Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
INSIGHTS ON PBS HAWAII
Will Our Children Ever Be Able to Afford to Live in Hawaii?
Aired: 04/02/201556:49Rating: NR
There seems to be no end to the rising cost of living in Hawaii. The high prices of housing, groceries, gas and other necessities make it more and more difficult for us to live in today’s paradise. But what about our children? If it's this hard to make ends meet now, what will life in Hawaii be like for future generations? Daryl Huff hosts this discussion.
Just finished watching this. Seems like they basically said that there are not going to be any quick fixes. That it's going to take time, education, changes in the way business works, etc. All of that often moves at a snail's pace, and usually comes in increments. I don't know about you who live in Hawaii, but I got the feeling that your children, for the most part, may NOT be able to afford to live in Hawaii unless they're very well educated and their skill set is desirable and well-compensated in Hawaii. Looks to me like the changes they talk about are going to take at least a couple of generations to accomplish. So, I came away with the idea that most of your children won't be able to afford to live there (in their own homes, at least), but if things change, perhaps your grandchildren or great grandchildren might be able to.....
I'd love to hear what locals have to say about the video.
Location: Southernmost tip of the southernmost island in the southernmost state
982 posts, read 1,172,340 times
Reputation: 1652
Meh. My house here cost half of what a comperable house did in California. Cost of living isn't much higher here either. Will my child be able to buy a 3/2 in downtown Honolulu? Probably no more or less likely than she will be able to afford to buy the same in San Francisco.
Hawaii is expensive, but I've lived plenty of places that had a higher cost of living.
The first thing they need to do is to raise the minimum wage - a LOT. $15 an hour to start, perhaps reaching $25 an hour in 5-7 years. This is the only way Hawaii will be able to defeat the cheap employers who refuse to pay workers a living wage - like the rest of the United States.
The thing I don't understand, Hawaii is supposedly a liberal state - if this is indeed the case, why hasn't more been done to raise the standard of living of the working class in Hawaii? They need to get that minimum wage up, and fast. Then they can move on to rent controls like NYC has done for generations, for the benefit of vast numbers of people would never be able to live there otherwise.
Actually, if it were me making financial decisions for the state, I'd require that all businesses within Hawaii have their corporate offices and major business owners living in the state. Right now there's so much money that gets spent in Hawaii but immediately gets shipped off island to the owners of the various businesses. I'd also require that Hawaii grow more of it's own food and get entirely shifted to solar electric or at least as much as possible. Maybe require businesses to have a certain percentage of their products made in Hawaii if that would be possible.
So much of Hawaii's economy is driven by tourism, but where does each tourist dollar go? They fly in on United, Continental, Alaska Air, etc. None of that money stays in Hawaii. Not sure who actually owns Hawaiian Air, they hire folks and have offices here. Then the tourists rent a car from Avis, Hertz, etc. Other than a few jobs cleaning cars and checking them in and out, not much money stays in the state or filters to the workers from that. Then the tourist go to a hotel in Waikiki. Any of them owned locally? Nope. All that money then immediately leaves the state and the only jobs are for hotel workers. If the tourists go to a mom and pop restaurant or take a tour with a locally owned company, then finally some of the tourist dollars are directly benefiting the local economy. Although a lot of the restaurant food is bought from the mainland.
There's so many fingers in the Hawaii pie it's amazing there's room for them all but so very few of them are local fingers.
Actually, if it were me making financial decisions for the state, I'd require that all businesses within Hawaii have their corporate offices and major business owners living in the state.
So a national company like Costco, which actually helps lower the cost-of-living with cheaper food and gas, would have to close?
Where does the money spent at Costco go? Costco, Walmart, Kmart and the rest of them are part of the problem. All the money spent there goes off island and doesn't stick around to help the island. If Hawaii produced more of it's own food and goods, then the money would stay in the state. More and better jobs, more money circling around. Also, by being at the end of a huge long supply chain, folks living in Hawaii can't afford the sheer consumerism that seems to drive a lot of the mainland economy.
The idea is not to make it less expensive to live in Hawaii by selling cheap crap to the locals but to keep the money in the economy and provide valid jobs for folks producing food and goods. If folks were growing and selling something instead of buying everything, they'd have more money. Much of Hawaii's problem is all the jobs provided are service jobs, nothing to get real income from. Nor are they being educated to expect or try anything else.
The folks making decisions don't seem to want to encourage folks to thrive, either. Look at the paper pulp eucalyptus trees that were planted on Hawaii island after sugar went down. Instead of planting trees of value - tropical hardwoods like koa, mahogany, teak, toon, etc., they planted pulp trees that require a huge amount of them to make any money. And, the money made does not go to the workers in the trees, it goes to the owners of the tree lots. (There are also biological concerns with the eucalyptus wrecking the soil and the near offshore areas where the rainfall runoff goes but we won't get into that at this time) There's maybe a hundred jobs provided now for all those acres of trees that were planted. Nobody can eat them, they don't produce lumber for our local craftspeople. Instead, the trees are harvested and sent to Japan to be made into paper pulp. Had those same acres been reforested with assorted hardwoods, they would have been able to already harvest hardwoods instead of junk pulp trees. Koa is worth a lot just as lumber, after our craftspeople have worked on it, it's worth a whole lot more. Right there, that one choice to plant a pulp commodity instead of a valuable timber crop has impacted thousands of folks and not in a good way. Had all those acres been planted with food crops, the state would be much better off.
The first thing they need to do is to raise the minimum wage - a LOT. $15 an hour to start, perhaps reaching $25 an hour in 5-7 years. This is the only way Hawaii will be able to defeat the cheap employers who refuse to pay workers a living wage - like the rest of the United States.
The thing I don't understand, Hawaii is supposedly a liberal state - if this is indeed the case, why hasn't more been done to raise the standard of living of the working class in Hawaii? They need to get that minimum wage up, and fast. Then they can move on to rent controls like NYC has done for generations, for the benefit of vast numbers of people would never be able to live there otherwise.
You've set your sights too low. To be a 1%er means a family income of about $350k at a minimum, which translates to about $168/hour (40 hour week). Why not just raise it the minimum to $168/hour and we'll all be 1%ers! If $15/hr is good, 11x that would be 11 times as good. Seems logical to me. Where do I sign up? Mahalo.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
They need to get that minimum wage up, and fast. Then they can move on to rent controls like NYC has done for generations, for the benefit of vast numbers of people would never be able to live there otherwise.
Seems logical to me. Where do I sign up? Mahalo.
