Most Meaningless Economic Graph of 2004

Did you even spend two minutes looking at that graph? I admit it was a weird way to display that data, but once I looked at it sideways for a second I actually got what it was trying to convey. I found it rather interesting, in fact.
Jackass

once I looked at it sideways for a second I actually got what it was trying to convey. I found it rather interesting, in fact.

Are you being sarcastic? I'm on little sleep and having a hard time deciding if you are being sarcastic or not?

To me, it was just modeling inflation with a line drawn at the bottom that represented "the people who, in that year, didn't make that much money."

The problem is that the bottom 20% element has only a 1 pixel variation across the chart (geez, I can't believe I fired up photoshop to prove that). I got to agree with J$ that it's not exactly a data-laden graph from that point of view.

For that matter, I'm willing to bet that a fair number of the folks in the bottom 20% income bracket have an income of 0, which pretty much doesn't really sync with the top 20%, or hell, even the mid 20%.

Here's what's depicted by that graph, for the sleep impaired (and jr):

The 'tall' blue bars represent the median/average (ddon't remember which) income of the top 20% of the US. The 'short' dark blue bars represent the same for the bottom 20%.

The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, yadda yadda. I suppose 'rather interesting' may have been a little strong. And a line graph would've been siginificantly easier to grasp.

I agree with the other guys commenting on this: The graph isn't useless. It's small and doesn't show much detail, and it would be nice to see the bottm 20-40% in there for comparison ... but the graph does make its point.

The dollar figures are adjusted for inflation, which is important. If they didn't do that, it would be very misleading.

The dollar figures are adjusted for inflation

It did not say that anywhere?

That was one of the main points of its meaningless.

Also, it did not show the population numbers for each. The top 20% of income-people could be "200 people units" while in 2002, the top 20% refers to "20,000 people units." At the same time, in 1967, the bottom 20% of the income-people could refer to "1000 people units" while in 2002 it refers to "800 people units."

Meaningless graph.

>It did not say that anywhere?

Note where it says "Mean Household Income in 2002 Dollars".

>Also, it did not show the population numbers for each.

On the issue of "People Units", the point is to merely look at the percentages, not the actual amount of people. In 1967, the top 20% represented (US Population in 1967) * .2, same amount for the bottom (another thing you don't seem to grasp, the top & bottom numbers are the same), which we'll call 'X' for now. Based on the steady population growth, it's safe to assume that 'Y'=(US population in 2002)*.2 is much greater than 'X'. The act of looking at the percentage, rather than the top X or Y, let's us account for the end points of the income bell curve. The top X people in 1967 would be drastically poorer than the top X people in 2002, as the 2002 group are 'closer' to the radical endpoint of the curve, so we throw in the additional people contained in Y, which gives us more people, but the same portion of the curve. Chopping 20% from either end of the curve gives us the same segment of the population in both 1967 and 2002, there are just more people in both sections in 2002.

Now, I'm not sure why I'm spending so much time on this, when you yourself have confessed your ignorance of the whole subject. You just don't get it, admit that, and stop claiming the graph is 'meaningless'.