"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

That's the dilemma. NYC has always been a magnet that sucks in the
people who have been cast off by other parts of the country. So now
it's costing them, at a time when no city can afford it.


Back in the late seventies just prior to discharge, a group of us
short timers were
assembled to listen to a lady from the South Carolina unemployment
office who showed us a
chart of what the various states paid in unemployment.

The northern states paid a lot more than South Carolina.

Wes

?? I'm not sure what that means. Was she talking about totals, or
per-capita? Did she take out the dirt farmers? Did she take out the
people who had given up and were living on 'possum bellies and poke
salad? Did she explain how long the period of unemployment
compensation lasted in S.C., versus those "northern states"?

Did you get any sense that she was an objective reporter, just giving
you the facts, or that her salary was paid by the state of South
Carolina, and that she was trying to encourage you to move there, now
that you had developed vital skills and a tolerance for hardship
required to live in a low-income state ($5240 disposable income per
capita in S.C., in 1978, versus $8761 in CT, for example)? Do you
think she felt that her audience was sophisticated enough, skeptical
enough, and skilled enough to research and analyze what she was
saying?

Or was it a Dixie snow job?

She was pointing out that an unemployed ex-Marine would be a lot better
off
not cluttering up the rolls of the unemployed in SC.


--
John R. Carroll

Yeah, you could read that either way, but the circumstances suggest she
thought she was making S.C. sound more attractive.

However, even though the late '70s were years of big-time growth in the sun
belt, the unemployment rate in S.C. that year was higher than that of CT. I
didn't check the other northern states but there definitely was nothing
exceptional about S.C.'s rate (around 5.5%, versus roughly 5.2% for CT). So
a lower unemployment compensation rate just suggests they pay less, or they
pay for a shorter time.

--
Ed Huntress