December 10, 2008

Get Paid, Lose Weight

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800px-United_States_one_dollar_bill%2C_obverse.jpg The power of money. Obese people offered a financial reward for every pound lost shed more weight during a 16 week trial than those given diet advice. That’s not all. Previous studies show that smokers and cocaine addicts can be weaned off their habits by paying them to stay drug-free. Kids in developing countries actually attend school more when their parents are paid for it. A study currently underway in New York is assessing whether cash incentives motivate parents to send their kids for regular health check ups.

The diet study from U Penn found that many participants put weight on again after the program ended. The authors suggest long lasting results need long lasting payments. The paper appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

So what would thinner people buy for the planet? How about fewer greenhouse gas emissions. And what else might we buy for the common good? Peace? Rational thinking? If all it takes is money and we’re already running the presses overtime, why not print some more?

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones’ environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the PEN USA Literary Award, the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal.

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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.

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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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