Puerto Rico could encourage businesses to hire by eliminating mandatory $600 Christmas bonuses, 15 days of paid vacation and severance payments (two months pay if you work one year and six months if you work more than 15). Instead, Governor García Padilla wants Congress to extend the Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit and Supplemental Social Security Income to the commonwealth. Yet expanding the welfare state will likely further reduce its labor participation rate.

But Catholic economists typically see no problems with welfare state policies, and have no clue about how wealth is generated.