Friday, October 17, 2014

Hawaii Ranks Low Again In Multiple Economic Categories

We like it that way: Screw the poor by screwing the not poor, and feel virtuous doing so.
State Senate Minority Leader Sam Slom stated, “I agree with the authors of Rich States, Poor States when they write “Most politicians know instinctively that taxes reduce the activity being taxed – even if they do not care to admit it. Congress and state lawmakers routinely tax things they consider “bad” to discourage the activity.” We see this when we tax tobacco and alcohol....You can’t overtax the people to support bad spending habits, and then expect people to stay and invest in our state.”
As the article also says:
there is cumulative domestic migration loss of 26,409 people from 2003 to 2012, with a net domestic migration loss of 2.4%.
The Democratic Party's subservience to the Sierra Club (the most powerful lobby in the state, and a virulently anti-building one at that) has driven the median resale price of a house here to a statewide average of roughly $675,000. Try affording that as a school teacher, or anything else, for that matter. No wonder the young move to the Mainland to escape the consequences of voting Democratic. They probably still vote Democratic on the Mainland, though, so they effectively infect the Mainland as well. They do not see the connection between making it extraordinarily difficult to build homes and the rising price of existing homes.

And the Hawaii Republican Party does a miserable job of pointing that out.

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Pat said...

Hawaii Ranks 17th in Economic Performance, 36th in Economic Outlook

That's what the ALEC report actually says, if anyone cares to download the PDF and read it.

As you point out in another post, "belief is truth", so a Republican state senator will cherry-pick the report to support his narrative, and issue a "news release" with a deliberately misleading headline.

Can you say "confirmation bias"? I knew you could!

Saturday, October 18, 2014 at 2:27:00 PM HST  
Blogger TTB said...

Thanks for your comment, Pat.

Are you suggesting that the median price of an existing house in Hawaii is not roughly $675,000?

Are you suggesting that 'environmentalist' objections to building any housing people are willing to pay for does not have something to do with driving up the price of housing?

Are you suggesting that the 'environmentalists' who object to building both houses (Sprawl!!!!) and high rise housing (Density! Blocked Views!!!) are not responsible for our current housing prices?

The Democratic Party has controlled state and local governments here for over half a century. Are you suggesting that the price of housing here is the responsibility of the Republicans or Libertarians?

Are you suggesting that when 'environmentalists' and 'socially responsible' people use the Democratic Party to force developers to use market rate sales to subsidize below market-rate units, they are not making it the peculiar responsibility of buyers of new homes to subsidize others?

The Democratic Party owns every problem we have in Hawaii, from potholes to exploding sewers, from housing prices to under-maintained schools, from underfunded government employee retirement funds to underfunded government retiree health benefit funds, from homelessness to the homeless crapping on the sidewalks of Waikiki, from the worst paid public school teachers in America -when wages are adjusted for cost-of-living- to voter apathy so great we have the lowest turnout in America.

Whether Republicans or Libertarians could do better is irrelevant: The Democrats have demonstrated for half a century their utter incompetence at every single function of government. They succeed at only one job: Making sure that no one holds them responsible.

Sunday, October 26, 2014 at 10:23:00 AM HST  

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