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For the last couple years I have been hammered every time I say something good about how things were in Pensacola in years past. People like Oats and others tell stories of how backwards, crude and suffering from a "Inferiority complex". Things were bad. They say we have been saved by the great work done my our leaders and those who come from other places to "show us the way" This is from today's PNJ.
In the 1970s, he explained, the Pensacola area had one of the highest incomes per capita in the Southeast, where the average worker made 50 cents more an hour than the average Florida worker.
"Everybody moved to Pensacola (metropolitan) area back in the '70s because this is where the money was. This is where the jobs were. We were the economic center of gravity for the Panhandle, the Southeast as well as Florida," he said.
Yet, by 2001, the wage for that Pensacola worker dramatically slipped to less than $1 below the hourly wages their counterparts earned in the rest of the state.
While there's been some progress with wages ticking up slightly, Fort Walton Beach has usurped the Pensacola area's once prominent place as an up-and-coming economic force in the region, he said.
In the 1970s, he explained, the Pensacola area had one of the highest incomes per capita in the Southeast, where the average worker made 50 cents more an hour than the average Florida worker.
"Everybody moved to Pensacola (metropolitan) area back in the '70s because this is where the money was. This is where the jobs were. We were the economic center of gravity for the Panhandle, the Southeast as well as Florida," he said.
Yet, by 2001, the wage for that Pensacola worker dramatically slipped to less than $1 below the hourly wages their counterparts earned in the rest of the state.
While there's been some progress with wages ticking up slightly, Fort Walton Beach has usurped the Pensacola area's once prominent place as an up-and-coming economic force in the region, he said.