Federal Budget

US National Debt 1940-2010 [Chicago Tribune]

by Catherine Mulbrandon

in Other

From the Chicago Tribune found via infographics

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Tax rates and Government Spending

by Catherine Mulbrandon

in Comparing Tax Rates by Income

Day 6 of 28 Days of Tax Data

From USA Today

There is a lot going on in this interactive graphic:

The main graph is plotting a single salary (in gray) but it is shown adjusted for inflation from 1940 to 2008.
The colored areas represent the amount of tax appropriated each year to different parts of the federal budget.
The smaller graph shows the percent of income paid in federal taxes from 1940 to 2008

I have taken screenshots for three different incomes for comparison: $10,000 $100,000 and $1,000,000. You will notice that the percentage of the tax collected for Social Security is greater for the $10,000 income than for the two higher incomes. This is because the % of taxes collected from the Social Security tax is highest on the $10,000 income.

$10,000

$100,000

$1,000,000

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Paying Down the National Debt via YouTube

by Catherine Mulbrandon

in Other

Homemade video trying to show why it is not a problem that China owns part of the U.S. government’s debt. Scroll 3 minutes into the video and you can see how he used low-tech paper to explain what would happen if we pay down the debt. No fancy graphics needed.

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Infomation Visualization- LIVE

by Catherine Mulbrandon

in Other

Jonathan Jarvis attempts to create, in front of a live audience, a visualization of Obama’s stimulus plan. The visualization part starts about 2 minutes in to the video. Unfortunately, the sound and shaky camera make it difficulty to follow but it is an interest experiment in using infodesign to facilitate the conversation around fiscal policy.