There is a lot about the gap between what needs to be done, and what is being done. State Legislature has passed bills to raise minimum wage, like the Living Wage for Hawaii Bill written by Representative Roy Takumi. It requires businesses that are contracted by the government to pay their workers a living wage of $9.43 and hour. This a good step, but it only applies to businesses that are contracted by the government. Businesses like construction companies who pave roads and build buildings. This doesn’t cover the thousands of other jobs, like office clerks, cashiers, waiters and waitresses, nurses, maintenance workers, security guards, and other laborers that are not contracted by the government.
Another hot issue to the hotels is healthcare. With the rising cost of good healthcare the hotel companies are starting to offer healthcare benefits to their employees.
Even though these things are being addressed, there are large amounts that can still be done. The State Legislature has not done much about the high healthcare costs, but they have required employers to provide healthcare for an employee that works more than twenty hours a week. They could still do more; hospitals and lawyers could also do more. The reason they don’t is because they make money off of it, with the exception of the stat legislature, they don’t. Lawyers and hospitals make money off high healthcare costs. A way to counter this is to make no reward for lawsuits more than a fixed sum of money. Putting a value on human life is a whole new conversation however. Also hospitals could have a set number of tests they could do on a patient and anything over that will need to be paid for by the patient. These laws could also be enforced by the state or federal government.
Another cost that makes Hawaii a very costly place to live is the cost of housing. Hotels companies try and make affordable housing accessible to their employees, but this isn’t enough. Hotels are going to great lengths to make sure their employees have access to affordable housing offers. In an interview for the Honolulu Star Bulletin spokesman Cade Watanabe said, “Many of our members live paycheck to paycheck,”, “They need a living wage to be able to afford the rising cost of housing.” Hotels have started to add in housing benefits in their employee’s benefit packages. Since this state is an island it restricts the number of people who can live here and the amount of materials. This inflates prices of houses which makes it hard for people who live here and work for minimum wage, to pay for houses. This contributes to homelessness and other problems. It is shown in an article in The Wall Street Journal. Published on January 11, 2007 it says, "Roughly 6,000 people in the state are without permanent shelter, according to Hawaii's Homeless Programs Division. That's nearly double the number without homes in 1999." This could be solved by state legislature. They could make it more difficult to buy a house in Hawaii which would prevent people from coming in to Hawaii. They could also have Kama’aina rates and tax breaks for people that already live here or have lived here for a while.
One thing that is being done is that private companies are converting large areas of land into affordable housing. On Maui Amfac is developing 4,300 acers into affordable housing. To read more about this go to http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2002/05/27/story1.htmlEverything that people need to be brought in by large container ships. This makes our gas, food, clothes, and other things as well very expensive. This can be seen on the website, http://www.alternative-hawaii.com/overpop.htm. This could be fixed by the state by giving subsides to Hawaiian farmers and promoting Hawaiian grown products. This would take away our reliance on the U.S. mainland for supplies. The Maui Land and Pineapple Company owns 25,000 acers of land on Maui. This is more than enough to take away some of our reliance on the Mainland.There could be tax breaks for people that buy home grown food, or even grow their own food at home. More emphasis could be put on solar energy and bio-diesel. These things are all possible, but there would have to be a lot of hard work and it might cost a lot of money for the tax payer.
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