Word: joblessness
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...ethic, Nixon has done little to counteract the worst spell of unemployment in recent years. The overwhelming proportion of his tax benefits go to big business. The rich profit greatly from investment credits and advanced depreciation. In the short run, unfortunately, while the rich become wealthier the unemployed remain jobless. Richard Nixon is the modern version of Robin Hood he steals from the poor and gives to the rich...
...paradox is easily explained: in 1970 joblessness was rising sharply; many who were employed felt that they too would be thrown out of work. But now the rate has dipped from a peak of 6.2% in May of 1971, soothing the nerves of those still working-and they outnumber the jobless almost 17 to one. It may be that Americans are growing used to a jobless rate that they would have found intolerable only a few years ago. To Presidential Assistant John D. Ehrlichman, unemployment is really a training problem, because joblessness is "down to teen-age blacks, welfare mothers...
While training is surely desirable, Ehrlichman otherwise is wrong. Jobless rates are indeed especially high among blacks and other minorities (9.7%), and teen-agers (16.9%), but the rates have also risen in every other category as well since the last time Richard Nixon ran for President. (The overall rate in the late summer of 1968 was 3.5%.) Some of the biggest increases in the past four years have occurred among whites (from 3.2% to 5.1%), white-collar workers (2% to 3.5%), blue-collar workers (4.2% to 6.5%) and heads of households...
Members of TIME'S Board of Economists predict a record $110 billion increase in national output next year, but most of them believe that the nation's overall jobless rate will come down only to an average of 5%. Nixon Adviser Alan Greenspan adds that he expects the rate to range between 41% to 51% for several years. The Government's traditional "full employment" target is 4%; the irreducible jobless rate, composed of people moving between jobs and those only marginally employable, is a matter of guesswork. The mid-point of the experts' guesses...
...also true that unemployment today is somewhat less painful than in the past. In 1965 only 60% of jobless men over 24 got unemployment compensation; in 1970 the proportion rose to 77%, and it is even higher now. People who cannot collect unemployment compensation find it easier than before to qualify for welfare. Indeed, many of the unemployed feel no compulsion to take just any job that is offered...