Word: forded
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Unemployment is no longer the national trauma it once was-and, in large measure, Jerry Ford can thank the New Deal for that improvement. The Social Security Act of 1935 and subsequent social legislation so greatly extended the jobless benefits that most out-of-work Americans now collect tax-free income for up to 65 weeks, averaging from $48.15 weekly in Mississippi to $95.56 in the District of Columbia. In fiscal 1976 the average payment was $71.85 weekly, and more than 10 million people collected jobless checks at one time or another. Add food stamps, welfare, union unemployment benefits (which...
Armed with these figures, and the fact that the number of Americans at work has jumped from 86 million to 87.8 million in the 26 months of Ford's presidency, some economists argue that the unemployment picture is not as dismally gray as Jimmy Carter paints it. Moreover, the U.S. lists as unemployed some people-for example, full-time students looking for part-time work-who would not be counted as jobless in other industrial countries...
There is no denying that the present unemployment if long continued would debilitate the nation. Though their prescriptions differ, Ford and Carter agree that the nation should not and cannot tolerate such unemployment. It will be difficult to get below the 5% "full employment" goal, in part because many people are merely "between jobs" or lack basic job skills. The difference between that 5% and the present level of nearly 8% is where the real unemployment problem lies. The Congressional Joint Economic Committee reckons that every 1% of unemployment costs the U.S. $18 billion in lost tax revenues and increased...
...Ford: For the President the centerpiece of foreign policy-as laid down by his mentor Henry Kissinger-is the prevention of nuclear war. This means giving the highest priority to U.S. relations with the Soviet Union. Although Ford purged the word detente from his political vocabulary earlier this year, it remains his desire to relax tensions with Moscow and engage it in a web of technological, cultural and economic interrelations that presumably would make it too costly for the Soviets to return to cold war confrontation. Ford is also pressing for a new Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) based...
...volatile Middle East, Ford has authorized massive support for Israel ($4.3 billion in aid in the past two years), along with measures designed to gain the trust of the Arab states, such as economic aid and arms sales. Acknowledging that Kissinger's tactic of step-by-step diplomacy may have achieved all it can, Ford suggests that the next move toward a Middle East peace probably should be a general conference...