May 10, 2012

Chart of the Day: Being Rich in America is a Pretty Good Gig

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This will come as no surprise to any of you at this point — I hope — but it never hurts to see it again. The combination of the 1997 capital gains tax cut, the 2001 Bush tax cut, and the 2003 Bush tax cut has been fantastically beneficial to the richest of the rich in America. Most of us ordinary schlubs have seen our tax rates go down about three percentage points over the past decade or so. The rich have seen them go down about seven percentage points. And the super-duper rich? Their taxes have gone down nearly ten percentage points.

It’s pretty nice having a bought-and-paid-for Congress, isn’t it?

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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