Let’s bring back the boys (and girls)
June 23rd, 2008 by Jay Fidell
If we really wanted them back, we’d do something about it. Everyone always says they’re leaving by the carload, our best and brightest, and we’ll never get them back.
We’re tried silly things like parties, websites and clubby chat rooms. But for the most part we’ve been unable to get them to come back, with all the damage that does to our demographic.
The longer they stay away, the less likely it is that they’ll return. They finish school, get jobs, get married, have kids, and make a life. Can you blame them? Do you think they’re going to drop all that and come back midcourse? Lots of luck.
But there is something we can do about it – that should come as no surprise – if you really want to do something about this sort of relentless brain drain loss, all you to do is bear down, spend some money and make some sacrifices and, lo and behold, you can.
A few years ago, an expatriate Chinese scientist in New Jersey was wooed back by the Chinese government. They offered him what they knew would appeal to him most of all, the trappings of science itself – a laboratory and research money and laboratory staff galore in China. He succumbed easily, and back to China he went to take the prize.
It’s not hard to do that, and certainly worth it – scientists, after all, come with high leverage. No one knows what great things this guy will do for China now. His work there could be, probably will be, worth far more than the cost of repatriating him.
So how about repatriating our departed boys and girls, the ones who left because they saw brighter future on the mainland than in Hawaii? Because their teachers and parents and friends all inculcated in them the notion that the best thing they could to was to follow their peers and go to the mainland for a better life than they could have in Hawaii.
In fact, we have a good life here – it’s just hard to overcome the mainland sirens, as in Odysseus. We can’t just ask them to plug their ears. It takes a meaningful incentive to bring them back. So why don’t we bite the bullet and pay the price of that incentive and bring our best and brightest back home to help us build a future for our state. We need them more than we can say. What are we waiting for?
How do we do this? By the same kind of incentive you would always use – economics mixed with career satisfaction. Just like the Chinese scientist. You pay their way. You give them a free ticket. You get them a great job and salary, appropriate to their skill. You help them buy or mortgage a house, or you rent one to/for them cheap for x years. You excuse them from state income tax for x years. You offer them free courses at the University to advance their professional training. You tell them you love them, you make them feel good about themselves and their choice of returning. Priceless.
You give them bus passes, and opera seats. You give them memberships at the “Y”. In short, you do everything you can. You make them feel like returning heroes. You target them singlely, expatriate by expatriate, or you do it in groups. You can fix these incentives in concrete or you can change the benefits and quotas every year depending on the need for skilled workers in that sector. It’s like the HOT lane – computer driven – you adjust things depending on the need, you adapt the supply to the market place.
Are we doing this now? Not a chance, but we need to.
You can, in fact, for a controlled and predictable budget, bring back as many pau hana expatriates as you need. You target them, you incentivize them, you make them offers they can’t refuse and, if they do refuse, you sweeten the deal until it’s completely irresistable.
They say providing a skilled workforce is the trick to building a tech industry. If you want to build that industry, you have to provide the workforce, however difficult that may be. Well, we can do it. All we have to is design a system to focus on it. This is the way to our future, and theirs, and their families. Let’s not waste a minute – we can’t afford to keep on losing them, we need to stem the tide right now and get them back here post haste.
Those who would oppose this will say, “why spend our money on bringing these kids back – they’ll come back when they’re ready. Why should we give them special treatment? And if they don’t come back, that’s their problem”. I don’t agree. That kind of attitude will isolate us from our own children. This problem is our problem and it’s serious. We’re got to take charge or our collective destiny, or we will surely be the Sahara of the Beaux Arts (as from H.L. Mencken), and of the Sciences too.
June 26th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Why does it make more sense to subsidize those who have left than those who have stayed? If you want to give “free bus passes and opera seats” as an incentive to bring our kids back, why not give them to local residents as a means of reducing the “price of paradise” for those of us struggling to remain?
Ben Cayetano set up the “Economic Revitalization Task Force” several years ago in the making local conditions attractive to outside investors. After cutting the tax rates and other “business-friendly” changes, he visited Silicone Valley for face-to-face with the high-tech leaders. He was told the way to attract high-tech professionals was to plow money into the universities, the public schools, into the arts and to preserve Hawaii’s natural beauty. “what about our new lower tax rates?,” he asked. They laughed at him. That wasn’t what they wanted. They wanted a livable society.
The tax incentives designed to attract “investment” and stimulate Hawaii’s economy have too often been badly conceived, with the benefits going to well-connected businesses and little sustained benefit to Hawaii’s residents. The high-tech investment credits went to make Hollywood movies, or to subsidize technological modernization of local business which they would have probably made anyways, but we lost the tax revenue instead. Or, another way of saying it, the tax burden was shifted to other, less hip, Hawaii taxpayers.
Let’s improve Hawaii’s economy, and environment, by taking care of Hawaii’s people, educating our kids, requiring decent wages and benefits, and making Hawaii a livable place. I see no reason for targeting the benefits to the constituency you favor over any other, even if you spin tales of the benefits of high tech and refer to these people as our expatriate kids. Some of us have kids who still live here. Let’s take care of everybody, evenly.
June 26th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Jay,
This is a foolish idea. The Chinese scientist no doubt was of interest because his work had military value. There’s no shortage of scientists in China.
I agree with the earlier poster about what should be our priorities.
June 27th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
How do you decide who gets these special benefits? If I’m currently working in Hawaii, your plan gives me even more incentive to leave since it will necessarily take resources from me to give to the mainland transplants.
I suspect you haven’t thought about how difficult it would be to create an actual policy. Easy to dream, hard to achieve . . . .
July 4th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
More importantly…why do we have to ship our two most valuable product resources, i e., our children and our money, out of our local system, in order to educate them and give them a chance to prosper????
Why not redirect our resources at enriching our educational environments from kindergarden up at engaging our youngsters in creative critical thinking and problem solving behaviours, so that they are supported and challenged to do well?
Then perhaps consider that local employers should be encouraged to hire locally instead of always imagining that someone from elsewhere really knows more?
What about tax incentives, or….”student loan paybacks” where graduates commit to work for local governments and nonprofits for a number of years, in exchange for “buydown” on their student loan balances.
Once they are invested and embedded in this community they are less likely to leave.
Affordable housing will always be a key. For this, we need to assess an “affordable housing fee” on all real estate transactions that goes specifically to funding and managing an ongoing affordable housing trust fund. These funds would only be used to provide financing for affordable housing purchases, funding to build additional units, and funding to maintain affordable housing as a decent, clean, and wonderful place to live.
Palo Alto has wonderful mixed use projects with regular rentals, disabled units, “welfare” and public housing units, and senior rentals in mixed communities.
I lived in one for nearly a year before I even realized that it was a city housing project. It was nice, clean, had playgrounds, picnic tables, laundromats and parking. The mix of residents made everyone’s spirits lift and people took care of the place and each other, because the place took care of them.
Local residents are culturally competent in managing both our unique culture, our unique infrastructures, and our need to network resources in the Ohana consciousness. They are adept at navigating the demands of our changing culture.
Perhaps there should be “semesters abroad”, where universities exchange students to enrich each other’s learning environments????
Every new idea will create problems, but overcoming them will be part of the creative joy for our young people to tackle, and develop. Our job is to keep them fully supported in developing themselves, so they can decide how to build the community. Their vision will exceed ours, unless we limit them.
Sincere Aloha, Virginia
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