I started with Billions and Trillions, and went on to Trillions and Quadrillions in my Huffingtpost series on large numbers. This morning the Honolulu Star Advertiser tossed out a mere $32 billion as the tab for upcoming major construction projects and state liabilities in the state. That's $26,000 per person, but less than $1000/person/year over thirty years. In fact, Carl Bonham of the University of Hawaii indicated that all this was manageable.
The four big ticket items are:
Honolulu Waste Treatment ($4.7 billion)
Honolulu Rail Transit ($4.6 billion)
Airport Modernization (2.3 billion)
Undersea Power Cable ($1.5 billion)
The shocker is that this sum of $13.1 billion is less than the $17 billion for unfunded employees' retirement system liability (which the Legislature stole from to pay for other bills) and unfunded retirement health care liability. I didn't know retirees were that big a problem. Remember, this year the Legislature, as suggested by the Governor, purloined $67 million from the Hurricane Relief Fund to end the public school furlough. This is eerily close to eating the seed corn.
Of course, diversifying our economy should have been our highest priority, but every time we tried, something went haywire. Thus, we are stuck with only one industry: tourism. However, since 1997, the number of visitors from Japan has been cut in half. (See my blog of yesterday for the details.) We've survived because Japanese tourists now represent only one-sixth of the total, and there is future hope about China and Korea.
While, yes, we are fixing the airport, the bigger problem is that skyrocketing oil costs are coming, and we should have already long ago initiated the quest for a substitute jet fuel and next generation airliner. We are way too dependent on tourism, and still want to continue to perpetuate this economy.
My solution for this troubling state of affairs?
1. Find a way to make Hawaii the symbol for renewable energy development. This should be good for a $25 billion infusion of capital.
2. Hawaii as the site of the Sustainable Expo for 2020.
Pearl's favorite time was sunset on our roof. Here is one today, which I viewed over some o-toro sashimi, Niigata rice (rated #1), Hawaiian ogo (seaweed) and grated wasabi...with a junmai daijingo-shu sake. Frankly, I prefer that tube version, which is largely artificial, but much hotter and a heck of a lot cheaper.
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The Dow Jones Industrials continued to rise, up 101 to 10,525, while world markets also all increased, Gold fell $6/toz to $1183, while crude oil is at $79/barrel.-
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