The Trustees’ Report

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As I write this, the new Trustees’ report on Social Security is being released. Early reports indicate “bad” news: namely, the year that the program starts paying out more in revenue than it receives in taxes has moved back from 2018 to 2017. Uh oh! Meanwhile, the year the Trust Fund is predicted to be exhausted, and hence when the program goes slightly—slightly—out of balance, has moved back from 2042 to 2041. Egad! Okay, so there’s still no crisis, though the Trustees’ are quite obviously trying to show that the system is getting sicker and sicker.

On the face of it, however, these new numbers seem quite ridiculous; we’ve had healthier than expected economic growth over the past year, so why would the Trustees now become more pessimistic than they were last year? Hm? These new projections couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that five of the six Trustees’ are pro-privatization hacks who might find it in their interest to perpetuate all this “crisis”-mongering, no? Oh surely not.

At any rate, read Matthew Yglesias’ TAPPED post on this subject, laying out a lot of the issues here. The main point is that it’s absurd to try to predict crisis and doom 75 years into the future. But more on this in a bit…

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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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