I haven't seen this diaried anywhere yet; if I'm hopping on a bandwagon here, let me know...
We've all seen the Washington Post's illustration of the Obama and McCain tax plans, right?
It does a pretty good job of illustrating the differences between the two, and shows what a progressive tax plan should really look like.
But as Australian blogger Viveka Weiley points out, it doesn't quite do justice to the economic structure of the American population.
Check out the real deal below the fold!
Viveka Weiley, karmanaut/chartjunk
I couldn’t help but notice though - the graph is still massively weighted towards the interests of the super-rich. For example, the bottom two-thirds of the population are given only a third of the space on the graph, while the top 0.1% of the population - one in a thousand people - gets almost 10%. What’s more, an "average tax cut" is then given, which seems to have been derived from taking a total of the nine income brackets shown and dividing it by nine. Journalists should really volunteer to take remedial arithmetic, you know. Once again, this ignores that one of the brackets represents one thousandth of the population.
Weiley's graph adjusts each of the bars to scale, giving a much better view of the situation.
Look at how tiny that little ribbon is at the top!
Maybe someone should draw in a line illustrating Joe the Plumber's income on there.
I found that the Washington Post chart was effective in putting people's fears to rest about Obama's "crazy tax'n'spend liberal ways." I can't wait to start using this one!
Big ups to Viveka down under! There's another entry on that site showing how a newspaper downplayed global warming by leaving the key data point off the chart entirely. Check it out if you get the chance. It's nice to know there's someone out there fighting this 'chartjunk.'