By Thornton Crowe
As the media trumps the three-month 5% unemployment numbers like it was a great accolade on behalf of the Obama camp, one finds that most people are not buying it.
Salisbury has sustained several closings and layoffs over the last year, leaving us with a rising unemployment – now up to 7% in Wicomico County. Mind you, this figure does not include the following: under-employed – part-time workers who want full-time work, benefits expired/exhausted, unqualified for unemployment insurance and jobseekers that have simply given up. One quick look on Careerbuilders.com – which tells you how many have applied for any given position – you’ll find some jobs have 300+ applicants. Yet, Day’s first bold statement is to hire a Marketing Firm for downtown rejuvenation? (Sounds a bit like looking to keep people safe from guns rather than creatively solving a bad economy.) You can’t encourage business openings when people are flat out of cash, so the question is why?
Surely, many Salisbury residents would love nothing more than to open their own businesses and be their ‘own boss’ yet, governmental red tape – local, state and federal – coupled with lack of funds and credit – it seems to be a chicken and egg syndrome in every way possible. More businesses do mean more jobs but where does one go to start a new business in a town that seems hell bent on ‘good ole boy politics’ and a government more interested in placing Band-Aids rather than real economic growth solutions?
Instead of a Marketing Firm, perhaps a more advantageous attack on Salisbury’s downtown situation is to figure out how to get businesses to open there. Meaning, how do you put money in the right hands to get a business launched and offer incentives for downtown real estate. Third Fridays – while a grand time – does not generate a month’s worth of healthy revenue stream for any business located on the plaza.
Revenue streams come from a populous that has MONEY$$ to spend beyond their basic living expenses. With a whopping 7% unemployment rate (and that’s the November 2015 stat, showing a steady increase in the prior months) and the job options shrinking with every breath, where does Day and his cronies think the citizens are going to get money to spend? This is most definitely an Economics 101 concept completely lost on most Democrats in our local government; proving once again, a clear disconnects between idealism and reality.
So, do you feel that your world in the Bury is better now than it was eight years ago? Do you feel richer? Poorer? Stat? Weigh in…
14 comments:
Killary recommends the willful suspension of disbelief
Salisbury is only hanging on because of the University, and crony capitalism.
Nationally the Labor Participation rate (the % of adults working) was 66.0% in Dec 2007; since Obama took office that rate has changed to 62.6% in Dec 2015 (Source Bureau of Labor Statistics). Not only have policies like his put people out of work nationally, they have changed the demographic to where more are employed in the Private Sector than the Public Sector. The net is fewer and fewer people have jobs and more of those that do are supported by taxes than anytime in history. Salisbury reflects that trend by endorsement of the same failed policies.
Well... he created a job... That's worth something, right?
Wicomico is in the toilet. Thank you Rick Pollitt and liberal Dims for destroying are home values, work force and more.
The city and county needs manufacturing jobs that pay livable wages.
Once people have good jobs they will spend their money in the local economy. We need the jobs first - not the stores.
im still waiting for my shovel ready job our king promised me
2:01PM, given his tenure is almost up, I don't believe you'll be getting that job.
12:57PM Precisely the point. Day should concentrate on bringing jobs to Salisbury rather than marketing and PR campaigns for a flailing downtown. The scope he has presented with that initiative, coupled with the 'improving bicycle routes' is insane when his unemployment looms at 7%. If I were him, I'd be embarrassed to even even utter such nonsense in any public forum. Quality of life immediately escalates when citizens have disposable income and more liberal discretionary spending. It's proven fact - look at the 80s and 90s before the US economy was desecrated and gutted by liberal hogwash.
The idiots of Salisbury elected Day over Debbie Campbell, who understood economics better than anyone on that council in years. The Cohen girl was a close second. But every time they tried to point out simple economic realities, the vultures on the council would circle, along with that dingbat Ireton who pretended to be their friend, and their cronies. Salisbury is sunk having a mayor who wants PR campaigns and to not talk about crime. Feel good nonsense as the city burns, Nero.
11:37 ......
Mocked obama AND his inane followers quite concisely.
Good job. And funny, too.
It's more like 35%. They are not counting those who have dropped off the unemployment rolls or those who are working reduced hours due to Obama Care at the minimum wage.
According to economist like Harry Dent and Gerald Celente, they also state the unemployment rate is over 35 to 40 percent. It is a fact that there are more people on public assistance and food stamps than any time in the history of this nation even exceeding the last great depression.
Manufacturing is for the most part gone, the buildings are warehouses, and I see more empty and foreclosed homes than ever before. Maybe some parts of this country are in better shape like Florida, but not here.
We have become a country like Mexico. The very rich and the very poor, and the middle class is becoming non existent.
Lets see,, I make less and 1/4 of my wage goes to healthcare.
And you wonder why no one has any money to spend.
You mention help wanted ads. For what, a $10/hr job with no benefits? There is nothing worthwhile to apply for unless you are living in a cardboard box.
I meet more and more people who are now home sharing because they can no longer afford to live singly.
I have been looking for a second part time evening job. Apparently I am over qualified to be a cashier, even though I need it, can do it, and would be reliable, I was turned down because they thought "I would not stay every long". I later found out that the establishment, at one time had several of their cashiers all quit at the same time. I view it as a blessing in disguise.
This place suxs. Employers are antiquated in their thinking. Greedy and downright rude. Born here's panic at the slightest thought of progress and complain about everything.
I am waiting for the next housing wave to crash. I have a front row seat, as I predicted, since someone has taken the initiative to build student housing I am watching all the slumlords scramble to unload their dumps that they can no longer get their over priced $$'s for. I also have a front row seat to the ghetto-ish occupants who have purchased the foreclosures in such neighborhoods as - Deer Harbour. We just love seeing all your trash and extra refrigerators and furniture decorating the front of your homes, driveway, and in front of your garage doors. A big thank you for ghetto-izing our beautiful neighborhood with your trashy lifestyle.
I am sure this new wave of living will be coming to another neighborhood near you.
I drive around seeing beggars on every corner, empty buildings, closed businesses, trashed empty homes and drug deals going on out in the open.
The answer to your question is obvious. So why ask ?
8:25 I could not have said it better!!!!
5% my A** !!!!
This area is suffering from a Depression and it seems that no one at City Hall really gives a hoot. They're more interested in hiring fancy schmancy PR firms to market a downtown no one has disposable income to enjoy. It's almost like Day drives through these neighborhoods and is completely oblivious as he drinks his high priced Starbucks Cafe Mochachino.
As for the landlords, they deserved it when the president changed the rules on housing at SU, making it only Juniors, Seniors and Graduate students able to live off-campus. She should have cut off the local rent vultures altogether and made the student housing mandatory. The locals take advantage of the students any way they can - hating them all the way but taking their money just the same. And did I say, these vultures also do not improve their properties or fix them when they look dilapidated?
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