The REAL reason Gamestop left Puerto Rico at 1:46 PM

"Power(off) to the Players"

So as you may have heard, Gamestop has decided to close all 7 of it's stores in Puerto Rico and GTFO. As a Puerto Rican living in Puerto Rico I can explain it slightly better than IGN, but it'll take me a bit of time because the story of Gamestop leaving the island is also basically the story of the of the island itself.

So in the  late 1890s the Americans took the island from Spain after 400 years of spanish rule during the Spanish American War.  We could talk a long time about this and why it happened or if it was right, but ultimately that has nothing to do with Games.

After a few decades of military rule, it started to look a little bad. So they made the Island a Free Associated State, which since it's not a colony, forever solved all status disputes with the US forever(citation needed) . Now we were all American Citizens, but the island had only words to represent it on congress and no vote. Congress also reserves the right to undo any laws we try to do.

Financially, the island started to progress because several laws made it a good place for the manufacture buisneess. Cities were built,  and people started achieving enough capital to spend on frivolous stuff, like  TVs and Games.

However, eventually, the laws that made manufacture a good buisness were taken away, and slowly but surely the backbone of our economy started to fall under us.

This was the point to find a NEW backbone to our economy. But our leaders had a different idea: Borrow a lot of money and pretend we were ok. They Weekend at Bernies-ed our Economy. After all, would a collapsing economy have an expensive train that runs  a short distance? An expensive obelisk praising the chief of police? Giant metal avocados?

Our leaders suck. Can you tell?

The thing with borrowed money is, you have to pay it back or else people won't want to lend you more. Soon the size of our debt was mirrored only by our lack of resources to pay it back. And so, our government looked to the only reasonable source of income it could: giant corporations that owed it billions of dollars and had operated for years without paying them The informal economy,

The informal economy is mostly  criminals who sell drugs and guns, but don't  pay any taxes on those because...they aren't doing this to pay government. However, it also includes, say, people selling water bottles on the street, who aren't paying taxes on them because...fuck the government.

So they made a tax on bought goods of 7%. So if you buy a pack of waters to sell on Walgreens, or a Kawasaki bike with which to shoot up your drug rivals, you pay the cost of that, and a 7% tax charge on that.

The only thing they forgot was that they suck at doing their job. Oh, a cop would fucking threaten you with thousands of dollars in fines if you sold water on the corner now, but although most buisnesses charged this new tax, the government had no system in place to see if buisnesses were actually giving them the REAL 7% of anything. Many places did charge the tax, then proceeded to pocket the money.

With the noose tightening around their neck, the government came up with new incremental taxes on the chain of production itself, figuring if it could tax stuff at every point of retail, it would make  a lot of money.

Instead that, along with the continual increases on the cost of water and electricity, are killing the very idea of malls. You see, the owners of a mall charge  the stores within it, and that's how they make their money. Stores like KMart and Gamestop are mall stores. There aren't loose Kmarts and Gamestops around.  So, with imported goods taxed several times over before they hit the shelf, Malls refusing to back down on their rental prices, and frankly the economy being in the shitter because...there ISN'T an economy,  stores like Gamestop can't find any ground anymore.

While it's not quite a good thing that Gamestop is going away, I want to see the positive side of it. It's certainly good for Neo Japan. It's a small place, near my home. I've been meaning to go there, but now, I won't have choice it I want to get my game on.

I will miss Gamestop, and it's used games, and used games  sold in new boxes for new game prices, and the way they gave you 25 cents of discount if you brought them a used game from 2 years ago, I think we will  survive.  We somehow always will. This is hustler island.