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maravilla, you are, of course, welcome to base your life decisions on secondhand anecdotal data (did you actually see the ten bloated up and dead Indian cattle, or is this something you read about that somebody else says they know somebody who says s/he heard about it?), but others of us would like to get a little closer to the facts.
Without excluding all the other possibilities and variables, you cannot blame the cattle’s deaths on Bt cotton (whatever that is). You need to know [u]what else[/u] they ate, what their health status was prior to eating the Bt cotton, and what the autopsy and post mortem toxicity testing revealed. You really don’t know that these ten cattle weren’t poisoned by contaminated drinking water, do you? Or do you?
As always, coincidence /= causation
[quote=”camby”]would at least if living there want a shotgun….[/quote]
Well, if owning a firearm legally is important to you, you’ll probably want to steer clear of Costa Rica. At the very least, you’ll have to be a legal resident, take a gun safety course, take a written test (both [i]en espanol[/i], I believe), and pass a psychological screening. Before those conditions are met, you cannot import or possess a firearm.
Somebody jump in here . . . Can temporary residents, ([i]pensionados o rentistas[/i]) own firearms, or must one be a [i]residente permanente[/i]?
[quote=”maravilla”]if you already consider yourself poor, for god’s sake, don’t move here. you will become even poorer as the prices for everything escalates.[/quote]
Maravilla’s right. Stay where you are, wherever that may be, where the cost of living is on a constant downhill slide.
[quote=”barbaracjohnson”
$115 is more that one-tenth of my social security. A good reason to leave Costa Rica. Not cheap at all. [/quote]C’mon now, Barbara. One person’s unfettered extravagance is hardly cause to abandon the whole country. $115 is more than I’d spend, too, but it doesn’t make me pack up and leave.
[quote=”ddspell12″]Are the prices of automobiles bought in CR reasonable?[/quote]
maravilla’s right. As compared to prices in the U.S., cars purchased in Costa Rica, whether new or used, are very expensive. That’s due to the high import duties, freight costs, etc.
What’s important to understand, however, is that no matter who imports whatever car is under consideration, the final owner is going to pay all those additional costs. Whether you import a new or used car from the States or buy one that someone else has imported to Costa Rica, you, as the final owner, will pay those costs. No one is going to give you money for free.
And, as others have pointed out, in Costa Rica it’s legal to roll back odometers (often tens of thousands of miles), to re-title U.S. wrecks, and to “assemble” vehicles from scrap. When you buy a used car here, you really have no practical way to know what you’re getting.
New cars, imported from Asia, are not quite the same as the same models imported to the U.S. either. Friends recently bought a new Kia sedan here. The comparable model in the States has six air bags. Theirs has two.
And a number of people I’ve talked to have asserted that new vehicles imported directly from Asia weigh 200 to 300 pounds less than the same model imported to the U.S. Since they look the same on the outside, and since they look the same on the inside, one wonders what’s missing.
There is no doubt in my mind. If I had the luxury of time, I’d buy a car in the U.S. of the same make and model as commonly seen in Costa Rica and import it. That way, I’d get current safety standards and I would have a much broader selection. And the cost would be virtually identical to buying something here.
[quote=”bogino”] I’m am not afraid to call a spade a spade. [/quote]
Just don’t call a spade “a spade” to his face or the knuckle sandwich that’s floating around the Forum could be yours.
And what about my Rolex?
[quote=”bogino”]Sorry to say but I [b]KNOW[/b] what I saw . . .[/quote]
I understand what you saw and I acknowledge the (limited) facts as you have presented them. What neither of us knows, however, are [b]ALL[/b] the facts.
Unless you can relate the name of the owner of the vehicle, taken from its title or registration, and unless you can relate the name of the driver, taken from her driver’s license, you really cannot draw the conclusion that this “Middle Eastern” woman, regardless of her heritage, was driving a car she owned. What you saw was a Middle Eastern (why that’s significant escapes me) woman driving [b][u]someone’s[/u][/b] Mercedes. That is the sum total of what you [b]actually know[/b]. The rest is your assumption.
If you have a bill of sale for the Rolex, and if you can prove that it’s genuine, I’ll happily have my credit union send you a check. Please send me a private message with your full name and mailing address. Otherwise, . . . [b]COME ON!!!![/b] I’ll keep an eye on my Inbox here.
Victoria, I have never asserted that there is no or little cheating in government-provided social programs. Nor would I. With my single perspective, I have far too little firsthand information to go on to make such a global claim. Others do so at the risk of their own credibility.
I can tell you, however, that since the 1970s the requirements for checking and verification have been dramatically strengthened. So the likelihood is that the programs are “cleaner” today than they were then.
I can also tell you that, based upon two decades of the hard data, generated by full-time Food Stamp Program auditors, which my wife analyzed for the USDA, the greatest incidence and the greatest dollar value of incorrect issuance was attributable not to recipients but to caseworkers, and the incidence of under issuance was as great as the incidence of over issuance.
In the case of [i]bogino’s[/i] anecdote about the Food Stamp user driving the Mercedes, s/he and we have far too little information to render a judgement. As maravilla rightly observed, that person may have been driving her employer’s car, her sister’s, her neighbor’s, or one on which she owed more than its worth. None of those would make her either ineligible nor a cheat. And since bogino didn’t (couldn’t, really) gather enough facts to get the whole story, we really don’t know if this person who, bogino says, walked like a duck and quacked like a duck was really a duck or whether she was an authorized surrogate shopper for a shut-in unable to shop for him- or herself. None of us really knows, do we?
Things are not always as they seem.
[quote=”pharg”]
…and speaking of mutate, the topic of this thread here is Crime in Costa Rica, which seems to have mutated to: “why I will/will not get vaccinated no matter what you say”.
PEH[/quote]. . . which is just one more example of forum drift.
[quote=”barbara ann”]All I know is that we got our drivers licenses with our passport and our Arizona drivers license and the physical and blood test and so did one of our Canadian friends with their Canadian license…the one person that could not was the Canadian that let his license expire in Canada. He went back renewed his Canadian license, came to CR, obtained his CR license in the 90 day window with his Canadian passport.
[/quote]Barbara ann, our experience was the same as yours — in 2005 — but this 2012 when COSEVI is widely reported to be requiring a DIMEX card in order to issue a driver’s license to an expat.
[quote=”bogino”]
If it [b]LOOKS[/b] like a Duck and it [b]QUACKS[/b] like a Duck then guess what: It [b]IS[/b] a Duck![/quote]Yes, but is being a duck illegal?
Or . .
If it looks [b]to you[/b] like a duck, and if it sounds [b]to you[/b] like a duck, does that alone make it a duck? (Maybe your perceptions are skewed.)
The others are correct that, if your Social Security benefit is sufficient, and if you live frugally, you can make it here in Costa Rica. But there’s a hitch . . .
Moving to Costa Rica isn’t cheap. Whether you ship your household goods (strongly recommended) or sell everything and buy new here, there are big dollar expenses to face initially and from time to time.
It’s likely to cost anywhere from $6,000 to maybe $15,000 to ship a container full of your household goods.
Airfare will easily run $500 per person or more (lotsa variability, I know).
You should budget about $2,500, for example, to have a competent Costa Rican attorney specialist shepherd your residency application through Immigration. Otherwise, you’ll be traveling to Panama or Nicaragua every three months and praying that you can get a new tourist visa.
You may need a Costa Rican driver’s license once your residency is granted. That’ll be around $75.
And then there are the things you forgot to bring.
All in all, prepare yourself with a healthy nest egg.
The question none of you has addressed is whether (worst case scenario) the Mercedes which this woman was driving would have disqualified her from Food Stamp participation had the issuing agency known she was driving it.
The Food Stamp program, WIC, housing subsidies, etc do not and never have required that their recipients be totally destitute to be eligible.
When I was a welfare caseworker in Michigan in the early 1970s, clients could have as much as $1,500 in the bank plus a virtually unlimited value of personal possessions [u]excluding automobiles, farm equipment, livestock, etc[/u]. The equity they had in vehicles counted against the $1,500, but it’s possible that the Mercedes in question was “under water” relative to what was owed on it. Or it may have been leased.
And if those limits have kept up with inflation since 1970 then the allowable “wealth” may be much higher. You cannot fault people for taking legal advantage of programs the government has put in place for their benefit. And you should not automatically assume that someone is cheating until you know the facts.
Things are not always as they seem.
