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No taxation without representation either!
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2024
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This is actually the big wrench in just making them all states, some of the locals think the representation is worth missing out on to continue not needing to pay federal taxes.
In puerto rico this is especially pronounced since that's the territory most likely to achieve statehood in the near future considering how small the populations of all the other ones are. Even doing something extraordinary like giving out a representative for every 50k people would leave some of these places with only one rep in Congress while states like NY and California are fielding delegations of hundreds each.
I would think that the likely future of these territories are as Freely Associated States, basically independent defacto but with special benefits in exchange for staying under US military protection.
If Puerto Rico or DC achieve state status then Republicans lose Senate majority forever. If they both do, Republicans are totally fucked. Expect continued discourse of both sides disagree we can't do this etc.
I wouldn't be so sure. DC yes absolutely I frankly don't understand how the folks in that city haven't mutinied yet with how viciously they hate the Republicans. Puerto Rico on the other hand does not have a clean Dem/Rep split, and it'd take a while for Puerto Rico's local political parties to meld with the current system, and they could opportunistically choose to align with the Republicans if they thought they could get something out of it.
Also, for PR and USVI they would lose their Rum taxes. As island economies they are pretty limited, so they'd need to rely mostly on tourism to replace those dollars, however it's not like they can get much more than they already do.
States can't tax rum?
No, it's not that PR has taxes on their rum in PR, it's that all rum sold in the US that originated from PR has a tax that gets sent to PR. It comes to hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-27/chapter-I/subchapter-A/part-26
Of course I am having trouble really figuring out how much of a loss that would be to them. It's obviously very complicated to determine how much monies would end up coming in from Federal programs for states vs programs created specifically for them.
Can't they just tax the production and pass that to the consumers?
Then all the distilleries move to the USVI.
Would USVI even have the space for that? They're not exactly a territorial giant.
Probably. They poached Captain Morgan from PR, and they already have Cruzan.
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/15/1197958469/rum-wars-puerto-rico-virgin-islands-captain-morgan