Photo by Abigail Lynn

Why Living In Hawaii Sucks

It's not all paradise here in the Aloha State.

Warm weather year round, beautiful beaches, great surf, and good food. There's plenty to love about Hawaii. But while you might enjoy a vacation here from time to time, growing up and living here has made me realize the cold and honest truth about Hawaii.

It sucks living here. There are mainly two things that suck about living here, and I can deal with the rest of it. But these top two things really grind my gears.

The people suck

While locals love talking about how well we treat each other here, I've come to learn that the most you can expect from the Aloha Spirit is a shaka in the rear-view mirror when someone switches into your lane on H1 in bumper to bumper traffic.

People just aren't nice here

That's not to say there aren't nice people here. There are. It's just that they are the outlier. Everyone here is too tired, too stressed trying to make ends meet, and too selfish to treat you with any modicum of respect. And if they are nice to you, it's just a facade, before they go back to their home/cubicle/desk to talk trash to their family/co-workers about you.

I may be slightly hyperbolic. But the state is, in my opinion, one of the least nicer states in our Union. I used to think people were nice here, just in general. One visit to Japan, Minneapolis, and Canada changed my mind real quick.

People being not very nice is fine. In fact, I must admit it doesn't really bother me that much. But the two-faced attitude people here have about how we treat each other with aloha and respect is just laughable.

Most 20-somethings here are lazy degenerates

I don't know if it's a thing unique to my generation, but everyone around my age is a lazy degenerate. Seriously. I can't fathom how these people go through their lives. It's as if their entire life revolves around getting to the weekend so they can party. Then, when that isn't enough anymore, they need to recenter their life around going to the latest festival.

If they don't party like that, then they drink. A lot. It's a thing here. Everybody's got "their beer" and if you just let people talk to you at a party they'll inevitably talk about how great some random beer is, or how crazy the last party they went to was. Like it's some kind of badge of honor to be blackout drunk.

Those two things wouldn't be bad on their own. But locals have a penchant for the crabs in a bucket mentality. As soon as they see you not engaging in self-degradation, they need to make sure you know about it. "Bro why aren't you drinking?" "Bro are you just gonna stay home every weekend?" "Bro you have to let loose sometimes!" "Bro come on just one drink, just one time!" It's not offensive so much as it's pitiful. I actually feel sorry for these people. They have nothing but retail or waitress jobs after having gone to college to get a bachelors degree in six years. Then they live a life chock-full of complaints on Facebook about how bad the customers were on that day. But oh-em-gee can't wait to go to coachella!1!!!1

The government sucks

Our blessed government here sucks. At everything. In our politicians' pursuit to get re-elected, they have managed to squander just about everything they put their hands on. This most likely isn't a problem unique to Hawaii, but we are damn sure giving everyone else a run for their money.

The rail is a great example of just how inept and malicious our government is. Back in the early to mid 2000's there started to be a big push for rail; and in 2008, there was a new balot initiative to get a vote down for rail. The purpose? To gauge whether residents of Hawaii would approve the $4.28 billion project, while only days earlier we thought the project was going to cost $3.7 billion.

Hawaii voted 'yes' to the rail, by a slim margin of 51 to 46. This was after decades of failed political support for a rail, and now that our government had the okay from voters, they felt they had all the power. So they re-established HART and got to work.

This all in and of itself wouldn't have been THAT bad, but a retrospective from today reveals a host of problems. The top three of which:

Lies about cost

In 2006, when political campaigning sort of started, we were told the rail would cost $3.7 billion. Then, days before the general vote on rail happened, the cost jumped up to $4.28 billion, for the entire rail to go from Kapolei to Ala Moana. Doesn't seem like a big increase, until you realize that's an almost $600 million increase. Just a small smidgen increase.

However, that number looks great today. Why? In 2017, the cost has somehow ballooned up to over $10 billion. And to think, I sat through a presentation in which a crony for rail told an auditorium full of people that we "can't cancel the rail now; otherwise, we have to pay back the $1.5 billion the federal government already awarded us!" And now we're stuck paying $6 billion more than we thought we would, with the project only just barely halfway completed. And as of 09/20/2019, they still don't know how they're going to get all the way to Ala Moana!

Lies about how we'll pay for it

Back in 2008, we were told in order to help pay for the rail, we would get to pay a temporary surcharge to the general excise tax. The amount was 0.5%. Doesn't sound too bad. It would sunset in 2022. However, like most things in Hawaii, things aren't what they seem.

Back in 2016/2017, our lovely senate and mayor surprised absolutely no-one by proposing bills that would extend the surcharge. How long? Indefinitely! A proposal to extend the surcharge that we were initially told was going to be temporary. If I wasn't so impressed by their brazenness I'd feel like I just got kicked in the nuts.

Luckily, that was too far reaching even for the smooth brains in our state legislature, so they backed down from that position to extend it "only" to 2027. Of course, this was most likely their gambit all along. Make us scoff at the idea of an indefinite increase, and then quietly back down to "only" 5 more years. Those sneaky bastards.

Most recently, in 2018, our beloved city council plundered our property taxes to cover some of the rail bills. Why is this such a travesty? We were told, repeatedly, back in the early planning days of rail that the government definitely absolutely wouldn't use city funds (such as property taxes) to pay for it. Well, definitely quickly turned to probably, which then turned to maybe, which then turned to Mayor Kirk Caldwell begging the people to pass the property tax bill ASAP so he can cover his overspending.

Lies about where it would go

There's little to go on here, since so much of it was temporal and is now lost to the echoes of time. But during the cutthroat campaigning of rail we were told everything from "it's going to go all the way to Manoa!" to "it'll go all the way to Hawaii Kai". Both of those, by the way, turned out to be false, because the state goes out of its way to cater to developers. Can't build new stuff at UH Manoa! But we sure have a lot of space in Kakaako and Pearl City, so let's make sure the rail goes by the parcels owned by our friends at DR Horton and Howard Hughes.

Perhaps the most offending of all lies about the route of rail is the part about Salt Lake. Oh, you haven't heard of this one? It's a fascinating, thrilling, and definitely unheard of story of politicians lying to get votes. Any embellishment by me can't improve the story any, so I'll just quote Wikipedia here, since the facts paint a grim enough picture:

Nobody likes the rail. The only people who like it are brainlets who think people will actually use it, or people who think it will actually clear up traffic (it won't). The state themselves estimates that it will cut down on congestion by a whopping 1%. You are reading that correctly. 1%. No zeros following that "1". Just a depressing percentage sign.

In summation, the rail project highlights three things: the government lies about cost, they lie about what they'll give you, and they lie about how they'll tax you. Oh, and I forgot to mention, the original timeline was that we'd be able to ride half of the rail by 2018, with the full route being completed by 2020. That has been pushed back to 2025.

This is typical of everything our state and city government does: over budget, behind schedule, delivery of a crappy final product, while over-promising on all of it.

Maybe I'm just an old salty person

In the end, Hawaii has a lot of great things going for it. Like the food, the weather, and its proximity to Japan. But as time goes on, and the older I get, the more I realize that the government here is making all of our lives worse, and the people who continue to vote for them are brainless sheeples voting for the whatever politician is promising them the most outrageous things that they can't pay for.