Mississippi: Highest unemployment rate in the nation! - USM Forum -- Message Board

Date: Jul 22, 2005

Mississippi: Highest unemployment rate in the nation!

Date: Jul 22, 2005

I, for one, am grateful to all the USM faculty who stay here because they believe that they can make a difference. There is a reason that Mississippi is dead last & one of them is education (or lack therof).

Date: Jul 22, 2005

Invictus wrote:

I, for one, am grateful to all the USM faculty who stay here because they believe that they can make a difference. There is a reason that Mississippi is dead last & one of them is education (or lack therof).

Sure, this is a nice sentiment, but people should be paid for their work. Making a difference doesn't pay the mortgage or the medical bills or the college tuition for your kids.

Date: Jul 23, 2005

Glad I'm gone wrote:

Sure, this is a nice sentiment, but people should be paid for their work. Making a difference doesn't pay the mortgage or the medical bills or the college tuition for your kids.

I don't disagree with you at all. But it's a vicious cycle: high unemployment --> low tax revenues --> low teacher pay --> lower quality of education --> high unemployment. Rinse & repeat.

I was expressing my gratitude for the folks who teach in Mississippi who aren't mercenaries, like yourself GIG, for the ones who are independently wealthy, I suppose, or who can live on pork & beans, or who don't have any kids to educate, or whatever.

But yeah, pack it in & head for greener pastures. I don't blame you a bit.

Date: Jul 23, 2005

Invictus wrote:

Glad I'm gone wrote: Sure, this is a nice sentiment, but people should be paid for their work. Making a difference doesn't pay the mortgage or the medical bills or the college tuition for your kids. I don't disagree with you at all. But it's a vicious cycle: high unemployment --> low tax revenues --> low teacher pay --> lower quality of education --> high unemployment. Rinse & repeat. I was expressing my gratitude for the folks who teach in Mississippi who aren't mercenaries, like yourself GIG, for the ones who are independently wealthy, I suppose, or who can live on pork & beans, or who don't have any kids to educate, or whatever. But yeah, pack it in & head for greener pastures. I don't blame you a bit.

Invictus-

I agreed with your post until you called GIG a "mercenary." Highly trained and educated folks in non-academic jobs move on to better positions without being labeled negatively. Most of us faculty can live adequately on our salaries, but not live large compared to similarly trained folks in the non-academic world. In higher ed, there is even greater cultural pressure to be a company man or woman (rah, rah, sis boom bah) compared to the corporate world or government jobs. I think that this is a subtle way to maintain some stability in the workforce without providing regular opportunities for promotions, COL adjustments, or merit raises. Let's applaud the worker who goes on to greener pastures (while being sad for our loss). It's the limited academic free market at work.

Date: Jul 23, 2005

GIG wrote -- "If you think there is going to be any improvement in the state's funding of higher education, especially money for raises, you're deluding yourself...."

I disagree. Pity the poor folk on Medicaid; some are already dying due to cuts in prescription medication coverage. But the picture for Mississippi higher ed is likely to improve. The business types firmly in charge of the executive and legislative branches know that economic development will hit a stone wall without decent higher education. I expect them to stop the slide; watch for a significant boost in the IHL appropriation next year, with faculty and staff raises all around.

Date: Jul 23, 2005

Invictus wrote:

I, for one, am grateful to all the USM faculty who stay here because they believe that they can make a difference. There is a reason that Mississippi is dead last & one of them is education (or lack therof).

Many of us loved our work at USM for this very reason. We worked for lower salaries and less library, computer, etc. support because we thought we were making a difference. We often had to struggle to carry on the research part of our jobs, but we struggled together. Often our reward was seeing the difference we made in young lives--and their successes after they left us.

Date: Jul 23, 2005

Invictus wrote:

But it's a vicious cycle: high unemployment --> low tax revenues --> low teacher pay --> lower quality of education --> high unemployment. Rinse & repeat.

I would simply add a twist to the above. Educators in MS educate talented young people - who then leave. In the national market for talent, MS seems to be an exporter. This drain damages the future growth potential of the state by an unknown but presumably nontrivial amount.

P.S., I've watched this phenomenon in the part of the country where I grew up and see the same thing (thankfully to a lesser extent) happening here.

Date: Jul 23, 2005

leper wrote:

Invictus wrote: But it's a vicious cycle: high unemployment --> low tax revenues --> low teacher pay --> lower quality of education --> high unemployment. Rinse & repeat. I would simply add a twist to the above. Educators in MS educate talented young people - who then leave. In the national market for talent, MS seems to be an exporter. This drain damages the future growth potential of the state by an unknown but presumably nontrivial amount. P.S., I've watched this phenomenon in the part of the country where I grew up and see the same thing (thankfully to a lesser extent) happening here.

Mississippi has a way to handle this export problem. We just don't educate them well enough to make it outside the state. That way they will stay home close to mom and dad. Who knows they may become governor some day.

Date: Jul 23, 2005

Godless Liberal wrote:

I agreed with your post until you called GIG a "mercenary." Highly trained and educated folks in non-academic jobs move on to better positions without being labeled negatively.

Revisit the term "mercenary." A mercenary is a person whose loyalties are for sale to the highest bidder. That's exactly what anyone, highly trained or not-so-highly trained, highly educated or not-so-highly educated, academic or non-academic, is who follows the money. It helps to have no sense of loyalty whatsoever, but some of us grow up that way.

What GIG described wasn't professional advancement or anything like that. It was pure "follow the money." GIG was smugly saying, "See? I was smart & bailed out of that loser backwater place."

The kind of person I like in my squad, especially when we switch sides for a better paycheck in the middle of a civil war. That guy Van Owen was like that for a while...

Date: Jul 23, 2005

In a an creative economy economic progress requires attracting and retaining highly creative people. Highly creative people tend to go to places where they can be around other creative people, where they can be stimulated, where their ideas and their lifestyles are welcome. Giving tax incentives to bring in companies is helpful -- it creates employment for workers who make things. But this is also a smaller and smaller percentage of our economy in global terms, and a part of the economy that is easily exportable to somewhere else where labor is cheaper.

Mississipppi would be smart to invest in school, in the arts, and in investing in centers that will attract such people. Good schools a good climate, interesting people, artistic and technological progressivism will attract far more companies than tax incentives. Look how many innovative company are in high tax areas -- because those high tax areas provide the kind of creative environment their people need to be happy and the companies need to be innovative and thus productive.

Date: Jul 23, 2005

Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner wrote:

Godless Liberal wrote: I agreed with your post until you called GIG a "mercenary." Highly trained and educated folks in non-academic jobs move on to better positions without being labeled negatively. Revisit the term "mercenary." A mercenary is a person whose loyalties are for sale to the highest bidder. That's exactly what anyone, highly trained or not-so-highly trained, highly educated or not-so-highly educated, academic or non-academic, is who follows the money. It helps to have no sense of loyalty whatsoever, but some of us grow up that way. What GIG described wasn't professional advancement or anything like that. It was pure "follow the money." GIG was smugly saying, "See? I was smart & bailed out of that loser backwater place." The kind of person I like in my squad, especially when we switch sides for a better paycheck in the middle of a civil war. That guy Van Owen was like that for a while...

You make my point for me. GIG did not say his "loyalties" were for sale to the highest bidder (your definition of mercenary). In a free market system, a worker's labor (not loyalty) goes not to the highest "bidder," but to the owner of capital who can best compensate him or her for that labor. It is hardly traitorous "switching sides," like in a war. In the corporate world, at worst, it benefiting a business competitor (though this can happen to a lessor degree in academics). People in the corporate and government world change jobs for both professional advancement and compensation (usually correlated) all the time. Why knock GIG for this? Academics have also been doing it for years.

Loyalty IS important, but not blind loyalty. Corporations are notoriously unloyal (my father in law, for example, may have his pension slashed despite Lucent's promises). Universities are a bit more loyal to their employees, but as state employees even that has notable limits. Loyalty should be directed toward one's spouse, children, country, and friends. Corporations and universities like to call their operations "families" to trade on this important human predisposition.

If you value blind loyalty to an entity at the expense of the free market system, you'll need to change your handle to Comrade Roland.

Date: Jul 23, 2005

Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner wrote:

Godless Liberal wrote: I agreed with your post until you called GIG a "mercenary." Highly trained and educated folks in non-academic jobs move on to better positions without being labeled negatively. Revisit the term "mercenary." A mercenary is a person whose loyalties are for sale to the highest bidder. That's exactly what anyone, highly trained or not-so-highly trained, highly educated or not-so-highly educated, academic or non-academic, is who follows the money. It helps to have no sense of loyalty whatsoever, but some of us grow up that way. What GIG described wasn't professional advancement or anything like that. It was pure "follow the money." GIG was smugly saying, "See? I was smart & bailed out of that loser backwater place." The kind of person I like in my squad, especially when we switch sides for a better paycheck in the middle of a civil war. That guy Van Owen was like that for a while...

Stephen:

Your posting time beat mine! I'll have to write quicker next time.

Date: Jul 23, 2005

Gee, what a stink I started!

I used the term "mercenary" simply in response to the snottiness I perceived in GIG's post. It struck me as just smug -- a put down. I suppose had GIG stayed, Mississippi wouldn't be on the bottom. It was that smugness I reacted to.

Yes, Stephen, academics have been doing it for ages. So has every other profession. It's odd that when a military person does it, we call him a mercenary & it's bad, but when anybody else does it, it's just TCOB. Personally, I don't give a rat's hindquarters about loyalty. Shelby Thames considers himself "loyal" to USM, ferchrissakes.

Anybody who can better themselves, monetarily or professionaly, should do so. But don't be smug & put down those who decide to stay.

Date: Jul 23, 2005

Godless Liberal wrote:

Stephen: Your posting time beat mine! I'll have to write quicker next time.

Nice post GL -- hate this new format.

Keep it up -- I am enjoying reading your stuff as I patch in and out . . .