How’s it going over there in Hawaii?
onedrin asked:
Over the last several months things here on the mainland have been crazy to say the least. Gas prices, home sale declines, DEMOCRATS. But we rarely hear anything about Hawaii on the news. The most I see is the beautiful temperatures during the winter. I know that Hawaii has always had a higher cost of living than most of the mainland, but how is this “un” recession affecting Hawaii? Are you feeling the crunch as much as we are on the mainland?
Over the last several months things here on the mainland have been crazy to say the least. Gas prices, home sale declines, DEMOCRATS. But we rarely hear anything about Hawaii on the news. The most I see is the beautiful temperatures during the winter. I know that Hawaii has always had a higher cost of living than most of the mainland, but how is this “un” recession affecting Hawaii? Are you feeling the crunch as much as we are on the mainland?
April 20th, 2009 at 11:50 am
I live on Molokai, and the largest private employer on the island closed up shop in April. That’s also when Aloha Airlines and ATA abruptly ceased operations. In shaky economic times, the risk that your airline might fold and strand you in Hawaii doesn’t exactly make people want to book vacations.
I’ve heard tell of a hotel on the Big Island where recent bookings have fallen off more than they did after 9-11 (You may remember that no planes but military planes were flying for a few days back then).
And you rarely hear anything about Hawaii in the news, anyway. When you hear that Honolulu or Maui has the most expensive gas in the nation, you don’t hear about Molokai ($4.599) or Lanai, where gas prices will be over $5 this week.
We’ve been fighting the crystal meth epidemic over here for more than a decade, but you didn’t hear about it in North America until it began to spread in small towns in the midwest!
And how much did you hear about the various movements for Hawaiian Sovereignty before you visited? The long-brewing disputes over water rights? The truth is, for mainland media outlets to provide extensive coverage of Hawaii, they’d have to send correspondents out here, and they can’t afford to send correstpondents out here. But they learned long ago that their readership is not interested. In a newsroom on the US east coast, they used to ***** a joke about how many people from each nationality would have to be killed in a tragedy to make the front page. The punchline was that -all- the Pacific Islanders would have to die to make A-1.
The cost and standard of living in Hawaii have been issues for a very long time. Most of the land over here is owned by a handful of entitites, many the estates of the children of the original missionaries. Lots of folks who grow up in Hawaii live with their parents into their thirties and forties, even while they have their own children. Or they move to Las Vegas. There are so many Native Hawaiians in Vegas right now that there are 14 halau hula (hula schools) in Nevada.
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Yes we feel it too. Gas prices are way up and so are housing and food prices. It’s true that almost everything is more expensive in Hawaii than on the mainland, especially groceries. I have a small one-bedroom apartment and it costs $1,200 a month plus $150 for utilities (and the apartment was unfurnished when I moved in). Rents keep increasing but the salaries don’t. Many people have 2 or 3 jobs to afford Hawaii’s high prices. The average house is still very expensive here, about $600,000, but it also has declined a bit in the last months (it had been as high as $650,000 before).
April 23rd, 2009 at 7:20 am
YES! We are truly feeling the recession here in Hawaii.
Everything is IMPORTED…..and importing costs FUEL and fuel is going up up and up
gas is now at $4 or more ($4.23 where I live)
jobs are less, food, gas, rent, prices all have gone up….airline prices are way up
its bad here…..