am begging, begging anyone that can hear us to save us from dying. If anybody out there is listening to us this morning, harrowing accounts of survival are emerging after Hurricane Maria's devastating blow to Puerto Rico.
Roads now rivers, homes demolished. 4 million residents here are without power. 100% of the island. Officials warn it could be months before electricity is restored. The hurricane, they say, was a problem. The greater tragedy is the lack of government action. There's a lot of old people here in Puerto Rico. They need help. You know, we can't let them die. I hate to tell you Puerto Rico, but you've thrown our budget a little out of whack. On 20 September 2017, Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico, burying entire towns. The island's infrastructure, crippled by years of austerity, collapsed.
500,000 homes were destroyed or damaged and the entire power grid was destroyed. The federal government's response was slow and inept. President Trump refused to waive the Jones act until 28 September, which delayed the response and increased costs. So why hasn't the government issued a waiver for the so called Jones act, as it did to help Florida and Texas recover from hurricanes? We have a lot of shippers and a lot of people that work in the shipping industry that don't want the Jones act lifted. When it was finally waived, it was only for 10 days. Nine days after Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, FEMA had
approved $141.8 million in aid. Nine days after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, FEMA had approved just $6.2 million. The United States was slow in deploying helicopters and hospital ships for weeks, while victims of the storm fought to survive one of the deadliest hurricanes in American history. Abandoned communities in Puerto Rico had no power, food, water, gas or medicine. People were forced to drink water from toxic Superfund sites. Ordinary Puerto Ricans came together in brigades to clear roads, deliver food and water. Along the way, we come across a caravan of more than 100 volunteers, church members who are traveling across the island distributing food and water.
Meanwhile, fema, the US Military and the local government failed to reach isolated communities for weeks. It took a full year to restore electricity to the entire island. Two weeks after the disaster, President Donald Trump visited Puerto Rico and infamously tossed paper towels at hurricane victims as the thousands of Puerto Ricans were fighting for survival. He said Puerto Ricans want everything done for them. After Hurricane Harvey, Trump told Texans to those Americans who have lost loved ones, all of America is grieving with you and our hearts are joined with yours forever. We are here with you today, we are with you tomorrow, and we will be with you every
single day after. After Hurricane Maria, Trump tweeted at Puerto Ricans, his fellow Americans, we can't keep FEMA in Puerto Rico forever. FEMA usually stays in disaster areas for years. Trump said this just weeks after the disaster, while people were still searching for their missing loved ones. Hurricane Maria killed over 3,000 Puerto Ricans. The hurricane didn't kill most victims, though. The deaths came from a systemic collapse that followed. Ambulances couldn't reach the injured, unsafe water made people sick, and communities went months without electricity to power medical equipment or safely store medicine like insulin. The vultures began to circle again. The firm Golden Tree bought millions in Puerto rican debt for 15 cents
on the dollar in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. They'll make about $160 million off that investment, which Puerto Ricans will pay for. After Hurricane Maria and the series of earthquakes in 2020, Puerto Ricans were just trying to survive. While they were distracted, La Junta moved to privatize all of Puerto Rico's public assets. Tolls, ferries, prepa, which is the island's power authority, were all handed over to private corporations with no vote, no oversight, but with massive price increases. In 2021, Luma Energy took over Puerto Rico's energy grid under a 15 year contract that required no investment from Luma, but required PREPA to pay Luma $125 million a year.
Luma fired experienced workers, dismissed union contracts and raised energy rates seven times. Despite Puerto Ricans handing over hundreds of millions of dollars to Luma, outages are now longer and more frequent than they were under Prepa, even after Hurricane Maria. Half of the island went dark on New Year's 2024, soon after a price increase. This is the price of electricity in the US over the last 10 years. This is Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans pay around double the US Rate for electricity. This is a major obstacle to economic recovery. High electricity rates drive up business costs, they drain household incomes, and they make basic survival difficult.
Puerto Rico's energy grid is based on oil and Gas. But the island has no oil or gas, forcing it to import fuel on expensive Jones act ships. Solar and wind energy are abundant on the island. After Hurricane Maria, communities with solar power had electricity for months while everyone else was in the dark. We were extremely happy to learn the solar system and Casa Pueblo was intact. We were the only place in town with power and we were able to be a source of energy for the community. There is a massive movement on the island demanding to rebuild a grid based on renewables, which would create a more reliable and safer energy grid while reducing costs, creating jobs and helping pay down the debt. As of 2025, only 7% of Puerto Rico's grid is renewable
because importing oil and gas is far more profitable for American energy companies. So the grid is being rebuilt on the same expensive, unreliable fossil fuel system that has already failed. Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico's public education system, causing hundreds of millions in damage. After the storm, locals rushed to help clear away the debris and save books and equipment. Governor Ricardo Rossell and La Junta rewarded them with massive layoffs and closures, Shutting down over 670 schools. Only 800 schools remain open. Families were forced to move to closer schools, which were now overcrowded and underfunded. As Puerto Rico's public education system was dismantled for profit, charter schools were forced on the island.
Charter schools take on fewer disabled and poor students. They have lower graduation rates and they force families into debt at much greater rates. Charter schools do, however, benefit people who own Puerto Rican debt. Apollo Education Group, a for profit school corporation and target of many federal investigations, owns Puerto Rican debt. Puerto Rico's education system has been dismantled on an island where over 50% of children live in poverty, cutting Puerto Rico's future off at the knees, forcing many families that want a good education to leave the island. Unlike for profit schools, the University of Puerto Rico has the best graduation rate on the island, with 64% of its students coming from low income backgrounds. The UPR is vital in raising
people into the middle class. Rather than rebuilding this crucial asset. La Junta slashed its budget by 50% and raised tuition by 300%. This despite the fact that research has shown that every $1 million invested in the university yielded a return of $1.6 million. Enrolment has plummeted and fields critical to Puerto Rico's requirements recovery, medicine, engineering and law were gutted. Its neurosurgery program lost accreditation due to a lack of funding. Puerto Rico used to have the best healthcare outcomes in Latin America. Its public healthcare was free to nearly everyone on the island. In 1993, the governor, Pedro Rossello, privatized Puerto Rico's public healthcare system. Much like
how his son Ricardo Rossello sold off Puerto Rico's education system. The results have been disastrous. Puerto Rico pays into Social Security and Medicare, like any US State. But when it comes to healthcare funding, Puerto Rico receives a fraction of what US States receive. Insurance companies frequently refuse to reimburse already low paid doctors. Puerto Rico pays to train specialists who then leave for better paying jobs in the states. In 2009, there were 14,500 doctors on the island. Today there are 9,000 to serve 3.2 million people. Puerto Ricans suffer higher rates of asthma, diabetes, heart disease, HIV, AIDS and preterm births than any U.S. state. Between 2001 and 2025, Puerto Rico's population shrank by 15%. By
2050, it's projected it will decline by 40%. Hundreds of thousands of working age adults, gone, driven out by economic collapse, austerity and rising costs. They leave because they have no choice. Puerto Rico is aging. Waiting rooms of underfunded clinics overflow with anxious seniors. And the few young people who stay behind struggle to find financial stability. They have fewer children than almost anywhere else on earth. This shrinks the tax base, stunting any possible economic growth. More people of Puerto Rican descent live on the mainland US Than on the island. Puerto Rican workers earn much less than their counterparts do in the states. Despite a high cost of living
and fewer federal benefits. Even after Bill Clinton's Repeal of Section 936, Puerto Rico still offers massive tax breaks to corporations. Manufacturers, mostly big pharma companies, extracted $100 billion in tax breaks from 2017 to 2020 23. But now the government is begging the ultra wealthy to come live on the island. A law, Act 60, offers wealthy Americans tax exemptions from federal and local taxes, capital gains tax, and taxes on passive income. This offer is not available to locals, but crypto millionaires are flocking to Puerto Rico. That's because if you spend at least half the year on the island, you're free of taxes on capital gains. What a deal. The result is that the ultra rich have swooped down to Puerto Rico to buy cheap land from Puerto
Ricans devastated by Hurricane Maria and years of austerity. So we had a big hurricane in 2017, and that was amazing for the island. Brock Pierce, crypto visionary and bitcoin billionaire, relocates to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. I only casually observe Brock Pierce's entry into Puerto Rico and claims that he was going to make it into a crypto utopia. But I'm well aware that the reason to go to Puerto Rico is for the tax benefits. I'm clearly not here for those economic incentives. The stuff that I'm interested in are the things like helping Puerto Rico. I'm living a life in service.
This has created hyper segregated communities of ultra wealthy tax dodgers and the eroding of the Puerto Rico millions of normal working people once loved. The purpose of Act 60 was to create jobs, but the result has only been a handful of cleaning, hospitality and other low paid, unstable jobs. Puerto Rico's beaches, legally public and open to all, are now being privatized by wealthy crypto investors, hedge fund managers and real estate tycoons. Locals say Aguadilla Piercort, the developer behind the construction site, has been building illegally on three areas near the cave, saying they've cut down a protected forest and let sediment from their site pollute the water below. Locals are being
pushed out by expensive hotels, short term rentals like Airbnb, and foreign investors hoarding properties. And while those Americans seek out a tax shelter in Puerto Rico, they're driving up the price of rent by 600%. The infrastructure that failed with deadly results during Hurricane Maria is still desperately underfunded. Infrastructure continues to deteriorate while exclusive hotels spring up and billionaires demand docking space for mega yachts. In San Juan, where puerto Ricans earn $30,000 a year on average, the median home listing is over $900,000. I'm moving to Puerto Rico so I feel like people are wondering why Puerto Rico, right? Like how random. Yeah, Taxes. It's one vertical. Yeah, it's one. Figures like
Logan and Jake Paul have moved to the island to dodge taxes while abusing the local environment. Billionaire vulture fund investor John Paulson, who made billions off the 2008 financial crash and the collapse of Greece and who owns millions in Puerto Rico's debt, is using Puerto Rico's distress to buy land and resort properties on the cheap. Why did Paulson decide to buy up all this land? It was cheap. Prices were plunging so he could get it for pennies on the dollar. The Puerto Rican government has used brutal force to crush any resistance to this scheme. Puerto Rico is now the fifth most unequal place on Earth. For centuries, Puerto Rico's wealth has been extracted, its labour exploited, its people sacrificed. It has
been a tax haven for the rich, a testing ground for experiments and a dumping ground for toxic industries. When Puerto Ricans demand independence, they are met with American bullets. They live as second class citizens with no political power pushed out of the homeland they clearly love. Today, under La Junta, Puerto Ricans have fewer rights while people work multiple jobs just to survive, paying high taxes for crumbling infrastructure, failing hospitals and a vanishing education system. Rather than investing in Puerto Rico in finding ways to bring the displaced home, the government has brought in tax dodgers who price locals out of their own homes. This kind of parasitic exploitation will soon destroy its host.
Puerto Rico is being emptied, erased, and auctioned off. Without change, we will watch something terrible happen in real time: a Puerto Rico without Puerto Ricans. But you probably haven't heard much about this because the media rarely covers stories like this with the depth they deserve. Which makes it hard to keep up with everything happening in the world. That's why Nebula is such a crucial space for creators. It allows series like 'War Room' by Real Life Lore to exist - a monthly briefing that covers the most significant geopolitical updates, from ceasefire deals to conflicts in Myanmar, Syria, and beyond. Nebula has an entire carefully curated News section to keep you updated. These kinds of
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