A guide for change
By Anthony Clapes
"It's the economy, stupid!" With that mantra, Bill Clinton ousted a sitting president in 1992. In that same year, Hawai'i's economy was heading for far more serious trouble than the national economy had by then experienced, and 10 years later, it is still in trouble. The government and news media report that the economic picture in Hawai'i is improving. But is it?
Where have all the workers gone?
Government figures tell us that in April, Hawai'i unemployment stood at 4.4 percent, and that it has fallen below 4 percent since then. Most of us would conclude from these figures that the number of employed people is rising. It is not. The number of employed people has been falling since the end of last year.
Last December, the civilian labor force here stood at 579,000 people. In April 2002, the most recent month on the government's published employment spreadsheet, there were 574,000, about 5,000 fewer. There were also 4,000 more unemployed workers in April than in December. In other words, some 9,000 folks had stopped working or stopped looking for work in Hawai'i in the first four months of the year. Did some of those folks reach retirement age? Sure. But did some leave the Islands to find work, or just give up hope of finding work? You bet.
Unemployment figures, by themselves, are meaningless. The state is supposed to create employment, not unemployment, so why don't we hear about the size of the work force instead of the size of the out-of-work force? The answer is that the figures are too embarrassing.
In April, there were 574,000 civilian workers in Hawai'i. Ten years earlier, there were 581,000. In a decade, there has been no net job creation in the Islands. Instead, the number of people working in Hawai'i has declined. (So has the number of people working in or for the military, by the way.)
Mind you, this is not all the government's fault. Most jobs are in the private sector, and Hawai'i's businesses certainly have not expanded the job base in the Islands since 1992. Still, it is partly the government's fault, and this is an election year. As the national electorate did in 1992, Hawai'i's voters need to ask the candidates what they propose to do to create more jobs, better-paying jobs and an expanding economy.
Van cams and the economy
The best thing that has happened for the state's economy, since it went into recession more than a decade ago, is the van cam controversy.
The demise of the computerized cameras mounted in vans to catch speeding motorists is a near-perfect example of popular will controlling political behavior. When a sufficiently loud public voice emerged to make van cams page-one news, the politicians saw the momentum moving against the van cams and — in this election year — acted accordingly.
Never before in Hawai'i has the power of the people over their elected officials been demonstrated so graphically.
That triumph of the power of the popular will is incredibly important for the economy because it shows that if the public can demand a better economy forcefully enough, the politicians will turn on a dime away from perpetuating our job problems and toward fixing them. The "old boy network," if it still exists, is simply not as strong as the will of the people.
Granted, it's hard to get voters' blood boiling over economic issues in the same way that their blood boils at the sight of mercenary spies photographing private citizens as they drive to work. But that's what we need. We need that same passion, so that the politicians are energized to deal with the hard work of putting the economy on a healthy footing.
We need to get riled up over the economy in the same way the national electorate was riled up over the economy in 1992. What was it that galvanized the American voters that time?
Our frightening job situation
By 1992, a wave of corporate restructuring and layoffs had raised the specter of a serious recession. People who had jobs feared that they might be laid off or that their pay would be cut. Those uncertainties were the basis for the casting out of office of a president whose popularity rating soared off the charts a year earlier.
So how's the job situation in Hawai'i today? The right adjective might be "scary."
As already explained, the number of employed people has shrunk. In particular industries, the shrinkage has been dramatic.
For instance, from 1990 to 2001, the number of construction jobs declined by more than 41 percent. Transportation, communications and transport workers were down 16 percent. Manufacturing jobs were down 15 percent. Agriculture, down 15 percent. Hotel workers, down 12 percent. Finance, insurance and real estate, down 12 percent. Federal employees, down 11 percent.
Meanwhile, the number of state and county employees has grown by more than 18 percent each.
A second critical social problem created by our gasping economy
is the profound lack of well-paying jobs. Of the 25 largest occupations in Hawai'i in 2000, most paid average wages of less than $20,000 a year. For all 25 of those categories taken together, the average wages were about $27,000. Only seven of the 25 largest occupations paid average wages exceeding $30,000 a year, and only two paid average wages exceeding $50,000 a year.
Most disappointing of all, median household income in Hawai'i, after adjusting for inflation, was 6 percent lower in 1999-2000 than it was in 1984-85. In the United States, median household income was up 11 percent over the same period. In no year since 1990, except for 2000, has the income of the average employed person in Hawai'i grown to any significant extent after accounting for inflation. In 1990, average personal income in Hawai'i was 14 percent higher than in the nation as a whole. In 2000, it was 6 percent lower than in the nation as a whole.
If average personal income doesn't at least keep up with inflation, the average standard of living declines. Maybe you've noticed.
That is our economy in a nutshell: Faltering. Failing to keep up with the employable population. Failing to provide good jobs and good pay. Turning mortgages into unsafe gambles. Making Hawai'i an ever-weaker part of the U.S. economy. Breaking up our families and weakening our trade unions as individuals are forced to leave the Islands to find work. Stressing our social services and charitable organizations by sapping their sources of financing while demands on their aid increase.
Is your blood boiling yet? Which do you think is the more important issue for Hawai'i's people, van cams or the economy? This election year, with almost every political office in the state up for grabs, the people have a terrific opportunity to change Hawai'i's future for the better. Are you willing to demand that the politicians do something about the economy?
Great! Now, what should you demand that they do?
The People's Platform
That is the question that the People's Platform answers. The People's Platform is a set of simple, nonpartisan principles designed to serve all the people of Hawai'i by focusing the candidates' attention on what needs to be done to transform Hawai'i's economy within a framework of traditional environmental, cultural and social values.
The People's Platform contains only five planks, consisting of one basic commitment and four specific action items. Here they are:
Basic Commitment: Establishing a balanced-growth economy is the priority of government for the foreseeable future.
Action Items:
• Establish and empower a public/private Partnership on Economic Expansion.
• Create a result-oriented education system, kindergarten through college and beyond.
• Provide a 21st century, result-oriented government.
• Marshal capital for growth ventures.
Of course, these planks are generalities. It would be easy for any politician to express support for them. But generalized political promises over past decades have led the state into an economic quagmire. To avoid repeating history, the People's Platform provides specific goals and objectives for each plank.
Balanced economic expansion should be the priority of government because without it, all aspects of our society are at risk.
Therefore, we want leaders who will dramatically increase the focus of government on expanding the economy. That expansion should be balanced. We don't want growth for growth's sake, which has been the historical model in this state. Rather, we want balanced growth that raises the standard of living for everyone, honors environmental and cultural considerations and traditions, reuses underused and already-developed land, takes into account present traffic and infrastructure issues, and otherwise solves our problems rather than making them worse.
Public/private partnerships have been used by most countries and states that have turned their economies around. Within 90 days, we must establish a permanent, high-level Partnership on Hawai'i's Economy, composed of government, private sector, academic, union and nonprofit leaders. Within a year, this partnership will publish and implement a strategic plan to create a balanced, expanding economy.
In the economy of the 21st century, a good education is not a luxury; it is a basic vocational requirement. We are competing with too many states that rank higher in educational performance than we do.
Our goal is to put Hawai'i in the top third of the states in quantitative educational attainment within four years for K-6, and 6 years for K-12. You can complain about test-based teaching if you like, but there's no escaping. To compete with others states, we need to master the national test.
Make the University of Hawai'i one of the top 50 academic/research institutions in the country over the next 10 years, and make it a powerful engine of commercializable innovation. Finance the university for success by tripling its endowment every three years over the next decade.
Economic expansion comes from new technologies and new ideas. The University of Hawai'i needs to be the center of this activity in Hawai'i. However, the university's endowment is woefully inadequate to finance that mission.
Becoming a 21st century government requires that our state and county governments take seriously the competition with sister state and regional governments (and with foreign countries) to be the home of expanding industries. Within five years, we should be in the top third of states in automation of back-office government operations, efficiency of permit issuance processes, and elimination of obsolete, duplicative, ineffective or unnecessary operations.
We must promptly organize the state government's economic expansion efforts into a single, Cabinet-level agency.
Entrepreneurship has been the main source of growth and jobs in America for many years now. For the entrepreneurial spirit to catch hold, risk money has to be made available here. Tax incentives already in place have stimulated investments in promising startup companies in Hawai'i. However, local venture capital to finance the expansion of proven small growth companies is still lacking.
Working with the government and with businesses, foundations and other nonprofits, the partnership should by 2005 arrange for $200 million in local venture capital to be available for expansion of small, growth-oriented companies.
That is the People's Platform. It may sound business-oriented, but it is not about offering special favors to business; it's about putting business in the position of offering more jobs and better-paying jobs to all of Hawai'i's people. It may sound Republican more than Democratic, but it's not. It is nonpartisan; it favors only candidates who truly care about the future of this state.
It may sound like something that's barely possible to achieve, and it is. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
In creating a new economy for Hawai'i, our reach must exceed our grasp, because the goals of the People's Platform are challenging and not within easy reach. If we stretch for those goals, though, we will succeed in creating a strong economy in Hawai'i.
If you'd like a copy of the complete People's Platform, or would like someone to talk to your civic group or organization about it, e-mail tclapes@attglobal.net or call 595-0128 on O'ahu.
Anthony Clapes is author of "Blue Wave Millennium: A Future for Hawai'i." He lives in Honolulu.
