August 8, 2011

We Are Stupider Than We Used to Be

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Matt Yglesias posts the chart on the right today, and it’s a useful reminder that as bad as the Great Recession has been, it’s still not within light years of being in the same league as the Great Depression. This has all sorts of implications for assessing things like monetary policy, Obama’s ability to get things done, the depth of anger in the country, and so forth.

So yes: things are much better today then they were in 1933. Still, whenever I look at comparisons like this, I’m always struck by one way in which our situation today is worse. In 1933, nobody really knew what to do about a massive, persistent economic downturn. Keynes’s theories hadn’t yet gained wide currency, and conventional wisdom of the day was uniformly unhelpful. Certainly FDR was never a deliberate Keynesian: He did end up spending a lot of money, but mainly because he wanted to help people, not because he really thought that deficit spending per se was the answer to our problems. So in some sense it’s forgivable that they didn’t do a better job of combatting the Great Depression. They really didn’t know any better.

Today we do, of course. And yet, we’re still not willing to do what needs to be done. Partly this is thanks to mindless partisanship, partly because we just don’t have the guts. It’s pretty damn discouraging. At least our predecessors had the excuse of ignorance. What’s our excuse?

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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