AS YOU READ THE CONCLUSION TO HAWAI'I - THE DARK SIDE OF PARADISE, IS IT ANY WONDER THAN MORE AND MORE PEOPLE WANT THE ILLEGAL U.S. OCCUPATION OF HAWAI'I TO END?
Native Hawaiians constitute roughly 20 per cent of the state population, but they represent 54 per cent of the prison population.
Not coincidentally, they also have the lowest per capita income, the highest poverty rate and the shortest lifespan of any ethnic group in Hawai'i.
Hawai'i public school students receive a very poor education by any standard of measurement. They consistently rank among the lowest of any state in test scores.
Education reform has been talked to death by every governor and legislature of the past 30 years, but nothing substantial has been done. This has led to a "brain drain" in the islands. Most of the bright students who manage to learn something in spite of the handicapped school system leave Hawai'i for foreign colleges and careers.
In the 1980s, Hawai'i gained the enviable reputation of providing medical insurance to the highest percentage of residents of any state. A decade after the state ended dental cover, toothless smiles are commonplace among the poor. Tens of thousands of residents have no medical insurance at all.
Despite higher profits for many businesses, jobs are scarce and most of the available work pays minimum wage or close to it...
In some cases, the lives of the working poor are worse than the unemployed. Among other things, they don't qualify for state financial assistance or full food stamp benefits.
Even during the height of the hotel building boom in the 1980s, workers in the upscale South Kohala district of the Big Island were forced to sleep in their cars or public parks because they couldn't afford the high rents on hotel pay.
Today most of the Island of Hawai'i (Big Island) as well as the islands of Molokai, Lana'i and Kaua'i are economic wastelands with little opportunity to make a decent living.
On Kaua'i workers often share apartments or small houses with several other workers because rents are too expensive for one or two individuals to afford. On every island married couples with children often work two jobs each to make ends meet - if they are fortunate enough to find that many jobs, even at minimum wage.
Aside from housing, transportation and food expenses contribute heavily to Hawai'i's staggering cost of living. The prices of gasoline, mandatory auto insurance, used cars and repair work are considerably higher than the mainland.
And only the city of Honolulu has reliable public transportation. On the other islands owning a car is a necessity to be able to work or look for jobs.
Hawai'i imports two-thirds of its food from the mainland and locally-grown food is expensive due to high land prices. Although a relative scarcity of farmable land exists in the islands, some economists have concluded that land prices are artificially inflated through manipulation by the Big Five, giant land-holding companies owned by descendents of the five most influential missionary families who settled in Hawai'i two centuries ago.
But critics argue that even the food imported from the mainland shouldn't cost as much as it does.
One supermarket manager admitted candidly that Matson Navigation shipping adds an average of only 18 per cent to the cost of imported food. Yet prices range between 30 and 40 per cent higher than California where the Matson ships pick up the food for delivery to Hawai'i...
Meanwhile, the situation grows worse daily for the vast majority of people in paradise and it's unlikely to reverse direction anytime soon...
In the past, Hawai'i was known for its aloha spirit and laid-back lifestyle.
But by the early 1990s tourism, by then underpinning the state's economy, was under threat from cheaper competition.
The Gulf War and early 1990s recession lost Hawai'i its status and a lot of its visitors. The end of the Cold War saw cutbacks in military spending...
Now aloha is difficult to find as various ethnic groups vie with each other for the last crumbs of the once-large economic pie. And the pace of life has become frenetic in too many ways.
As one long-time resident commented: "Hawai'i is turning into one of those Caribbean tourist islands where you have fancy hotels and a tiny rich neighbourhood and the rest of the island is a shantytown of poverty and crime."
