I've been reading quite a bit lately about the cost of living in Hawaii, with the general consensus being that it is much more expensive to live there than the mainland. I can understand the higher prices on certain items (oil being one of them) since it needs to be shipped from the mainland to the islands. What I don't understand, however, is why home prices are astronomical while wages are in the toilet. Someone....PLEASE....explain this to me. If land were limited, sure, but it's not. The Big Island, for example, has SO much available land (well, aside from the areas inhabited by lava flows) that it just boggles the mind. In addition, islands like Kauai and Molokai, admittedly quiet, have nothing BUT land (though in the case of the latter, it is because of the native population hell-bent on living like their ancestors [which I'll get to in a second]). It would seem to me that despite certain efforts to maintain a "paradise" for visitors, the droves of people apparently flocking to the islands would scoop up all this land and build something even MORE attractive. I mean, why not put a nice house or resort near a quite beach on Kauai? If there is one, there will likely be two, and from two to four and so on. Answer me this: What do the developers of these sites have to gain (aside from out-of-control profits that they don't deserve) by selling lots to only the rich? Why not sell lots for $20K or $30K, allowing a $100K house to be built on it? There are only so many developers on the islands and they're making all the money anyway. To whom do you think the $5M houses on the beaches of these lovely islands belong to, anyway?
Hawaii is constantly complaining about sovereignty; in fact, it's a really big deal at the moment. It seems as though the native Hawaiians want the same "governmental protection" that the American Indians and Alaskan Eskimos receive. Seems odd that they'd want to be herded onto reservations, only to pursue the lifelong ambition of "casino pit boss," don't you think? Maybe that's why they get paid so little; they can't seem to find any common sense.
Why do "non-native" kama'ina (residents) get paid so little, then? My guess, and it's only a guess, is that most businesses (though not all) -- particularly those owned by Hawaiian blood -- get a tax break to open shop in first place (though why t-shirt shops and tour companies deserve a tax break is beyond me. Chances are it's because, of course, they couldn't afford to open it themselves and because Hawaii wants to generate it's own income instead of depend on the mainland). So a guy, on SOMEONE ELSE'S (tax) MONEY, opens shop, sells a few surfboards (or whatever) but realizes it takes one person to show some tourist how to use the board and the other to man the register, creating a job for some surfer kid happy to have anything in his pocket to pay for his board wax (this, apparently, is the reason they have the lowest unemployment in the country, by the way). Since Surfer Boy is happy to have anything at all (partly because he's a kid and partly because it USED to be difficult to find ANY job in Hawaii), he is content with $5.00 per hour. Of course, Surfer Boy doesn't know how to do anything but surf and the owner wants to develop his own custom board so he starts to look for someone experienced in developing surfboards. Since there are very few people with this knowledge and experience on the islands (just stay with me, it's a HYPOTHETICAL, OK?), he puts an ad on Monster.com and gets about a thousand resumes of people with ten and twenty years of experience looking to move to Hawaii. He doesn't want to hire any of them because it would require relocation costs, and god-forbid he eat into his profits any more than he needs to, so he's stuck with Surfer Boy. Surfer Boy knows how to surf, of course, but the best he can do when it comes to developing a surfboard is to cut a ragged shape from some wood (which had to be imported, by the way). Of course the board fails to generate interest and therefore income. The owner fires Surfer Boy and has to start all over again. Hmmm, anyone see any problems here?
Anyway, I just needed to get this off my chest.
