Repeat After Me: Always Adjust for Inflation. Always Adjust for Inflation.


If I told you that the American economy grew by more than 50 percent during Jimmy Carter’s presidency, you’d probably think I must be pulling a fast one. And you’d be right: inflation was high during Carter’s term in office, so most of that growth is an illusion. Adjusted for inflation, the economy grew 13 percent.

Likewise, if I told you that California has more violent crime than Washington DC, you’d be equally skeptical. And rightly so: California just has a lot more people than Washington DC. Adjusted for population, DC’s crime rate is three times higher than California’s.

This is why reporters really, really need to stop writing stuff like this:

After 2½ years of budget battles, this is what the federal government looks like now: It is on pace, this year, to spend $3.455 trillion.

That figure is down from 2010 — the year that worries about government spending helped bring on a tea party uprising, a Republican takeover in the House and then a series of ulcer-causing showdowns in Congress. But it is not down by that much. Back then, the government spent a whopping $3.457 trillion.

This is just flatly deceptive. Adjusted for inflation and population growth, federal spending has declined by 8 percent since 2010. In current dollars, it’s fallen from $11,800 to $10,900 per person.

The excerpt above comes from David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post, who wants to make the point that for all the screaming and shouting over the budget during the past few years, the size of government hasn’t really changed much. And that’s fine. If he wants to, he can make that point by noting that all the fuss has produced only an 8 percent decline from record highs. But what he can’t do—not honestly, anyway—is present nominal numbers in his lead and then again in a big chart, with only a tiny footnote to alert readers that he hasn’t accounted for inflation, let alone population growth.

I don’t have quite as big a problem with the rest of Fahrenthold’s story as some do. He’s basically making the point that Congress has a hard time cutting federal spending, and that’s perfectly true. If the Post thinks its readers are interested in why that is, fine. But along with the usual collection of horror-story anecdotes (roads to nowhere, tiny subsidized airports, etc.) they have an obligation to present the big picture honestly. They didn’t.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist 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 need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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