More Fun with Charts

Jon Chait at The New Republic takes exception to a chart by The Wall Street Journal which attempts to imply that most of the money from which the government should be collecting tax isn't resting with those making over $200K (as liberals would have you believe). Kevin Drum at Mother Jones has re-drawn the chart. He takes the same data and reconfigures them to show how much money really is sitting with those making over $200K, relative to everyone else.

And so while I agree with his and Chait's point, I don't think his graph is accurate either.

Chait points out that in the initial graph there are 7 bars representing all those making over $200K, so even though the biggest single bracket is those making $100-200K, if you lump everything above 200 into a single line, it becomes the biggest bracket. This is not untrue, but it's also misleading as it makes the same exact mistake again. If you group all the people making under $200K and put that graph against all the people making over $200K, again it would seem that most of the wealth in fact lies with those making much less than $200K.

What the graph fails to account for is population distribution. If you look at the sum of money with those making over $200K, that represents a far smaller number of people than the other group. Collectively, it's true that more dollars exist in the sub-$200K pool than the $200K+ pool, but the $200K+ pool is a tiny fraction (around 4.5%) of the rest, so we're dealing with less people being taxed, and people who are individually much more able to afford a modest tax increase. The data do back up their arguments, but only when you consider all the variables.