Paradise?

Please close your eyes for a moment and imagine a paradise…..

Done? 

Doesn’t your image  closely resemble  a  lush  tropical island  with palms and sandy beaches? 

 Didn’t you imagine being somewhere  in the Polinesia, Hawaii, Thailand or the Caribbean?

Hmmm……..

Now close your eyes and imagine a cold, cold country with lots and lots of forests,  thinly interspersed with small villages and a handful of  medium size cities. The people there are – statistically at least – well taken care of by their government, have access to education, health care, good quality housing, long vacations and even  decent paying jobs. Is that  what you’d call a paradise?

The length of the day  there is -during summer – more than impressive – it’s unbelievable. Yet, in winter, even in the southern part of the country, the daylight begins around 9 am and ends before 4 pm. You notice that people, no matter how well taken care of, do not exhibit anything even remotely reminding of  a joye de vivre – they are serious, if not gloomy, listen to melancholy songs all day and night long and are prone to alcoholism of a rather joyless variety :  in its crudest form straight vodka (good one, though), on a street corner or in a portal of  a building, from a bottle hidden in a brown paper bag.

I have been there – it is a beautiful country, full of the wild, stark beauty, thousands of lakes among the deep, dark woods…  and  filled with honest, friendly, hospitable people.  But is it a paradise?

And yet, according to a country ranking based on a combination of  UN Human Development Index and the Environmental Sustainability Index created by  Yale and Columbia Universities and the World Economic Forum,  if you are searching for the best quality of life ( wouldn’t it be the definition of paradise – a place with the best quality of life?) you need to move to Finland, or – in a descending order – Iceland, Norway, Sweden or Austria.

All winter paradises, perhaps. But if you are fond of islands, palms, tropics, what do you do?

I think someone in Puerto Rico had an ingenious idea of  remaking Puerto Rico based on Finland as a model (see former post: Stagflation??? Tsunami???). 

How could it look like? Let’s see…

First, all the high quality of life paradises have abundant natural values – so does Puerto Rico, so here we don’t have to do much.

Next – they all have very low population density. Puerto Rico has one of the world’s highest. So, what do we do? I have an idea: lets make a Paradise Union between Finland and Puerto Rico and ship the majority of Puerto Rico’s population to Finland. Finland still would have a very low population density, but now so would Puerto Rico.

Third: open a rum distillery in Finland and  let  relocated Puerto Ricans teach Finns how to have fun on the lighter side, without  necessarily always combining it with transcedental meditation of one kind or another. Lets combine sappy sentimentality with the lightness of carefree living!

Fourth: since the named ranking lists Stockholm and not Helsinki as the most livable city in the world, we’d probably need to make a separate Stockholm-San Juan Union … or  make first Helsinki a bit more like stockholm and then make a Helsinki-San Juan Union as a part of the larger  Finland-Puerto Rico Union.

Hmm, I gotta return to packing, but I hope that you got ideas – even better than mine – on how can we improve Puerto Rico based on Finland and/or how to improve San Juan based on Stockholm.

So please, be my guest and post your ideas  here as comments. And remember – dream big!

 

Stay Away… or PAY!

There are countries ( like Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Myanmar, Singapore – to name just a few) that welcome immigrants, particularly those, who, like retirees or investors,  will bring their money with them, without competing for the jobs with the locals. Those countries try to lure those desirable immigrants by allowing them a host of priviliges, of which most common is a right to bring their possesions like cars, furnishing and other household items duty free. 

Not Puerto Rico.  Puerto Rico  is rarely a  retirement destination for Americans, other than Nyoricans (= New York Puertoricans) although it could for most Americans be  a “living overseas light” destination, a primer in the pleasures and perils of living in another climate, another culture, yet with many aspects of life similar to those in the USA.

For starters US citizens do not need to jump though legal hoops to gain residency – Puerto Rico is a US territory and  – at least in theory – every US citizen – or  resident – is entitled to living – and even working  – in Puerto Rico.

Yes, there is a high unemployment in Puerto Rico and the income levels are much lower than in the USA:- according to official statistic the  unemployement rate is over 12%, while median wage in Puerto Rico is only about 1/3 of the median wage in the lowest median-wage state in the USA – Mississippi.  And the cost of living in Puerto Rico is  higher than anywhere else in the Caribbean or Latin America, with San Juan supposedly the most expensive city in the Caribbean – but – legally – there are no legal restrictions on a US immigrants’ right to live and work there.

There are, however, economic restrictions: Puerto Rico tries hard to restrict the influx of  immigrants – any kind of immigrants – by imposing excise duties on any and all goods brought to the island by practically anybody.  Even its turist board,  while welcoming vacationers,  is doing its best to discourage potential immigrants: on its discussion board, experts on Puerto Rico  try hard to actively discourage anybody whose questions suggest a willingness to become a Puerto Rican resident.

They point to island’s overcrowding ( which, statistically, is undoubtedly true: Puerto Rico has a population density much higher than most other places in the world), on its low income levels ( also, judging by statistics – true), lack of public transportation, which is at least one of the causes of  the horrific amount of cars  on the island, judging both by its size and by a cars per capita ratio.

Somehow  you don’t find them discussing positives,  like a much better access to affordable health care. – far, far more affordable than in the US proper. 

Positives like the islands bilingual status, which, at least in theory, should allow you to conduct at least government business in English – though I have as yet no information on how well does it actually work in practice. 

Positives like similarity of laws and jurisprudence, which – although tinged with Spanish traditions – appears to be pretty americanized.  No, I am not a  – blind – fan of American legal system or its jurisprudence – far from it. I simply think that to an average US citizen  similarity of jurisprudence is a plus, a fact that makes assimilation easier.

Positives like an abundance of  American stores with goods a US citizen is familiar with. Etc. Etc.

Add to it a rich culture, a – save for transportation – well developed infrastracture,  an abundance of  natural diversity: beaches galore, mountains galore, and  all kinds of forests, from dry forest (Guanica) to rain forest (El Yunque); great food, pleasant climate through most of the year, etc.

Finally, consider proximity to the United States and ease of reaching it thanks to a well developed network of flights.

But…. if you decide to not stay away …. be prepared to pay  for  everything you bring there. And if you decide to bring a car – which you can hardly live without on a relatively large island with no transportation – you’ll pay through the nose.

The newer and more fancy car, the more you’ll pay in excise taxes: nominally up to 40% of  your car’s value ….but with shipping costs added to the value, to make the tax even higher.

It may not be a sufficient deterrent to someone who knows Puerto Rico, knows that he/she likes living there and plans on staying there a long time.  But for someone who is moving there on a temporary basis – who, like me, was offered a job, a contract or an assignment there with a possibility to end it after 6 months, a year, two years,  but with an option to stay there as long as one  likes, it becomes a guessing game, an exercise in  figuring out how to  balance cost and comfort.

Is it worth while bringing my car over if I decide to stay there only six months? Or will I be better off buying – or renting/leasing a car there, even though cars cost considerably more over there? What if I stay a year, or two, or indefinitively? The calculation will change in each and every case, so you have to factor  different scenarios, assign probabilities, etc.

Still, life seldom follows the logical patterns and the probabilities assigned by our mind are vulnerable to the havoc our irrational emotions – or even fleeting moods of estrangement and loneliness – might at any time wreck on them. Why, or why can’t  we be more lice Vulcans (= from Star Trek)???

Or Puerto Rico more immigrant friendly?

 

Stagflation??? Tsunami????

I happened to look up a  Puerto Rico Herald and  got goose bumps. Turns out there is a terrible stagflation  (rapidly rising cost of living with low pay and high unemployment) in Puerto Rico and scientists warn against a  very dangerous tsunami likely to hit  Puerto Rico as well.

Why, o why am I going there??????????????? 

On top of  everything   the PR government wants to introduce vacation and other benefits for part-timers!!!! Horror of horrors ……for a crude American style anti-employee-rights demagogue. But I am an enlightened European (warning! Sangrona speaking) and  despise heaping  benefits on the  rich and super-rich  and stealing  even the crumbs of prosperity – or semi prosperity – from the population at large.

And in the same breath that Herald grosses over benefits for part-timers it also suggest Finland – with its economy at the top of worldwide competitiveness – as a model for Puerto Rico’s salvation.

Herald apparently did not study Finlands economic model too comprehensively, since it pointed out Finland’s high outlays on R&D (3% of BNP versus Puerto Rico’s less than 1%), but forgot to mention about Finland’s extensive benefits for workers of all kind: blue and pink collar to professional and managerial, fulltimers and all kinds of parttimers. There is no mention either that in Finland (like generally in Europe) the pay scale is much, much flatter than in the USA. So may be paying attention to all kind of employees instead of  grossly overpaying CEO’s, hedge-fund managers and a few other privileged categories could be a model to follow for PR… in addition to increasing investment in R&D?

Oh, well, the news happened to be two years old, and I can’t wait until I can see the dangers of stagflation, tsunami and the benefits for part-timers with my own very eyes  in only about a month!