MGB:_The main injustice I see is that we are ignoring Cuba because we don’t like its revolutionary government. We quarantine it as if Antigua and Barbuda or Puerto Rio might suddenly go Communist if we reported on their tragedies.
The problem of the islands is that people live there. I am not sure it can continue but if it does, at least on the US side, the USVI and Puero Rico should be offered statehood, either together or separately, on much better financial terms than they get now and with full debt assumption. Either way, if there is tax reform that replaces most income and payroll taxes with consumption taxes and a high income and inheritance surtax, then they should not be exempt.
The other option is for Carribean unity. Instead of many nations, it should be a single nation or region inside a larger North American nation. This limits the elites from one island from dominating too much and provides enough ecoomic and social diversity to go beyond tribalism or the ferver of following one bishop’s reactionary ravings on abortion or marriage equality. Dominicans enslaving Hatians to harvest sugar could no longer happen if more people were watching. Connecticut could not succeed on its own before the Federal era. Why should Puerto Rico expect to have any diiferrent luck?
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