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Editorial

A people problem

The U.S. has a people problem. The birth rate has been sliding for years, and it’s about to translate into a shrinking labor force. By 2040, according to a study out this week, America could have more than six million fewer working-age people than in 2022. The only way to counter the domestic trend is by attracting workers from abroad. “The working-age U.S. population has peaked absent additional immigration,” writes Madeline Zavodny, in a forthcoming paper from the National Foundation for American Policy. “New international migrants are the only potential source of growth in ...

Maui’s changing landcape

“One of these days, Wailuku will touch Maalaea.” We remember making this prediction in the early 1980s while sitting on a friend’s Kula lanai. Long after sunset, the stars twinkling in the clear Upcountry sky shone brighter than the smattering of city lights below. Kahului Airport, Dream City, Puunene Mill and old Wailuku Heights framed one edge of the dark valley, while the condos of Maalaea delineated the other. In between lay a vast expanse of sugar cane and pineapple, two crops with long histories and, as it turned out, short futures. It didn’t take a Nostradamus to see ...

Fighting inflation

The Federal Reserve lifted the benchmark interest rate Wednesday to 5.3 percent, a stunning rise from practically zero in March 2022. The Fed was too slow to recognize inflation’s painful bite, which reached more than 9 percent year-over-year last summer, but the Fed’s credibility has been restored. The central bank acted aggressively, helping cool inflation to a fairly tolerable 3 percent. Now, the path is murkier. As anyone alive in the 1970s knows, the biggest danger is to give up too soon. Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell has made this case repeatedly. “Is there a risk that we ...

NATO’s future

Despite excitable speculation before the Vilnius summit, there was never a serious prospect that Ukraine could join NATO while it is at war — as Kyiv has acknowledged. Membership cannot be granted retrospectively amid a conflict. Article 5, which sets out the principle of collective defense — an attack on one is treated as an attack on all — works as a deterrent, not as a do-over. Nor was there much prospect of this meeting even agreeing to a concrete timetable for membership afterwards. The alliance operates by consensus, but the U.S. calls the tune because it pays two-thirds of ...

Homeless have a story

Sprawled in the grass next to a Kihei sidewalk, the man in baggy clothes could have been dead from an overdose, or sleeping, we weren’t sure. Approaching the scene on our morning walk, we watched a man on a bicycle make a U-turn, park and kneel beside him. Gently cupping the man’s face in one hand, speaking softly into his ear, the bicycle rider confirmed he was alive. Wearing a relieved smile, he picked up something nearby and placed it in the sleeping man’s hand. We assumed it was a wallet or other valuable. The tenderness of the exchange has stayed with us. What were their ...

Closing the gun-making loophole

Do-it-yourself has never been easier; just ask the owners of any of the more than 25,785 ghost guns seized nationwide last year. The internet has made it simple for Americans of all ages (and criminal records) to purchase firearm-making kits at discount prices. The result is a national crisis. The Post reported this month on a rash of crimes using unlicensed, unserialized weapons: from an 18-year-old in Springfield, Va., who stormed into a garage during a fistfight and killed two unarmed 17-year-olds; to two teens in Brooklyn Park, Minn., who tried to shoot someone outside their car ...