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We Need To Visualize What's Happening
Feb. 22nd, 2010 02:21 pmThis article on wealth accumulating at the top has reminded me, yet again, why I hate that I suck at spreadsheet programs. Check out this snippet from the article:
Sadly, this isn't visual. And by visual, I mean more like this:
Yes, I've linked to that chart before. I've also mentioned this chart on population demographics in Canada:
I'm combining the two here to suggest that an animated gif like the second chart be applied to the format of the first chart to show changes in wealth concentration over time. Instead of age, though, this new chart should show income. The dividing line (as seen in the gender chart) should separate wages to the right side of the mid-line and taxes to the left. One would see as the years progressed how the number of people earning top money increased as the tax rate on the top earners dropped from a high of 91% in the 1970s to its current paltry 27%.
As with the Chartjunk graph, I would also like to see a few floating averages: one for median household income; one for median individual income; one each for modal individual and household incomes (the most common wage earned in the country that year, +/- $5K per year); and the same for mean average individual and household incomes.
I think the breakdown of the median, modal and mean averages in important. I have a nagging feeling that when our economy creates a mean average income greater than the median and modal averages, things start to go awry. This might indicate an increasingly dangerous concentration of wealth, dangerous in that it creates a class of folks who have the means to change elections and distort the discussion (which is what evidence suggests has been happening for decades now, only it's getting worse).
I have, though, zero skills at finding this information, zero minus 7 at graphing it. Any one out there want to help in the effort? I think it would be a bitching graph to create, and am shocked no one has yet done so.
- Average income of top 400 US households in 2007: $345 million (that's income per year, folks)
- Average income of top 400 US households in 2001: $131.1 million (that's about half)
- Average effective tax rate in 2007 for this same group: 16.6% (per Johnston article)
- Average effective tax rate in 1993 for this same group: 29.4%
- Percent of the top 400 earners in items taxed at preferential (low) tax rates: about 75%
Sadly, this isn't visual. And by visual, I mean more like this:
Yes, I've linked to that chart before. I've also mentioned this chart on population demographics in Canada:
I'm combining the two here to suggest that an animated gif like the second chart be applied to the format of the first chart to show changes in wealth concentration over time. Instead of age, though, this new chart should show income. The dividing line (as seen in the gender chart) should separate wages to the right side of the mid-line and taxes to the left. One would see as the years progressed how the number of people earning top money increased as the tax rate on the top earners dropped from a high of 91% in the 1970s to its current paltry 27%.
As with the Chartjunk graph, I would also like to see a few floating averages: one for median household income; one for median individual income; one each for modal individual and household incomes (the most common wage earned in the country that year, +/- $5K per year); and the same for mean average individual and household incomes.
I think the breakdown of the median, modal and mean averages in important. I have a nagging feeling that when our economy creates a mean average income greater than the median and modal averages, things start to go awry. This might indicate an increasingly dangerous concentration of wealth, dangerous in that it creates a class of folks who have the means to change elections and distort the discussion (which is what evidence suggests has been happening for decades now, only it's getting worse).
I have, though, zero skills at finding this information, zero minus 7 at graphing it. Any one out there want to help in the effort? I think it would be a bitching graph to create, and am shocked no one has yet done so.