In the supposedly classless society of the United States, the 400 wealthiest Americans now have an average net worth of $5.7 billion -- an increase of 14 percent over the previous year. Economic inequality is growing rapidly, and the wealthiest Americans are increasing it by championing the abolition of public schools, minimum wage laws, Medicare, and Medicaid, weakening unions, restricting voting rights, and, of course, promoting tax cuts for the rich.
Published Articles by Lawrence Wittner
The United States is the top nation in the world when it comes to war and gun-related deaths. But, when it comes to education, health, and the environment, the statistics show that it ranks far down on the list.
After thousands of years of bloody wars among contending tribes, regions, and nations, is it finally possible to dispense with the chauvinist ideas of the past? To judge by President Barack Obama's recent rhetoric and Middle East policy, it is not.
An array of global problems -- including not only the aggressive use of military force, but climate change, disease, and poverty -- cry out for global solutions. But we are not likely to see these solutions in a world of international anarchy, in which the "national interest" continues to trump the human interest.
Americans committed to better living for bosses can take heart at the fact that college and university administrators -- unlike their faculty (increasingly reduced to rootless adjuncts) and students (saddled with ever more debt) -- are thriving. Indeed, these are boom times for campus administrators.
Despite the immense dangers and costs, the nuclear powers are building a new generation of nuclear-armed submarines that will carry the nuclear arms race well into the 21st century -- if these nations survive that long.
Although national officials around the world are behaving much like their predecessors -- gearing up their countries for war -- there are reasons why war might actually be on the way out.
Economic inequality is growing in American higher education. At the same time that increasing numbers of university presidents are becoming millionaires, the livelihoods of most faculty members are deteriorating and students are being plunged into unprecedented levels of debt.
Is overwhelming national military power a reliable source of influence in world affairs? Apparently not, for, currently, the United States is militarily supreme in the world, but unable to cope with a number of international challenges. Also, in recent decades, substantial U.S. military advantages -- even when employed in bloody wars -- failed to prevent developments that it desperately sought to avoid.
This new book about leading women environmentalists over the course of American history is richly detailed and documented, providing a ground-breaking account of undaunted activists, determined to prevent environmental catastrophe.