Awkward Facts Kill the Regulatory Uncertainty Zombie

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Is a tidal wave of both existing and upcoming new regulation responsible for the sluggish state of the economy? This is one of those arguments that’s so transparently dumb that I sometimes think its only purpose is to force liberals to waste time arguing about it. It’s like that old story about LBJ spreading a rumor that his opponent was a pig-fucker. You can’t say that, it’s a lie, Johnson’s campaign manager told him. “I know,” he replied, “I just want to make him deny it.”

Maybe that story is true, maybe it isn’t. But it fits. Even when we’re denying that regulations are responsible for our poor economy, we’re talking about regulations. And the more people hear about regulations, no matter what the context, the more plausible it seems like they might be a problem. And of course, it also distracts us from talking about other stuff. It’s a twofer.

Still, you gotta fight it. EPI’s Larry Mishel wrote a pretty definitive takedown while I was off in the Bay Area with lousy WiFi reception, and among other things he notes that business investment—which ought to be highly sensitive to the regulatory climate—has recovered considerably better over the past two years than it did during the first two years of the Bush recovery:

The data show that investment has increased more in this recovery than in the prior two recoveries and roughly the same as that of the 1980s recovery. It is interesting to note that there was no growth in investments (as a share of GDP) in the George W. Bush recovery. That means that this recovery, with Obama regulations pending, is far more investment-led than the recovery under the deregulatory Bush administration. So, investment does not look like it is being held back, at least relative to other recoveries and the size of the market.

The chart is below. Bottom line: If demand were high but regulation was holding back recovery, then investment levels would be weak, employer surveys would be full of complaints, and businesses would be making lots of temporary hires in order to sell more stuff now without the danger of adding permanent payroll. But none of these things is true. Our problem is high debt levels and weak demand, not business-deadening regulations.

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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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