Don't Quit Your Day Job…

A lot of recent financial news has focused around the spreading European sovereign debt crisis. The big question many Americans now try to answer is what this means for them on a day-to-day basis. At the same time as this is happening, the Fed has declared that they will endorse a policy of more transparency, opening up their forecasts to scrutiny and understanding.

Our tax visualization last time was interesting, but this one might convey more data. Once again, or source for tax data is the IRS’s publication 2010 Data Book. Just like last time, note these are tax collections, and the IRS annual year ends in September. True revenue is after all refunds and credits are finalized, but this data is interesting to see the amount of tax collected – and how it makes it’s way to Uncle Sam.

Much to the chagrin of our regular readers who try to keep up with DQYDJ in a feed reader, we must once again anger you by asking you to click through to an article. It became tedious for us to calculate the ‘amount of the world economy’ of each country which was next in line to ‘possibly default’. Instead of quitting the subject entirely in disgust, we decided to just visualize the GDP of the entire world. To that we have added the share each country contributes to World GDP. Because sharing is caring, our data is posted at IBM’s Many Eyes for you to edit and play with. Fascinating stuff, and a great visualization if we do say so ourselves.

Time may only move in one direction – but just like a faster than light neutrino, let’s ignore physics for a bit! Inspired by this comment from an anonymous author, we will take you to the years 1976 and 1989 and look at life through the eyes of a recent college graduate.

Why would a rational person purchase insurance yet also play the lottery?

It’s a question that has puzzled Economists (and fake Economists, like 2/3 of the staff at DQYDJ) for a long time. Think about it, a lottery is the exact opposite of insurance. When it comes to insurance, a person purchases coverage to hedge against risks. In a lottery, sums are spent for a long-shot chance at the ‘risk’ of a payoff. People are risk-seeking when it comes to playing the lottery yet risk-averse when it comes to purchasing insurance. What gives?

With all of the recent Place Occupying (although currently off the front pages), the United States has been introduced to a question which will remain in the public consciousness for a long time: “Who are the one percent?”

One interesting side effect of recessions since the 1980s has been the demographic breakdown in unemployment rates. Yes – recently, unemployment discriminates against men. While recessions in the 60s and 70s saw female unemployment rates increase faster than male rates, the current recession saw age 20+ male unemployment peak at 10.7% (in October 2009, SA) while the female 20+ rate peaked at 8.3% (in November 2009, SA).

A .4 percentage point drop from 9.0% in October to 8.6% in November? I’ll take it! Maybe there really are green shoots sprouting in the economy? (Look, Bernanke gets a pass if Greenspan gets a pass for being premature on his famous “Irrational Exuberance” call)

There are arguments on both sides of the political aisle about how good the unemployment report actually is… Is the lowered rate really just a function of discouraged workers dropping out of the workforce? Could the news actually be masking even more encouraging signs? I’m not going to let you comment before you stare at the charts I produced for you on various measures of employment.

Been reading DQYDJ for a while? Good. You know that looking at data from a different angle yields very interesting insights.

Here’s one interesting thing: the federal income tax code benefits 18 to 35 year olds at the expense of 45 to 65 year olds. How do I figure? The IRS helpfully posted data for 2009 (links are xls files) on both the amount of income made by age group and the amount of Federal income taxes paid after credits. So, should the Silent Generation and Baby Boom Generation be mad at Generations X and Y? Partially! Read on.

If you read this web site the odds that you are also living under a rock are pretty small. That probably means you already know that over the weekend the so-called Deficit Reduction Supercommittee failed to reach an agreement (and had to admit its failings on Monday). A little back-story: the Debt Panel was trying to find deficit savings in excess of $1.2 Trillion over the next 10 years. A little more back-story: the entire concept and execution of the debt panel was a disgusting farce. The entire $1.2 Trillion was to be cuts from ‘baseline spending’, also know to the rest of us as ‘planned future spending increases’.