A fun toy for examining historic US tax rates and government expenditure. You put in your income and it graphs the amount of taxes you pay and breaks down what the government spent it on. As usual on this type of stuff, there are pages and pages of comments arguing about the methodology and what it all means. (via).
and in honor of those tax arguments:
(originally from here)
A collection of interesting charts, tables, maps, and interactive data toys -- with a focus on economics and graphic design. Enormous thanks to the bloggers who help find all this stuff, and the wonderful researchers, analysts, and graphic artists who create them.