November 27, 2012

No, Business Is Not Slowing Down Because of the Fiscal Cliff

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In his column today, Neil Irwin quotes the CEO of AT&T claiming that “uncertainty” over the fiscal cliff is restraining business growth. This is a common claim, but Irwin correctly points out that “a slowing in business spending took effect long before the term ‘fiscal cliff’ had even been coined.” He’s right. But just saying this doesn’t make it clear just how dramatic the slowdown has been. As you can see in the chart on the right, business investment growth has been on a clear downward slope for the past three years. This obviously has nothing whatsoever to do with fear of the fiscal cliff.

I’m a cynic, so I suppose you should take my views on the business community with a shaker of salt. Nonetheless, here’s what I think we should conclude from this: Fortune 500 CEOs should never be taken seriously on macroeconomic issues. Their job is to dole out high-grade BS in public, and politics and macroeconomics are just grist for their mill. Every word out of their mouths is special pleading, and that’s how the business press ought to treat it. I really have no idea why anyone ever takes them seriously on this stuff.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

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