June 25, 2015
Sometimes it’s hard for us to fully articulate CEPR’s value and impact, especially when we are asking you to send us some of your hard-earned money (see above).
Yes, we know, we can talk about the many successes we’ve achieved over the past 15 years. Many of our accomplishments have involved preventing something from happening that, had it happened, would have made things a whole lot worse for many people. Things like stopping the privatization of Social Security. Or we could talk about how we have successfully countered false statements; how we pushed back against claims that raising the minimum wage causes unemployment, or debunked the myth that the left-leaning governments of Latin America have caused economic hardship for their people. There’s a long list of things like that.
Yes, we are proud of these and other past success stories. But we would like to do even more. We want progress, and we want it now. We want to see the financial transaction tax enacted. We want to see the minimum wage raised. We want to see the end of austerity in Europe. We want trade policy that supports growth and employment. We want to see a recovery in Haiti that truly benefits the Haitian people.
As you may know, we here at CEPR have often referred to ourselves as the “underdog of the think tank world.” We’ve been proud of that status. We’ve been punching above our weight ever since our humble beginnings in 1999 (and we consistently rank number one in media citations per budget dollar). We even enlisted Dean’s dog Biscuit to pose as our Underdog mascot. He did us proud.
But we’ve decided that we need an image makeover. We’re tired of just fending off the bad guys. We want to win, and win big. So we have enlisted Dean’s other dog, Noodle, to the CEPR cause. Don’t let that nice name fool you: she’s tough, and she isn’t afraid to fight—hard—for the economic policies that we all need, both here and abroad. And neither are we.
To do this, we need your financial support. Now, more than ever. We’ve lost some of our foundation funders over the course of the past few years, while our expenses have continued to rise. We are asking for your help. We need to do more—research, writing, and outreach—if we are to see the outcomes listed above become reality.
Noodle is ready, and so are we. With your help we can do it. GRRR!
Thanks, and happy summer,
Dean, Mark, the CEPR staff, and Noodle
