Mike Buck Show listeners hear from Akina about how to put Hawaii on road to prosperity

From Grassroot Institute, January 7, 2021

IT WAS ANOTHER rollicking conversation on “The Mike Buck Show” when popular radio personality Mike Buck again hosted Keli'i Akina of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. This time, on Dec. 29, 2020, the topic was how to revive Hawaii's economy, which was in trouble before the coronavirus lockdowns were imposed last March but is significantly worse off now.

Broadcast on AM 690 and FM 94.3, The Answer, the half-hour conversation focused on the institute’s policy brief issued last May titled “Road map to prosperity,” which is available for reading or download at the Grassroot Institute website.

Said Buck about the report: “It’s amazing what [you] can come up with when a bunch of thinkers get together and are able to have a little chit-chat [about] things that just make so much sense that they probably won’t happen (laughs).”

Significantly, the institute’s “road map” is the only report of its kind that does not advocate more spending, borrowing, taxes or regulations. Instead, it recommends less state spending, lower taxes, fewer regulations and reform of the federal Jones Act, which adds to the cost of all imports to Hawaii.

The report's goal is to create more opportunity, generate more economic activity, lower the cost of living and foster greater prosperity, which in turn would produce more taxes.

Considering how bad Hawaii's economy is at the moment, maybe some of those things in the report that make so much sense might happen after all.