Hawaii Tourism Cool Down Looms - good or bad?

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

borrowing 10 billion dollars a day

A lot of that was from the free money given out during COVID. People couldn’t work, but needed money to survive.. Businesses weren’t open, and it was deemed preferable to pay them money than to have them close down. Etc.

Inflation was/is from money pumped into the economy that was not earned or produced from manufacturing, work, etc.

But the alternative probably would have been far worse.

[HiloJulie]

Hawaii's bureaucracy and anti-business laws have made any alternatives to tourism difficult, and now they are making tourism difficult. 

Case in point- these are figures off the internet so may not be 100% accurate and currency conversion plays a role so just consider them ballpark.  I choose Japan as the reference because we get a lot of Japanese tourists.

Minimum wage in Hawaii:  $14/hour.  Increases $2/hour every other year.

Minimum wage in Japan:  $6.09 - $7.66 depending on Prefecture, average $7.17.

Average wage of a hotel housekeeper in Japan:  $8.24/hour.  Average of a Hawaii housekeeper $16-$21.83.  And now it's considered appropriate to add a gratuity. 

Annual average income of a Japanese worker:  $41,509.  Hawaii:  $61,410.

Hawaii hotel taxes (Oahu) 17.9%.  Japan 9%.  Hawaii resort fees per night $30-$50.  Japan- resort fees are not common.

Restaurants- moderately priced: Hawaii $30-50. Japan $15-30.

Maybe our tourism is suffering because we're pricing everybody out?

All 100% true and correct.

But one very important comparison is health care costs.

Japan has, OK, "socialized" health care which pays 70% of your health care costs. Private Insurance is available for purchase, thru employers or on the public exchange which covers the other 30%. At about 1/3 the cost of their American counterparts.

Japanese residents also live 6 years longer than Americans.

Further, Japanese health care has a very liberal mandatory maternity leave program that allows for 6-week pre-natal and 8 weeks post-natal as well as allowing either spouse UP TO ONE FULL YEAR of paid childcare time off for the baby's 1st year of life.

Also, of interesting note - Japan's obesity rate is 4%. America's is 40%.

ETA: Japan ranks between Number 1 and 3 for overall healthcare, while America hovers in the high 60's to low 70's

[terracore]

The difference is that Japan has a healthcare system, and the USA has a profit-driven illness management system.

TPTB want their constituents fat, sick, and dependent. A dependent populace is a compliant one.

The N in SNAP stands for "nutrition". You know... like Red Bull, Mountain Dew, Snickers. Anything so long as it's not served hot.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Japan's obesity rate is 4%. America's is 40%.

And some of that 4% are sumo.

[ironyak]

Figured worth reviving this thread as Hawaii tourism cool down is now in the works. Going with "bad" for oh so many, many reasons to strip search, imprison, and deport two backpacking teenage girl tourists.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/teenage-gi...king-trip/
"Two teenage girls from Germany were detained, arrested, and deported at an airport in Hawaii after immigration officials said it was suspicious they had not booked a hotel room.

Backpackers Charlotte Pohl, 19, and Maria Lepere, 18, arrived in Honolulu from Auckland while undergoing a round-the-world trip. The duo planned to spend five weeks in Hawaii before moving onto California and Costa Rica for the next legs of their journey.

But despite having ESTA travel authorization, immigration officials accused them of attempting to enter the U.S. to work illegally, and they were placed in handcuffs and taken to a nearby detention center they later learned was a deportation facility.

Upon arrival, they were subjected to full-body scans, strip searches and forced to wear green prison jumpsuits, German outlet Ostee Zeitung reports. They were then placed in a holding facility with serious criminals, including an alleged murderer who had been locked up for 18 years, and were forced to spend the night in a freezing cold double cell." (more at link)

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Then they came for the beautiful white teenage girls 
And I did not speak out because I was not a beautiful white teenage girl.

Wait, what?
Weren’t we at dangerous murderers and drug addicts with gang tattoos (or not) just a week ago?

Don’t turn on your indoctrination channel to have five idiots in a box explain it to you, how it’s a normal thing, a good thing.  “If there were only four who explained it in exactly the same way, I don’t know, maybe I’d question it.  But five.  That’s a lot, probably a TV majority mandate.”

Open your eyes.

[Durian Fiend]

Figured worth reviving this thread as Hawaii tourism cool down is now in the works. Going with "bad" for oh so many, many reasons to strip search, imprison, and deport two backpacking teenage girl tourists.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/teenage-gi...king-trip/
"Two teenage girls from Germany were detained, arrested, and deported at an airport in Hawaii after immigration officials said it was suspicious they had not booked a hotel room.

Backpackers Charlotte Pohl, 19, and Maria Lepere, 18, arrived in Honolulu from Auckland while undergoing a round-the-world trip. The duo planned to spend five weeks in Hawaii before moving onto California and Costa Rica for the next legs of their journey.

But despite having ESTA travel authorization, immigration officials accused them of attempting to enter the U.S. to work illegally, and they were placed in handcuffs and taken to a nearby detention center they later learned was a deportation facility.

Upon arrival, they were subjected to full-body scans, strip searches and forced to wear green prison jumpsuits, German outlet Ostee Zeitung reports. They were then placed in a holding facility with serious criminals, including an alleged murderer who had been locked up for 18 years, and were forced to spend the night in a freezing cold double cell." (more at link)

  "...After a sleepless night in the freezing cell, the girls were woken early and escorted back to the airport in handcuffs. Upon arrival, they were forced to board a Hawaiian Airlines flight to Tokyo and were told they would receive their passports back once they arrived in Japan.

Included in their travel documents were interrogation transcripts signed by the girls, which “contained sentences we didn’t actually say,” said Charlotte after the ordeal. “They twisted it to make it seem as if we admitted that we wanted to work illegally in the US.”


Wow! Forewarned is forearmed.  Apparently we have some dishonest chumps working  immigration in HNL.  This is bound to hurt European travel to Hawaii, although those numbers are probably insignificant.  It will be interesting to see if Canadians eschew Hawaii vacations next season as readily they are vowing to dump Florida and SW US as snow bird destinations.  Perhaps they tend to view Hawaii in a more favorable light, compared to the mainland.  I certainly do...

[Punatang]

Then they came for the beautiful white teenage girls 

This story is truly outrageous. It's unfortunate that they seem to have mentioned work unless the officials lied. Things can also get lost in translation. There is no excuse for the conditions.  Lastly, why is our government wanting to pick on beautiful Germans?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...meike.html

[kalianna]

Are you aware that the article you sited is from 2023 and has nothing to do with Hawaii??

[Punatang]

2023? Then it must have been Biden that deported that German family? Thanks for pointing that out.