People Don’t Have Any Money

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Consumer spending continues to suck:

Most stores reported significant declines — with the worst coming from chains that specialize in teenage clothing and gear.

Over all, the industry posted a 2.9 percent sales decline compared with a year ago, according to Thomson Reuters, making August the 12th consecutive month of negative growth. The August decline comes on top of a 5 percent drop in July.

Despite signs that the economy is stabilizing, consumers remain reluctant to spend. That does not augur for a good holiday shopping season, a crucial time for retailers. As analysts at AT Kearney noted in a recent back-to-school report: “thrift is settling in as a habit for consumers across the board.”

Look: thrift is not “settling in as a habit.”  People are spending less because they don’t have any money.  Some are unemployed.  Some have had their hours cut.  Some are paying down credit card balances.  Some are desperately trying to make ends meet after their ARMs reset.  Some are paying off home equity loans they thought they’d be able to refinance forever.  Habit has nothing to do with it.

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate