Happiness and “well-being” research tends to rank Hawaii in the #1 spot among American states. Today let’s consider if Hawaiians are also more intelligent.
Let’s consider a Boston-area resident who will be happy to tell you how intelligent he is. He works 60-hour weeks and is trying to build up a nest egg so that he can do the following:
- not go into work every weekday
- spend a lot of time with friends and family
- live in a warm sunny climate
- go to the beach
- snorkel
- fish
In other words, his dream is to live like a Hawaiian on welfare. But if he were actually as smart as he claims to be, why did he spend 40 years slaving away in an office when he could have been in Hawaii living on welfare? (The public housing that I saw in Hawaii was wonderfully located, oftentimes walking distance to the beach or a school, and was sometimes brand new. There is presumably a waiting list but perhaps that can be shortcut by having a child? CATO Institute said that, in 2013, Hawaii offered a welfare family a package of benefits worth $49,175 per year or the equivalent of earning a pretax salary of $60,590 per year.)
Unlike in Manhattan, for example, the recreational pursuits of rich and poor are similar in Hawaii. The rich resident of Hawaii will have a much nicer house, of course, but there is seldom any reason to stay indoors.
If “Most Americans Are Unhappy At Work” (Forbes), why are we not forced to conclude that most Americans have less practical intelligence than a Hawaiian on welfare?
[The analysis should be similar comparing a Hawaiian with a job. I know a lot of folks in Massachusetts who say “I am doing X, Y, and Z because 5-10 years from now I hope to be doing A, B, and C.” Whereas Hawaiians who worked seemed to be content with their lives overall and weren’t living for the future.]
Related:
- Hawaii child support cashflow may be as high as $72,000 per year (tax-free) for each child
If everyone lives on public assistance by the beach in Hawaii or California, who will pay the bills? In any case, in comparison to our economic competitors in Taiwan, China, Japan, Korea and Singapore who work 80 hrs a week, 50-60 hrs a week does not seem like a lot.
A huge fraction of “hawaiians” have to leave in order to make a living. The stats are probably skewed. The people left behind had the means to stay.
You talk all the time about welfare and public housing as if they hand this out readily to all comers. That stuff is for women and practically limited to women with kids. An able bodied man cannot score these free goodies. An EBT card and medicaid is about the best a man can get. Disability can be milked at times, but it’s not quite as simple as you make it sound.
There are some benefits to accumulating a large nest egg, mostly freedom to choose.
One got tired of spending 20 hours a day with family and would like to hire a baby sitter.
Weather got too hot in the summer, it would be nice to turn on air conditioning or better, go for an Alaskan cruise.
Sun is too strong at the beach, time for a trip to Europe.
Did snorkeling last week, would like to try scuba diving.
Tired of the fish you catch locally, prefer to have some flown in from Japan for a change.
For someone not born into island living, it gets old fast. Hawaii is a small place. Even for someone with means to visit other islands at will, eventually island fever strikes. The fever is often life altering for young adults with lots of energy, curiosity, and immortality. They leave not to return but for close family funerals. If they happen to accumulate a tall pile of cash, they may return for long stays during retirement. Otherwise, one sandy beach is pretty much like the next. And there are many outside of Hawaii not so full of pale, fat humans carrying all manner of disease and an especially offensive form of alien arrogance.
Well, part of it is probably to get away from living among poor people.
I’ve been living in Hawaii (Big Island) for the last 3 years and I have no idea how CATO could have come up with those numbers. There *are* more people here paying with EBT but they are not living anywhere near a 50k/year lifestyle. There is also very little public housing. Cost of living hurts people on the lower end of the income range proportionally more. My property tax is next to nothing yet I spend at least 2x as much on groceries as I did in California. If all your income is going towards rent and essentials it’s going to be painful.
In other places covering 1800/month in rent is easy with the right skills but not so in Hawaii. Agriculture has been a historical economic driver, but now that’s over and tourism is king. That industry is very sensitive to national economic conditions though and really isn’t all that large. I tell my mainland friends that yes, it can be great and cost of living can be less than popular mainland cities but you really need to be able to bring your own employment via telecommuting or your own business. Also assume that if you want to have children the best you can hope for them is that they go to college off island for better opportunities.
In my family you’re a blacksheep if you don’t play a musical instrument. I imagine in MA you’re a blacksheep without intellectual moxy with at least one doctorate degree.
In order words, people in MA will work less and live off the government when it’s the cool thing to do.
Thirty-five years ago, a good friend childhood friend moved to Hawaii from New England the day after high school graduation; she build a life there and is still there.
My father and two uncles were all stationed in HI in the early ’60s when serving in the US Army, and after discharge, the each lingered on for a couple of years with big HI dreams but all eventually drifted back to New England.
Coming from the east coast with excellent credentials and experience, is it hard to get a decent, mid-level white collar job (e.g. accountant, computer programmer, financial analyst, etc.) in Honolulu?
@bobbybobobAn EBT card and medicaid is about the best a man can get.
Florida and the other states that did not expand Medicaid under Obamacare do not allow men over 18 y/o to receive Medicaid.
So when are you moving Phil?
That raises an interesting question. What prevents the Boston-area resident from cutting back his work hours to 40 or 50 per week, freeing up 10 or 20 additional hours to spend with friends and family? Or, even more drastically, cutting back to four days a week?
A possible answer.
My wife grew up (19 yrs) on Oahu. She says that outside of the military and hospitality, there just isn’t much of a job market (or a cultural mindset). Lots of smart and motivated people leave for the mainland.
Also, it’s not awesome being haole (roughly, “white”, but really any non-Asian Pacific Islander) in the local communities.
In Shoe Dog, Phil Knight tells a story about going to Hawaii on vacation, staying for a couple weeks, getting a job at a stock brokerage firm (EF Hutton), quitting the job, going to Japan, lining up a distribution deal with a shoe company in Japan, and flying around the world and back to Portland. The most incredible part of that story is *landing a good job in Hawaii while on vacation.*