By taxing capital gains at the same rate as regular income, Hawaiʻi can make its tax code more fair while funding critical investments in education, housing, healthcare, and support for working families.

Challenges and Opportunities for Improving Food Security for Hawaiʻi Residents

The 2022 Hawaiʻi legislative session included extraordinary examples of the types of actions policymakers can take to rewrite the economic rulebook.

An analysis of Hawaiʻi’s pandemic-era rent relief and pre-litigation mediation program created through Act 57 (2021).

A guide to understanding the basics of the Hawaiʻi state budget and its importance to society.

The missed opportunity of federal child nutrition programs in Hawaiʻi.

How expanding the state Earned Income Tax Credit to make it refundable can boost the economy and provide opportunity to Hawaiʻi’s working families.

Tax credits can fine-tune the tax system to promote social welfare and encourage economic activity by delivering targeted tax relief.

Policymakers have shaped an economy that relies far too much on extractive tourism that provides little to residents in return. To reverse these trends, we need a dramatic shift in our public policy. 

Improving Hawaiʻi’s data policy to better serve Native Hawaiians.

The State Government’s Crucial Role in Countering the Pandemic Recession.

40 Years of Rising Costs & Stagnant Wages.

In the context of COVID-19, correctional facilities are public health disasters waiting to happen.

Hawaiʻi’s post-COVID-19 economy should be one informed by an understanding that the old economic order had been failing many Hawaiʻi residents for decades.

Creating our state Earned Income Tax Credit was an important achievement. Now it’s time to make the state EITC refundable and permanent.

An overview of Hawaiʻi’s senior hunger safety net and how to strengthen it.

Looking back at the Great Recession, 2007–09.

Not only would a minimum wage increase help to improve the living standards of affected Hawaiʻi workers, but it would also strengthen local businesses, as low-wage workers plow almost every additional dollar of earnings back into the local economy.

Despite the heavy toll that eviction takes on households and communities, tenants facing eviction in Hawaiʻi have relatively little support to ensure they are not improperly removed from their homes.

Hawaiʻi counties have an opportunity to model vacation rental unit regulations off successful ordinances from around the world. The stakes are high: our housing crisis is among the worst in the nation.