Earnings of the Poor Are Stuck on Nuthin’

Here’s a different way of looking at the American economy, courtesy of David Leonhardt:

This is similar to my chart from Wednesday except that Leonhardt shows incomes of the poor going up slightly while I show them going down slightly. Either way, the natural question is: where did all the money go? The answer, of course, is that it mostly went to the men and women who nearly destroyed the world ten years ago until Barack Obama bailed them out. Now they’re busily working with Donald Trump to lower their own taxes and repeal the modest regulations that were put on their banks.

As near as I can tell, they are hellbent on causing another financial meltdown sometime in the next decade. And why not? The last one worked out pretty well for them.

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We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

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