NEWS AND OBSERVATIONS

As often as is possible, this page will be updated to bring you insights on the state of the planet. If you find or have information you would like to share with other visitors to the School, please forward them via email to me for possible addition to this page. Items are organized alphabetically by subject.

COMMENTS OR QUESTONS?

CORPORATE LEADERSHIP

In 1993, Michael Eisner, Chairman of Disney, received compensation totalling $203 million. Disney's total income for the year: $300 million.

EDUCATION

United States / Segregation

A study released by Harvard University concludes that schools in the United States are becoming increasingly segregated today by race and class. On the one hand, the data raises concerns over the quality of education received by minorities. Latinos, which comprise the fastest growing minority group, also attend the most severely segregated schools. Segregation is returning to schools in the southern states, even in the suburbs of large metropolitan regions. The pattern of home ownership, where race and class divisions are prevalent, is a major factor in segregation in the schools. [source: Philadelphia Inquirer, June 15, 1999]

NEWS and OBSERVATIONS
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PHILOSOPHERS of the Just Society
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PRINCIPLES of Cooperative Individualism
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RESPONSE Page
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SEARCH FOR THE JUST SOCIETY - Instructor's Manual
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SURVEY on the Financing of Government

ENVIRONMENT

Destruction Caused By Invading Species / Termites

Reports are increasing in the southern part of the U.S. of a species of termite that is eating buildings and even live trees at an alarming rate. The termite apparently came into the United States from China during the Second World War. The old section of New Orleans is severely threatened by colonies that have been found to have up to 70 million termites in them. Treatments utilized in other parts of the U.S. are not effective, and the termites are proving to be extremely adaptive to different climates. [source: Philadelphia Inquirer, June 13, 1999]

ENVIRONMENT

Recycling and Waste Disposal

In the United States, each person generates an average of 4.4 pounds of garbage each day -- 217 million tons in 1997 (as reported by the Environmental Protection Agency). This up from 88 million tons as recently as 1960. Nearly 40% of the total is comprised of paper and paperboard products, 13% from yard waste, another 10% from food waste, and the remainder of materials that will not decompose over time when buried.

ENVIRONMENT

Recycling and Waste Disposal

There are more 2,300 landfills just in the United States, many of which threaten ground water with high levels of contamination. And, experts say land fills all eventually begin to leak because of the toxic chemicals placed there.

Another problem is that the process of covering and compacting garbage prevents newspapers and food from disintegrating. There is also enormous controversy over incineration of waste, although proponents say that the plants that burn municipal garbage to create steam and electricity are "one of the cleanest sources of power in the world ... destroying bacteria, pathogens and other harmful elements usually found in garbage, and burning cuts its volume by about 90 percent." The offsetting dangers are the ash, which must be captured by air-pollution-control devices, to prevent this toxic substance from escaping. [source: Parade Magazine, June 13, 1999]

ENVIRONMENT

Recycling Nuclear Waste

Applying a low tech solution to the removal of nuclear waste from ground water. [24 February, 2000]

ENVIRONMENT

Water Quality

Landscape architects and horticulturalists at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, have built a water-cleansing apparatus they call the Green Machine. This project is based on the work of Dr. John Todd, an internationally recognized biologist/ecologist. The process works as follows: After wastewater is collected and allowed to settle, sludge is drained off to use as compost. The Green Machine commences its task by collecting energy in the greenhouse's solar roof panels. Sunlight converted into electricity drives the pumps that begin oxygenizing wastewater that has been moved to aeration tanks. From the tanks, the water travels through a series of hanging gardens; further aeration and aquatic vegetagion continue to break down pollutants. The water is then passed through polishing ponds where additional plants, algae and sunlight, plus snails and fish "eat" the remaining pollutants. Further filtration takes place after the water is channeled outside the greenhouse into a constructed marsh that has been enriched by plants specifically selected because of their cleansing properties. Thereafter, groundwater recharge of pure water is accomplished by percolation and without the use of a single toxic chemical.

For more detailed information, contact Associated Professsor S. Edgar David.

ENVIRONMENT

Water Shortages

The organization Population Action International has published an analysis of the availability of fresh water around the globe and forecasts severe shortages in many countries. Only around 1 percent of all the earth's water is available as fresh water for all plants and animals. In the United States, the quanity of fresh water available per person has dropped 40 percent in the last 25 years and is projected to drop another 20 percent by the year 2025. This will still leave the U.S. as a whole with a more than adequate water supply, at 7,500 cubic meters per capita. Levels below 1,000 cubic meters indicate water scarcity; and, among those counties projected to fall below this level include all of the countries along the northern coast of Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, most of the Middle East, South Africa, Rwanda and Burundi.

GOVERNMENT / REFORM OF

United States / Term Limits

Amidst all the controversy over the Constitutionality of imposing term limits on elected officials, the instances where the voters have approved such limits on state legislators continues to grow. Nineteen states now have term-limit laws in place. Nearly 2,500 of 7,500 state legislators are term-limited, as well as some 19,000 local officials.

Critics have argued that term limits rob the legislaures of knowledge and experience. Yet, in Maine during 1997, where three-fourths of the lawmakers were in their first or second terms, the state budget was passed more quickly than ever before in the state's history. One Ohio state representative states: "Many of us are now more likely to take a chance on controversial legislation. Before, we might have said, 'I want to introduce that bill someday.' For us, someday is now."

Another prediction, that lobbyists would become more powerful, does not seem to be the case. One reason is that voters are also passing initiatives to lower the amounts lobbyists can contribute to political campaigns.

And, finally, the attitude of people choosing to run for office is changing. Fewer attorneys or former legislative staff members are running for office, but people with business experience are. Voters are choosing people who have been successful in private life over career politicians.[added May 10, 1998]

JAPAN

Conditions

Japan's economy and society is in crisis. Japanese industrialists have long benefited by a highly protectionist environment and government policies that favor producers over consumers and business owners over workers. Despite a promised government infusion of more than $120 billion, the Japanese are not addressing the source of the problems. What caused so many banks and insurance companies to make so many high risk loans to so many industrial giants? The interlocking relationships between these entities is well-known. However, what is not getting adequate attention is that failed public policy is responsible for the highly speculative nature of Japan's stock market and land market. While land prices were escalating higher and higher, banks were advancing billions in loans to speculators based on these inflated collateral values. When land prices finally crashed, the banks were left with loans to businesses with declining cash flows and tumbled collateral values.

Business Week [April 13, 1998, p.28] reports: "For now Tokyo is following the same old script. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party promises real action; the markets react with disbelief; the economic data get more and more alarming. The U.S. provides the background chorus, warning Japan to change, to cut taxes, to deregulate, to do something. Commentators then note the LDP is too beholden to special interests in the construction industry and its rural constituents to back anything othe than more pork for public works."

LAND USES

Development in the United States

UNDEVELOPED AREAS STILL VAST

Environmentalists who claim open space is shrinking due to urban sprawl are correct -- sort of. States are losing more undeveloped area. It's just that even in states that are the fastest developing, the undeveloped areas are still vast.

o Texas, which was developed faster than any other state in the five years ending in 1997, only has 5.5 percent of its land developed.

o Twenty-five states have less than seven percent of land developed (Alaska was not included in the study by the

U.S. Agriculture Department).

o Even the most developed state, New Jersey, had 59.2 percent of its land undeveloped, while the least developed, Montana, had only 1.3 percent of developed land.

o The national average, not counting Alaska but including Puerto Rico, was 7.1 percent of land developed.

Development typically drives up land values, providing a windfall to farmers who live near citites and choose to sell. However, government economists say the development of farmland poses no threat to the food supply because improved crop yields and technology have increased agricultural output nearly two percent a year since 1948, despite the fact that the amount of land farmed has declined.

Source: Peter Zachariadis (Associated Press), "Rate of Land Development Increasing, Report Says," Dallas Morning News, December 8, 1999.

LAND USES

Golf Courses

Golf courses have been heavily criticized by environmentalists and other activists because of the enormous quantities of water, herbicides and pesticides required to maintain these manicured places of play for the well-to-do. Since 1985, the number of courses in France and Germany has tripled, to around 1,000. There are 400 courses in Sweden. Courses are now being built in large numbers in Spain and Portugal, even though Portugal has only 130 golfers per course (as compared to 1,600 in the U.S. and over 7,000 in Japan).

PHILOSOPHIES, SOCIO-POLITICAL

Georgism

Who was Fiske Warren? From 1909 until his death in 1938, Warren poured a considerable portion of his private fortune into the establishment of a "single-tax" enclave in Harvard, Massachusetts. Warren, a wealthy manufacturer, was convinced that Henry George's that most of the social problems that plagued the people of the United States could be solved by the institution of George's proposal to institute a single tax on land values. To implement this plan he purchased properties and leased them back to residents, using the "economic rent" to pay all taxes. At its height, Warren's holdings comprised hundreds of acres. The experiment, considered only a partial success, collapsed when Warren died.

POPULATION ISSUES

The Landless

In 1981 the number of people in the world who were landless or near-landless was estimated to be 938 million. By the year 2000, this number of forecasted to be 1.24 billion [source: World Watch, January/February 1997]

POPULATION ISSUES

Nigeria

The population of Lagos, Nigeria is 143,000 per square mile. By comparison, the population density of the City of New York is a mere 23,700 persons per square mile.

RENT / OF LOCATIONS AND NATURAL RESOURCE-LADEN LANDS

Indonesia: Royalties for Resource Extraction

In 1990 the government of Indonesia received $416 million for leases granted to timber companies. The estimated amount these leases would have yielded if awarded in an open auction market was $2.1 billion. [source: World Watch, March/April 1997]

SUBSIDIES / NATIONAL

Belgium, France and Germany

Kym Anderson writes in "The Political Economy of Coal Subsidies in Europe," Energy Policy, Vol.23, No.6:

"In 1991 ... total assistance [to coal mining companies] per coal miner employed was close to $90,000 for Belgium Germany and ... well over $100,000 for France. According to estimates -- which are three times as large in real terms as a decade earlier -- it would be far cheaper to close all coal production in these countries (and Spain) and pay miners their current wage to do nothing."

SUBSIDIES / NATIONAL

United States of America

The U.S. Government charges ranchers the remarkable sum of $1.60 per month to graze a steer on publicly-held land. An analysis prepared by the Cato Institute estimates this is a subsidy below market value of some $200 million annually.

SUBSIDIES / NATIONAL

United States of America / Mineral-Yielding Lands

Edward A. Chadd writes in Common Cause:

"Since 1872, an area of mineral-rich land the size of [the state of] Connecticut has been sold for practically nothing... Meanwhile 233 [new] applications, with a total mineral value of $15.5 billion, hang in the balance. Under current law the government would have to sell them for less than a million dollars."

SUBSIDIES / NATIONAL

United States of America / Nevada Gold

Geologists estimate that the lands in the State of Nevada hold gold worth $1.5 billion. Under current leasing arrangements, the U.S. public will receive "rent" of roughly $3,300 for the rights to mine this gold.

In 1994, the U.S. government spent $100 million building and maintaining roads through the nation's publicly-held forests so that timber companies would have access to cut down the forests. The timber companies were charged nothing for these improvements and services.

SUBSIDIES / NATIONAL

United States of America / Sugar

Since 1981 the U.S. government has guaranteed sugar-cane and sugar-beet growers and processors a high minimum price for domestic sugar. The result is that U.S. consumes pay more than $1 billion annually above the world market price for sugar. One result has been a doubling in the number of acres in the State of Florida planted in sugar-cane. A second effect is what is described as a drastic ecological decline in the Everglades traced to phosphorus killing other vegetation and reducing the oxygen in water, killing off fish. Sugar growers have recently agreed to contribute over $322 million toward the reduction of phosphorus runoff and the creation of buffer zones. The full cost of clean-up is estimated by environmental group at over $1.5 billion. Although some 46,000 people are employed in the sugar industry, high prices have forced other jobs out of the U.S., such as in candy manufacturing. The Heritage Foundation in a recent report on U.S. agricultural policies concludes that the sugar program is corporate welfare at its worst.

WEALTH / DISTRIBUTION OF

Condition of Labor / Mexican Workers

There are some 2,200 factories in Mexico's "free-trade zone" along the border with the United States. The reported average hourly wage in these factories is $1.64. Workers holding similar responsibilities in the same companies in the United States are compensated at around $16 per hour. [from: World Watch, May/June 1997]

WEALTH / MEASUREMENT OF

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Statisticians measure the well-being of societies by counting up expenditures into what economists called "Gross National Product." Ostensibly, the larger the GNP the better off the people of that society are. GNP includes expenditures for cleaning up environmental disasters, for building prisons and warehousing all of the peoples who commit crimes. GNP also includes all of the medical expenses to treat people brought to hospitals with gunshot wounds, drug overdoses, addictions to alcohol and tobacco. Well, you get the picture.

WEALTH / TAXATION OF

Green Taxes

European governments are gradually beginning to lower taxes on incomes in favor of taxing energy use, waste generation and pollution. Sweden introduced the first such measures in 1991, followed in 1993 by Denmark and the Netherlands in 1995. Other European governments are considering similar measures. More information is available from The Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, and Energy in Wuppertal, Germany; email address: kai.schlegelmilch@mail.wupperinst.org

[from: World Watch, March/April 1996, p.6]

WEALTH / TAXATION OF

United States of America

David C. Korten writes, in When Corporations Rule the World:

"In 1957, corporations in the United States provided 45 percent of local property tax revenues. By 1987, their share had dropped to about 16 percent. A 1994 study by the Progressive Policy Institute of the Democratic Leadership Conference identified what it considered to be unjustified subsidies and tax benefits extended to corporations in the United States amounting to $111 billion over five years."

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