BREAKING: Economy Continues to Stagnate

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If, despite my warnings, you allowed yesterday’s upward GDP revision to kindle a tiny spark of excitement about the economy, today’s news should bring you right back down to earth:

Household spending fell in July, a sign that cautious consumers could hold back economic growth in the second half of the year….Personal income, reflecting income from wages, investment, and government aid, rose 0.2% in July—the smallest monthly increase of the year….Meanwhile, the report showed a key measure of inflation—the personal consumption expenditures price index—rose 1.6% in July from a year earlier. That matched the prior month’s annual gain, and is below the Federal Reserve’s 2% long-run target for the 27th straight month.

Spending is down, which is no surprise since personal income is pretty much flat. This suggests that perhaps we could tolerate a wee bit higher inflation as a way of getting the economy moving, but of course we can’t do that. Sure, inflation has been below its target for 27 months, but you never know. The 28th month might be different! And even the prospect of a single month of moderate inflation runs the risk of turning us into Zimbabwe.

So instead we just sit and stagnate.

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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.

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