Chart of the Day: Austerity Politics

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So what happens if we tighten our belts and cut back on spending, as Republicans unanimously want us to do? A new IMF study estimates the effect of a cutback equal to 1% of GDP, which amounts to about $150 billion in the U.S. According to both the GOP leadership and its crew of presidential candidates, this would be peanuts, a mere down payment on serious budget cutting.

And maybe so. Unfortunately, as the chart below shows, a cutback of that size would lead to lower incomes and dramatically higher unemployment. But wait! There’s more! The IMF study says the effect is twice as big as the one in Chart 2 when central banks can’t cut interest rates. And guess what? The Fed already has interest rates at zero. They can’t cut them any further.

In other words, the GOP’s version of belt-tightening would probably jack up unemployment rates by nearly a full point. Welcome to Rick Perry’s America. (Via Brad Plumer.)

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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.

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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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