How Americans have done financially since 1940


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hans Rosling and Gapminder

Image
As part of his larger mission of promoting "fact-based" public health policy, Swedish physician Hans Rosling founded Gapminder.org , which aims to make world health data available and understandable to everyone. Back in 2006, Rosling gave a well-received TED presentation on the principles of Gapminder, showing, among other things, relative historical changes in life expectancy and GDP. ( He spoke again in 2007. ) Rosling acknowledges that there are some small flaws and inconsistencies with data derived from all these different sources, but believes that the comparative results are far more significant. Check out the vast difference between Mauritius and Congo in income per person and life expectancy (shown on the Gapminder site and in the '06 presentation); consequently, says Rosling, using the term "sub-Saharan Africa" to describe both of these countries is vague to the point of uselessness. His point: The more easily data and details can be visualized and co...
Read more

I want to be Jorge Camoes when I grow up.

Portuguese infoviz enthusiast Jorge Camoes has spent the last year and a half writing informed, insightful blog posts on the field, complete with examples and citations. To his credit, he approaches everything -- even the revered work of Edward Tufte and Stephen Few -- with loving skepticism. I'm gratified, too, that he seems to agree with me on one central point: Snazzy tools alone don't get you good data visualization. It all comes down to putting serious thought into the project before you plot the first data point. In future posts we'll discuss more of Jorge's ideas. Bem feito, o Sr. Camoes!
Read more

Debt and taxes: some original infoviz creations

Image
I was surprised to read this week that putatively educated Americans ( a Louisiana lawyer, a Colorado dentist , an ABC News reporter ) don't understand the concept of marginal tax rates. Because of this lack of comprehension, per ABC, the lawyer and dentist are vowing to keep their taxable income below $250,000 to avoid President Obama's proposed tax increase: "I've put thought into how to get under $250,000," said [the ill-informed dentist]. "It would mean working fewer days which means having fewer employees, seeing fewer patients and taking time off." Apparently some clarification is called for . Below is a US federal income tax table for 2009 ( source ). This does not mean that if you bring in more than $372,951, every single dollar in your entire pile of money is taxed at 35%. Only Dollar #372,952 (plus whatever additional money you may earn) is taxed at that rate. Dollar #372,950 is taxed at 33%. Meanwhile, Dollar #1 is taxed at 10%. Hence the ter...
Read more