The Big Kahuna

For ten years, I ran a restaurant in Newmarket, New Hampshire, called Jonny Boston’s International. The name of the restaurant came from the years I spent living in Australia. When I got ‘Down undah’ after graduating from high school, I would tell people I was from “North of Boston…” “Oh so you’re from Boston?” They’d say. “No.” I’d say. “I’m from New Hampshire, it’s North of Boston...” “Oh so you're from Boston then?”

Australians love nicknames, so I quickly became Jonny Boston. Later, when I spent a winter in Mexico, my roommate Jose´ would call me (after a little too much tequila), “Jonny Boston International! Jonny Boston Inter-Nation-Alllll!” Each syllable heavily exaggerated like a Mexican football commentator yelling GOAL!

So, in 2014, when I decided to open a restaurant serving international street food I thought it would be fun to reprise the role of Jonny Boston.

My restaurant was small, just 20 seats. At most, I had 6 employees, many of them high school kids, who only worked a few hours a week. It was from this humble position that I came to understand how the economy works on the most basic level.

One lesson I learned was the interconnectedness of the downtown businesses. If the hairdresser across the street was having a slow week, she wouldn’t be in for margaritas after she closed. If the tattoo shop down the road was busy, the boss would order lunch for everyone. When the engineering firm down the road got sold, everyone got laid off, and we sold three fewer burritos every day. 

The most important lesson though, came from one of our regulars, we called him, The Big Kahuna.

He wanted a burger that wasn’t on the menu: a cheeseburger topped with pulled pork, barbecue sauce, a fried egg, cheddar cheese, and Sriracha. “I don’t care what it costs,” he said. It was so good, I put it on the menu and named it The Big Kahuna.

For most of the year, he’d come in maybe once a month. But in November, he started showing up several times a week. A few days before Christmas, I finally asked him why.

“I work at Best Buy,” he explained. “Most of the year they only give me twenty hours a week.” “That’s odd.” I said, “It’s so they don’t have to give me benefits. But around the holidays they give me more hours. When I get more hours, I can come here more.”

Then he looked at me and said the line I’ve never forgotten: “If they paid me more, I’d eat here more.”

That was it. So simple. Just the truth. When working people have money, they spend it where they live; at my restaurant, the local café, the barber shop, the music venue. That daily spending is what keeps a town’s heart beating. The Big Kahuna wasn’t describing a radical idea. He was pointing out how a community’s economy is supposed to work; a simple, powerful cycle that’s been broken.

The Big Kahuna wasn’t just talking about buying a burger. He was talking about belonging. About the simple human connection of being a regular somewhere, of being known, of supporting a local business and sharing a meal with neighbors. His ability to pursue that small, essential piece of the good life was dictated by the profit margin of a distant corporation.

For more than forty years our state and our country have operated under Ronald Reagan’s promise that if we cut taxes for the wealthy and the corporations they own, the benefits would “trickle down” to everyone. Trickle-down economics has been the defining economic paradigm of my life.

But look at the results.

My dad supported our family of six on one engineer’s salary in the 1990s. Today, in the same state, two incomes often aren’t enough. He wasn’t an outlier: in 1971, 61% of Americans lived in middle-class households, many supported by a single income. By 2021, that share had fallen to just 50%. I’ve been searching for an affordable home for my own family for nearly nine years. 

Every year, I watch younger customers, friends, and even fellow small business owners get priced out, sometimes leaving New Hampshire altogether. Our property taxes keep climbing, funding our schools based on a town’s wealth, not a child’s future. Today, the poorest 20% of New Hampshire households pay about 8.9% of their income in taxes, while the richest 1% pay about 2.8%. We’re working harder than ever but falling behind.

The old political fight, left versus right, big government versus small government, offers no new path forward. Trickle-down economics doesn’t help the single mom working two jobs just to keep a roof over her family's head. It doesn’t help the retiree who is being pushed out of the mobile home park because of property tax increases. It doesn’t help the young person stuck in their parents’ basement, wondering if they’ll ever have a chance for a home of their own. 

This book is built on a different idea, one I learned from my grill, my customers, and my own struggle to build a life here. It starts by reclaiming a phrase we’ve all heard but rarely stop to truly consider: the pursuit of happiness.

When Thomas Jefferson placed “the pursuit of Happiness” alongside Life and Liberty in the Declaration of Independence, he wasn’t being poetic. He was being intentional. He was drawing on an Enlightenment idea, articulated by thinkers like John Locke, that the ultimate purpose of government is to create the conditions for human prosperity, what the Greeks called eudaimonia. This isn’t fleeting pleasure or casual contentment. It’s the deep, enduring satisfaction that comes from a life of meaning, connection, and dignity. It’s the ability to raise a family in security, to contribute to your community, to have a stake in the future, and to know your children will have the same chance you did.

Jefferson and the founders understood that you cannot pursue happiness if you are exhausted, isolated, or one crisis away from homelessness. You pursue it on a foundation. That foundation is built of stable homes, great schools, reliable healthcare, trusted neighbors, and a shared stake in the future. It is built in community.

When that foundation crumbles, the pursuit of happiness becomes a luxury for the lucky few. For everyone else, it’s just a meaningless quote on an old piece of paper.

Community First Economics is the practical philosophy of rebuilding that foundation: it recognizes that our fates are linked. My child’s good school makes your town safer. Your secure retirement stabilizes our local economy. Our clean water ensures our collective health. Prosperity doesn’t trickle down from the top. It is built from the middle out and the ground up, in strong communities.

This book isn’t about left or right. It’s about forward. It’s a call to remember that the word “economy” comes from the Greek oikonomia: “management of the household.” Our towns and state are our shared household. It’s time we started managing it for the well-being, the happiness, of everyone who lives here.

The path forward demands that we put the needs of our towns ahead of corporate lobbyists and tired arguments about tradition. This is the only path that leads to a New Hampshire where people like The Big Kahuna, have the foundation to build a good life, raise a family, and pursue happiness with freedom and dignity.

That’s the future worth fighting for. Let’s get to work.