So, how does America’s middle class compare to those around the world? Not as good as it used to.
It takes a second to absorb these charts, but they show how other countries’ middle class incomes have closed the gap on the USA from 1980 to 2010. Except for our top income brackets – they are still the richest of all.
The original article tries to explain parts of this trend.
Is the American dream still alive? Can you work hard and raise your income level? Well, it kinda depends on where you live. The NYT has a couple of nice interactive tools who exploring the results of a study of the issue. (via FlowingData)
A spiffy annotated interactive visualization by the NYT on what different industries actually pay in taxes. The differences in rates between industries illustrate who is getting tax breaks. The related article is worth a read.
Interesting scientific work, building on prior studies from across the world. Rather than get into the findings in detail I refer you to the NYT article and a very detail FAQ at the authors’ website)
Apparently the forecasts for the current heat-wave in Australia are so hot that the Bureau of Meteorology had to add two new colors to it’s forecasting map:
And here is the NYT version of of the 2012 temperature map. I like the city histograms at the bottom.
In: Source: NYT Sports Video
6 Aug 2012The New York Times uses resized maps to illustrate some relative economic indicators. Resized non-contiguous cartograms are always interesting (mappingworlds for example), but I’m not sure they shed much light here as the country proportions are very similar across indicators. As usual, however, the NYT includes some very clear narrative notes to help you along.
An excellent analysis of the players from both teams. The colors map out where shots were taken from, and how accurate they were.
The NYT presents a list of options for you to decide how to trim defense spending. As usual, it’s not quite as easy as you might think – but I still got it up over $800 billion. I like this interactive way of educating people about budget issues.
Share of income that comes from government programs, broken down by type of benefit. (related article)
An addictive collection of beautiful charts, graphs, maps, and interactive data visualization toys -- on topics from around the world.