The best way to keep salaries down is to keep unemployment high, that way people will be desperate for work and will put up with any shit to get a job, any job. Of course, high unemployment leads to all sorts of problems, like crime, civil unrest, or mass emigration (all of which have played a role in PR life, since long before I was there.) So how do you manage this? You put the unemployed population on welfare! This keeps them in-country and relatively quiet, and then they have enough greenbacks circulating so the locals can buy all those over-priced American goods flowing into the island on those over-priced American ships.

In this way, the American taxpayer subsidizes American employers on the island, and American companies selling stuff to the island. And the local government, desperate to employ its people, offers the yanqui companies tax breaks and leans on the unions so the US firms will invest there. Its cheaper to ship raw material to PR, build the product there, and then ship it to market than it is to pay CONUS wages to CONUS workers. And the "economic development funding", (foreign aid, also provided by the US taxpayer), goes into building up the tourist industry and its supporting infrastructure so the Americanos can get some Caribbean strange and the locals can make beds, mix drinks and buss tables.

CAN YOU SPELL ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM?
Its not done with gunboats, or bayonets, its done with dollars. We owe these people, big time. If we don't help them out of this mess, no matter how much it costs us, history will never forgive us.