The Great American Inequality Video


When you get down to it, the debate over the sequester—the automatic budget cuts that kicked in on Friday—is really about the future of the middle class. Democrats want to close tax loopholes for the wealthy to preserve education and social programs for the rest of us. Republicans call this socialism, and flatly refuse to consider any option other than cutting bigger holes in the social safety net.

As these opposing views come to a head, a new video based on Mother Jones’ well-known income inequality charts has been making the rounds. Even if you’ve already seen the originals, it may put Washington’s latest squabbles in a different light:

UPDATE, Thursday, February 28 (Brett Brownell): Following the video’s viral spread this week, Mother Jones reached out to its mysterious creator, YouTube user “Politizane.” “Z,” as he signed his messages, told us that he is a freelance filmmaker “living and working in a red state (Texas)” who is staying anonymous in order avoid losing clients or jobs due to “a vague political affiliation.”

At first he saved the original “Ariely chart” to his phone, and from time to time would “try to wrap [his] head around it.” The chart, created by Mother Jones and based on polling data by Dan Ariely and Michael L. Norton, showed Americans’ mistaken expectations of wealth distribution. Eventually Z decided to visualize the disparity in his own way by tinkering with After Effects software over a period of a few days. He also says he vetted the math/curve-fitting among some “geeky friends.”

“Wealth Inequality in America” is his only politically minded video so far. “These issues are simply things I think (and perhaps angst) about in my spare time,” Z says.”The really incredible thing for me is the simple fact that people are now talking about these issues…So it’s pretty neat to open some eyes and get people thinking.”

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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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