Anthony Pignataro writes in the Maui Time “Why Hawaii Loves War”:
Living on Maui, with its mostly undeveloped landscape and near complete lack of military facilities, makes it easy to think that America’s global war on terrorists, dictators and all-around bad dudes is something far away. Not according to the Rand Corporation’s new study “How Much Does Military Spending Add to Hawaii’s Economy?” which came out in early June. In fact, while reading (okay, perusing) the 52-page report, I learned five funny things about Hawaii’s growing addiction to the money that surrounds our nation’s all-but-unstoppable legions and war machines:
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There are currently more than 75,000 service members and DOD personnel in the state today. Of those, nearly two-thirds (48,000) are active duty, 18,000 are civilians and the rest are National Guard or reserves. This is of course down from the stratospheric number of service members stationed here back in the From Here to Eternity days, but is considerably more than the 56,000 personnel stationed here in 1999.
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Military pay is way better than civilian pay. “Active-duty service members and DoD civilian employees earned more on average than Hawaii’s full-time workforce,” stated the Rand report. “In 2007–2009, median earnings for active-duty personnel were $74,900, and those for DoD civilians were $69,800 (2009 dollars). The median earnings of full-time workers in Hawaii were $40,000 (ages 17 and older) or $37,400 (ages 17 to 50).” With numbers like that, you’d think the 1893 coup against Queen Liliuokalani only happened last year.
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