As you know, Hawaii's economy has not been doing very well for the last 10 years. The next chart shows the growth rate of Hawaii's economy compared with that of the United States and Japan. The chart shows growth rates from 1969 to the early 1990s. We used to attract about 10,000 new immigrants, either from the U.S. Mainland or Asia.
Today is somewhat different.
But I want to start by discussing that period. If you look at that chart you can easily see that our growth rated followed, rather closely, the Japanese growth rate. Japan had very high growth rate in the early '60s, double digit growth. And Hawaii's growth rate basically followed that very closely. If you look at the U.S. growth rate, it was always lower during that period.