AND NOW THE CONCLUSION -
IS IT ANY WONDER MORE AND MORE PEOPLE WANT THE ILLEGAL U.S. OCCUPATION OF HAWAI`I TO END?
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."
