It ain’t much, but it’s welcome anyway

The 50-cent bump Hawaii workers will get at the start of the year is just the first phase in a long-awaited increase in the hourly minimum wage. But it has real meaning to those who will be getting it.

Chances are, people working the minimum wage are part-time workers, but at the 40-hour work-week level, the new $7.75 hourly rate will produce a gross annual increase of $1,040. Even for those at half-time, that would be a few hundred dollars more in their 2015 earnings. Not a princely sum, but enough that low-wage workers will be able to spend a bit more on necessities — and that’s not bad for the economy.

More people, more traffic, more caution

Even though the population of Oahu is growing ever larger, our little island cannot. So it’s inevitable that our limited network of roads will get ever more crowded, with more cars and people jostling for room.

It’s in this spirit that the Honolulu Police Department has launched a campaign to get local residents to drive, walk and bike with aloha. HPD wants to imbue us with an innate sense of caution while on the road, so we naturally drive a little slower, pay more attention, avoid distractions, and have a zero-tolerance policy for drinking and driving.

So let’s look out for each other. If we choose to, we can go from 55 fatalities this year on Oahu to zero fatalities in 2015. That would make for a great new year.