REPORT CARD
Nelson, Marcia Z .
REPORT CARD Marcia Z. Nelson The Missiles Next Door THE MILITARY IN YOUR BACKYARD by Randy Schutt Center for Economic Conversion, 222 View Street, Suite C, Mountain View, CA 94041. $14.20...
...the navigability of such major waterways as the Panama Canal and the Mississippi River is reduced...
...Both the quantity and quality of work are changing, they argue, as high-paying manufacturing jobs are replaced by low-paying service jobs...
...The U.S...
...Their calculation includes so-called discouraged workers, fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds, and everyone who wants a job but does not have one...
...Soil may replace oil as the next resource crunch...
...Millions of unemployed Americans are routinely undercounted, according to Ward Morehouse and David Dembo...
...Soil erosion will eventually lead to higher food prices, hunger, and quite possibly, persistent pockets of famine," Brown and Wolf predict...
...Among the solutions the authors call for is a national policy of soil management...
...These are prices our children will have to pay for unchecked population growth and agricultural practices that boost productivity only in the short run...
...As population pressures drive up the world's demand for food, intensive farming methods are beginning to convert earth into a nonrenewable resource...
...Today, jobless workers are considered officially unemployed only if they are actively seeking work...
...How Statistics Lie THE UNDERBELLY OF THE CURRENT 'RECOVERY' by Ward Morehouse and David Dembo Learning Resources in International Studies, Suite 9A, 777 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017...
...After adjustment, the official unemployment rate of 9.7 per cent for 1982, the height of the recent recession, becomes a jobless rate of 16.6 per cent...
...A soil maintenance program in Kenya has successfully demonstrated that conservation techniques can boost farmers' incomes and feed a large rural population...
...With the Pentagon spending billions—almost $300 billion is authorized for fiscal 1985—we all live in the shadow of missiles...
...Schutt provides a list of sources needed to decipher this argot...
...A twenty-page annotated bibliography and sample pages of documents will help readers locate and master the tools to uproot neighborhood missiles...
...Activists need other languages to persuade a community to convert its military industry to the production of socially useful goods: Military dollars translate into profits, tax revenues, and jobs...
...The dimensions of the problem span the globe, report Lester Brown and Edward Wolf...
...Such dramatic erosion reduces agricultural productivity and drives up the cost of farming because nitrogen fertilizers and additional energy must be used to cultivate the land...
...Morehouse and Dembo offer an alternative and truer measure: the jobless rate...
...Changes in the official definitions of "employed" and "unemployed" in the past fifteen years have allowed the Government to overstate employment levels and underreport the numbers of jobless...
...This useful study reminds us that numbers don't always add up to the truth...
...The depletion of soil also carries indirect social costs: clogged reservoirs hinder irrigation and hydroelectric generation...
...The authors get their data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which offers its own broader but unpublicized estimates of unemployment...
...Author Randy Schutt gives step-by-step instructions for determining the amount of military dollars spent in a community, who the military producers are, and what they produce...
...What we are seeing," Morehouse writes, "is the pauperization of work in America...
...The soil lost during spring plowing in Northern China, for example, moves airborne across the Pacific Ocean where it will eventually be observed and measured in Hawaii...
...Unearthing a Problem SOIL EROSION: QUIET CRISIS IN THE WORLD ECONOMY by Lester R. Brown and Edward C. Wolf Worldwatch Institute, 1776 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20036...
...Persons not looking for work are simply not counted as part of the labor force...
...Peace activists can learn from this detailed workbook how to begin weaning their communities from military dependency...
...Food, like oil, has become a global commodity in an economically interdependent world...
...This task requires decoding the arcane, abbreviated language used in the public records of the Department of Defense...
...The jobless rate also adjusts for the increasing number of workers holding part-time jobs...
...Since 1972, the authors calculate, part-time employment has increased 156 per cent, with more than half that increase occurring under the Reagan Administration...
...Army Corps of Engineers spends inordinate amounts of money dredging waterways...
...Schutt discusses methods and resources for researching companies, estimating employment levels, and determining tax dollars contributed by contractors...
...The problem cannot be left to food producers alone, since the costs of soil conservation might further burden already cash-strapped individual farmers...
...And the loss of soil here today becomes the loss of food elsewhere tomorrow...
...When the Reagan Administration invokes statistics to claim credit for an economic recovery, watch out...
...14.20 (California residents add eighty cents tax...
Vol. 48 • October 1984 • No. 12
