Hawaii is surely experiencing severe budget problems. With an economy dependent on tourism, it’s only natural that our fortunes will decline as do the rest of the nation. No matter what we do, when money is tight, people don’t travel.

But for all the hand-wringing, we should realize that there are places worse off than us.

One indicator is a recent study by the Pew Center on the States, which recently looked at how everyone is doing compared with suffering California. (You can see the entire study HERE).

The folks there looked at a variety of factors to see how the states were doing compared with California, the Big Dog in the budget crisis fight.  This included unemployment rates, foreclosures and the ability of lawmakers to respond quickly to problems.

You can agree or disagree with the study’s methodology or the selection of factors it used to “grade” the states. But it is instructive that while California’s overall fiscal health is a D+, Hawaii sits at a  C+. Not bad, except that the overall average for the entire nation, according to the Pew study, is something like B-.

In short, we are struggling. Not as bad as California and a few other states, and not as strong as states such as Nebraska or Delaware.

What is useful about such studies is not the absolute ranking, but rather a deeper understanding of the polices and approaches that lead to relative fiscal health or illness.

Let’s hope our policy-makers are watching.

Tags: budget, fiscal stability, Hawaii, Pew Center

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 3:09 pm and is filed under 1. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.