Higher wage floor doesn’t cost jobs

Richard Fucik asserts that raising the minimum wage will reduce the number of jobs available ("Higher wage floor harms the homeless," Star-Advertiser, Letters, Jan. 27).

In fact, according to the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, the last four times the state minimum wage was raised — in 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2007 — the number of jobs in Hawaii increased in the years after the increases.

People at or near the minimum wage have to spend all their wages on necessities. Their additional earnings go immediately into the economy, causing economic growth, not economic stagnation.Business is stimulated, not depressed.

Since 40 percent of the homeless are working, if their wages go up, they are better able to afford rent, so homelessness will decrease.

After eight years of no wage increase while everyone else’s wages increased, it is time that the minimum-wage earners get a raise.

Bob Nakata
Kahaluu

HECO has put stop to solar firm growth

I work for a local solar company. President Barack Obama’s State of the Union covered so many topics that pertain to us.

» Job creation: In 2005, our company employed 10 people; in 2013, well over a hundred.

» Education and job training: We take on inexperienced workers and train them in our field, and we hire graduates with engineering degrees from the University of Hawaii.

» Minimum wage: We already start all employees at higher than the $10.10 an hour that Obama is shooting for.

» Equal pay for women: We have had many women making more than their male counterparts.

» Renewable energy: We are doing our part to reduce the island’s dependance on expensive, pollution causing fossil fuels.

What I wish Obama knew is that Hawaiian Electric Co. has stopped this phenomenal industry dead in its tracks under the guise of safety.

Unfortunately, it will now burden my fellow taxpayers, as many of my former colleagues head to the unemployment line.

Mark Ida
Salt Lake

Uninsured vehicles help clog our traffic

Resolution 11-308, which passed the Honolulu City Council unanimously in 2012, requested that insurance providers contact the city’s Department of Motor Vehicle Registration when a policy is terminated.

In turn, police would be able to track a license plate and know instantly if a vehicle is uninsured.

Many states are using this tool to get uninsured motorists off the roads. In Georgia, the rate of uninsured drivers was reduced from 22 percent to 2 percent utilizing this data-sharing system.

According to the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, rail will remove up to 40,000 vehicles from Oahu’s public thoroughfares. In comparison, it is estimated that more than 122,000 vehicles are driving without insurance.

What would you rather have — for a few thousand dollars, the implementation of a data-sharing system that has the potential to provide a massive reduction in traffic basically overnight without any construction headaches, or a rail system costing billions of dollars to take out only 1-3 percent of the cars from the equation?

Tom Berg
Ewa Beach

U.S. corporate taxes not world’s highest

According to the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy, one of the top five domestic issues is tax reform, but not the type of tax reform most people and economists think about ("What are Top 5 domestic issues?" Star-Advertiser, Jan. 27).

The institute repeats the right-wing propaganda on corporate tax rates, claiming that the U.S. has "the highest (corporate tax) rate in the developed world."

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Bank and others do not agree.Their findings, published in the Jan. 6-12 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, list the countries with the highest corporate tax rates as France, Belgium, Austria, Germany, Czech Republic and Australia.

The U.S. rates are significantly lower and approximately the same as Chile, New Zealand, Japan and Denmark.

John Thorne
Nuuanu

Officials and police ignoring homeless

In response to his proposed "Homeless Person’s Bill of Rights," it is obvious that state Rep. John Mizuno doesn’t believe in our Founding Fathers’ creed: "Of the People, By the People and For the People."

Apparently he also chooses to ignore the many letters to the editor regarding how the homeless have a negative effect on tourism, the associated economy and unemployment.

It’s outrageous for our elected government officials and Police Department to totally ignore our laws and the blight in Waikiki caused by the homeless sprawled out sleeping on the sidewalks lining Kalakaua Avenue, with their stolen shopping carts overflowing with trash.

They also take over the covered picnic areas without regard to our visitors in Waikiki who may wish to have a picnic there.

They routinely lie down or sit along the wall on Kalakaua with their blankets and signs asking for money, and the police do nothing.

Harlan Dismuke
Waikiki

Don’t allow bus ads, bring back van cams

Need $8 million for TheBus?

Here’s a suggestion: Do something that will keep us more like Hawaii and less like the mainland.

Don’t allow billboards on buses

Bring back the van cams for speeding. Those cameras really worked. We all slowed down.

Bring a little aloha back to our highways.

G. Clark Leavitt
Palolo