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Why is it that chronic, sky-high unemployment has produced so little political backlash? On Sunday, Catherine Rampell wrote a piece suggesting two big reasons: the unemployed don’t vote in big numbers, so politicians can safely ignore them; and there are fewer institutions left these days to mobilize them the way labor unions used to. Today David Leonhardt adds a third: today’s unemployment affects a relatively smaller number of people than in the past: “joblessness is concentrated among a subset of the population, rather than affecting a larger group of people for shorter periods of time.”

All probably true. But Paul Krugman wrote today that the press plays a role too: “Turn on your TV and you’ll see some self-satisfied pundit declaring that nothing much can be done about the economy’s short-run problems.” Bob Somerby takes it from there:

As he closes, he again suggests that the “supposedly serious people” you see on TV are too well-off, too self-satisfied, to give a fig—to care.

Could it be true that our High Pundit Class is simply above such concerns? Could it be that those Millionaire Pundit Values have wiped away such concerns? Could it be that they’re too well-off—too isolated, too uncaring—to worry about our ongoing economic disaster? Our possible debt ceiling debacle?

….Yesterday, in the Sunday Times, three regular columnists published columns. None of the three showed any sign of knowing that their nation’s in trouble, especially so as the deadline for possible default looms….Given the new lay-out of the Sunday Review, quite a few other columns and analysis pieces appeared in yesterday’s section. But no one seemed to have any idea that our nation is in bad trouble.

….There was nothing “wrong” with any of these columns; you may feel that some of them were quite good. But something was grossly wrong with the editor who picked these columns while picking no others. Reading yesterday’s Sunday Review, you would have no idea that anything is wrong with our economy—that millions of people are out of work, that we are facing a possible debt ceiling disaster.

….This has been going on roughly forever. Columnist Krugman to the side, why haven’t career liberal leaders ever complained about this upper-class culture?

Obviously there are lots of differences between the Great Depression and our current economic morass. But one of them was indeed the press: in the 30s, the typical newspaper writer was a modestly paid high school graduate, closer to being a blue-collar worker than a member of the middle class. Big syndicated columnists like Walter Lippman were pretty well off, but they were the exception more than the rule.

Today it’s just the opposite. Punditry is dominated almost exclusively, both in print and on the air, by the rich and the upper middle class. And there’s just no way around it: even if you’re trying hard, it’s close to impossible for someone living a comfortable life to really feel the desolation and helplessness of unemployment and economic distress when they’ve never really experienced it themselves and live in a social circle where it’s rarely a serious problem either.

The long-term unemployed don’t vote much, they aren’t organized, and in electoral numbers there aren’t that many of them. All true. But thanks to a political and media class that’s mostly pretty well off, they’re also largely invisible. Writing about them is more like an anthropological exercise than a simple description of your friends and neighbors. And it’s one reason that we’re doing so little to help them.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

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