Visualizing Economics

One thing people outside the US may not realize about studies like this is that a very large percentage of socioeconomic breakdowns in the US are proxies for the traditional north-south civil war divide. Compare a map of income inequality by state and overlay the 1860 election and you'll be looking at extremely similar maps. So, to a large degree, this study is merely saying that upper income people in the US South are less generous than upper income people elsewhere in the country, something that isn't a surprise to anybody to anybody who even remotely follows US political trends. http://visualizingeconomics.com/blog/2007/07/17/united-states-income-i… of income inequality by state

> It sucks, but its more like "you know what your house will be worth in another 15 to 20 years when it would have gotten there based on a reasonable fiscal policy and a 2% economic growth rate. Any reason for using 2% growth instead of something closer to the US average (which is around 4%)? http://visualizingeconomics.com/2010/11/04/log-scale-long-term-real-gr…

Definitely not hacker news. If we were on reddit, I would also mention that the percentage of GDP captured by the top 1% is also at a high not matched since right before the Great Depression: http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2007/04/04/nytimes-income-gap-is-w… ...and that the increase in tax paid by the top 1% tracks almost perfectly the increase in their percentage of the total income: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/top-1-paid-more-in-federa…

> All school children since the mid-1990s have been indoctrinated from birth with a Chinese Communist Party's highly-exaggerated historical narrative called the "century of humiliation" I suggest reading about the chinese history under european/american colonialism. To call it "Highly-exaggerated" is like saying the holocaust was highly exaggerated. It's absurd and makes it hard to take your comment seriously. > and the CCP has done more to hold China's development back than western colonialism and the war with Imperial Japan). That's simply an absurd statement. China, like india, under western colonialism went from being the largest economy in the world to an insignificant one. Now, china is the 2nd largest economy (nominal) and largest economy (PPP). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP) > This "century of humiliation" mindset is part of what helps justify the China's strategy of large scale technology theft (theft is a core component of the Made In China 2025 industrial strategy). No. IP theft is justified because that's the history of business. US did it in the 1800s. Japan did it. South Korea did. Israel did it. Everyone does it until they themselves produce IP worth protecting. It's just the natural cycle of development. Go read about the history of trying to steal silk, porcelain, fireworks, etc tech from china. It's simply a natural development. > Interestingly enough,…

Check out the graph: https://www.visualizingeconomics.com/blog?tag=Inflation Scroll down to "US Inflation 1790-2015". "-0.2% Average Annual Inflation 1774-1912"

Don't accept free money during a pandemic? Except that would be bad too..... Govt handouts during the pandemic added significant money without increased production to keep people afloat, which is good short term. The cost of that is inflation medium term. Long term wages rise to offset inflation. This has always been the pattern. Adding money for nothing to the system devalues each piece of money, so inflation is expected. Long term wages for context https://www.visualizingeconomics.com/blog/2008/05/04/average-income-in…

There might be good reasons to use that breakdown, but I still think referring to people with a household income of $65K as "upper class" is misleading. There's also something a bit strange with this breakdown. The top 20 percent of households made more than $91,705 [0][1] in 2007. $65K appears to be the top 20 percent of census tracts. That doesn't seem right, though, because you wouldn't expect 20 percent of the population to come from 20 percent of the tracts, unless they're exactly the same size (which tracts are not), so maybe I made a mistake in interpretation. [0] https://www.visualizingeconomics.com/blog/2006/11/05/2005-us-income-di… [1] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/cps…

The 2000 crash was mostly a stock market drop. The actual economy never constricted, just approached 0 growth. http://visualizingeconomics.com/blog/2011/03/08/long-term-real-growth-… If anything it was how weak the 2000 correction was that lead to the housing bubble.

"I sincerely believe that what the West is doing in this respect is anti-development and anti the fight against climate change,” he said, accusing rich countries of charging too much for clean technology." Look who is talking: http://visualizingeconomics.com/blog/2007/12/09/comparing-population-g… Until countries like India do not take steps towards sustainable human population, these are all pointless games.

In living (for some), 80%+ tax rates have been used and tax was very high for about 5 decades: - the top marginal rate of tax was 62% in 1932 (up from 25% in 1931) - rising to 91% in 1963 (income over $200k) - It was at 70% in 1981 (before dropping to 50% in 1982) http://taxfoundation.org/article/us-federal-individual-income-tax-rate… and a graph here: http://visualizingeconomics.com/blog/2010/02/04/historical-marginal-in… Though I can find very little that talks about the affects of this taxation on society.

Also see: http://visualizingeconomics.com/2007/11/04/has-middle-americas-wages-s… Incredibly stable since 1960.

Of course not, they would never complain. Poor southerners don't do that. The one did talk about losing the farm though. Don't take his word for it though, look at some data: http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2008/05/04/average-income-in-the-u…

I have a few issues with this article. One is that basing "they could buy x amount at so and so store" is meaningless because when you are poor you don't tend to arbitrage for lower prices, you buy when you're out. Not to mention that poor neighbourhoods have fewer supermarkets in number and are less likely to offer sales. But more egregious, the Walmart cited is in a shopping district with a Costco and a HomeDepot in San Leandro which is not in an especially poor area. [1] Non-SNAP families paying 7.1% for soda is a meaningless comparison since generally these families have much bigger food budgets than SNAP families so it's not unreasonable to see that figure be lower. Also non-SNAP families have access to more supermarkets and ones with sales. And 9.3% of $256 is $23.80 per month or about $0.80 a day. This is not an abusive amount of expense for a family, yes, it would be nice to offer incentives for better food, but this will be just an excuse to do more poor bashing. [1] http://visualizingeconomics.com/blog/2007/10/14/san-francisco-oakland-… Update: ninja edit to add part of a sentence

I'm sorry but this... We're talking about a generation that, although its members had much less material amenities than us, they had an easier time getting ahead. Try buying a house as a young person now. When my dad was my age, he could support a family on his salary. Is a myth. First, mortage rates haven't gone up they've been going down for 28 years (though in fairness they shot up before that): http://mortgage-x.com/trends.htm. If you're a Gen Xer your father was having to contend with rates double what you'd pay today. As for career you could probably move up the ranks faster but that's because it was a much steeper climb. Think about it. You're talking about an era where there was no Excel. There had to be people who actually did those calculations by hand. As for money the average income of an American household has not only gone up but has gone up sharply... http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2006/08/15/average-income-in-the-u… (The graph is in inflation adjusted dollars) While the cost of goods has gone down due to technology improvements. The cost of a Gallon of Milk in 1967 was double what it is now (http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/facts_for_fe… The average house size has doubled since 1950 (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5525283). Yet the average price only went up about 60%…

Because class struggle is making a comeback? Managers set salaries. Guild professions (e.g. lawyers, doctors, accountants) set their prices and uphold the guild with cryptic languages and lengthy vetting processes. The case where engineers (of either companies, processes, products or technology), instead, are in the position to set compensation (or more specifically, are able to profit by the fruits of their labor), are generally only available to very high ranking manager/engineer hybrids, consultants, and founders. This is probably the closest thing in the modern world, in the literal sense, to the Marxist Socialist ideal of the workers taking control of the means of production. Other than that: ask yourself the question -- why do the bankers have all of the money? PS: Some resources. 6% of all US income is now earned by the top 0.01% of the income bracket. This is as high as it's been since at least 1913. The lowest earning member of thix bracket in 2005 was earning $5.9 million a year. http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/08/18/the-percent-of-income-earned-… http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/category/share-of-income/ This isn't the difference between Bob down the street who went to college and Jim who didn't -- or the kid in your class who became a Harvard trained lawyer working in a big firm on wall-street versus the smartest kid in your math class who's now at Lawrence Berkeley labs. This isn't the difference between…

Non-shitty, blogspam with a dozen moving, flash-based ads links: The Complexity of the U.S. Tax System http://www.quicksprout.com/2010/02/18/the-complexity-of-the-us-tax-sys… Who Is Paying Taxes? http://www.mint.com/blog/trends/who-is-paying-taxes/ How Wealthy Countries Tax Their Citizens http://www.visualeconomics.com/how-do-wealthy-countries-tax-citizens/ Turbo Tax Infographic: Who Files Income Taxes Early http://www.columnfivemedia.com/turbo-tax-infographic-who-files-income-… Turbo Tax Infographic: Filing Your Taxes Online http://blog.turbotax.intuit.com/announcements/infographic-filing-your-… Wasted Potential: A Cost/Benefit Analysis http://reason.com/blog/2009/11/17/infographic-on-pot-tax-revenue Death & Taxes 2010 http://www.mint.com/blog/trends/death-taxes-2010/ Charity: Who Cares? http://www.mint.com/blog/trends/charity-who-cares/ State Taxes in America http://www.loansandcredit.com/state-taxes-in-america/ Locations of Offshore Tax Jurisdictions http://www.grant-thornton.co.uk/thinking/bespoke/index.php/locations_o… United States Federal Tax Dollars Per State http://www.visualeconomics.com/united-states-federal-tax-dollars/ 2010 Guide To Home Buying Tax Credits http://www.fixr.com/infographics/home-buying-tax-credits.html The Onion: Celebrity Tax Deductions (Content scraper didn't realize this was from The Onion?!) …