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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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.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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