Paul was a smart guy, but he was never president of Bankoh.
If he was he wouldn't have been let go during the down turn when all the banks got rid of their economists like Paul and Leroy.
What's happening is pretty typical, when you over use/abuse anything causing the quality of the experience to not meet expectations no matter what cost then you lose the repeat customer who moves on to something perceived better.
When traffic here finally gets to total gridlock and nothing can move from A to B during normal hours then people will start demanding change. Until then, as long as people can keep milking their cow and filling up their pockets with cash, nothing will matter.
Those that can will just split like they always do when satiated, leaving the unfortunate ones who can't afford to behind.
It'll be awhile before we reach that tipping point where we can't sell this place to anyone else anymore and all those needed to service the dream wise up and are racing out the door for a livable life.
Then we look for the next poor, underprivileged community to import here to serve. Syrians, Afghans, Yemenese, or maybe take in the Salvadorans, Guatamalans, Venuzuelans suffocating the southern border. The micros need to evolve up the economic ladder like all the rest did. Could be that this new unfortunate group may just be the growing homeless population which is becoming it's own ethnic culture in its self. The new homeless could be the next servant class for the tourists. It isn't that far fetched.
For every new skyscraper built in kakaako/ala moana, build another Kuhio Park Terrace skyscaper for the poor on sand island. Fill up Sand Island with ghetto skyscraper projects and build a bridge from sand island into honolulu/waikiki so workers can get to their slave owner facilities with ease. No different than the homeless tent city they put up during the pandemic.
We started with the japanese and chinese, then the korean, filopino, portugese, and puerto ricans. Then the samoan, fijian and tongans, then the vietnamese boat people. Then the mexicans for restaurants and coffee field labor and now the micronesians.