The peak of Puerto Rico’s mountain of debt is obscured in the clouds of unaudited financial statements, but what we can see looks nearly impossible to scale, according to a commentary today by Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) in the Washington Post. The island territory has a shrinking population of 3.6 million with a gross domestic product slightly over $100 billion, but is carrying $71 billion in debt with another $44 billion in unfunded pensions — equaling a debt of roughly $32,000 per person. Additionally, Puerto Rico’s labor participation rate is less than 40 percent. This means fewer taxpayers and a substantially higher debt load for wage earners. As bad as it sounds, it is still not even close to the United States debt load of $19 trillion spread among our 324 million citizens whom, if they were equally yoked, would each bear about $59,000 in debt.
