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[] I read charts and graphs that showed where the top 300 billionaires are in the world. The difference between how many billionaires America has versus any other country is huge. The United states has 115 of the top 300 billionaires. The second biggest countries with billionaires is Germany and they only have 28. One thing that bothered me was the amount of men versus women who were billionaires. Only 29 out of 300 billionaires were women. This shows that men are still holding more importance and power than women. Many of the billionaires in the United States have become rich through companies like Microsoft, Nike, or Apple. In other countries, most of them didnt become rich off of big named companies, they probably were part of the 110 billionaires who inherited the wealth. This article has opened my eyes to how much moneys these owners of these companies really do make and it is an extraordinary amount.

[] I read a chart on the stock market best and worst days from 1950-2009. The worst day during that time period was on october 19,1987, or best known as the 1987 crash. The second and third worst drops in the stock market were also in the month of october. Although the worst days for the stock market were in october, the best days for the stock market were also in october. It was interesting to see the the differences between the top day and worst day in the stock market, even though October had some good days in october, they had more drops than rises.

[] I analyzed two graphs which showed the increase of troubled mortgages in the united states. In 42 states in December of 2006, there was 20% or less troubled mortgages in the US. By the time it was July of 2010, the amount of troubled mortgages climbed to two states with more than 40% troubled mortgages, 10 states with 21-40% troubled mortgages per state, and 30 with 20% or less troubled mortgages. This effects the US economy because Americans cant pay their mortgages on their houses so that the government is losing money. The reason for the major increase in troubled mortgages in the US over the past three and half years is due to the recession and the loss of jobs/ unemplyment rate increase.

[] I looked at the line graph which shows the riise and fall in th stock market from 1871 to 2010. This graph doesn't only have the rise and fall, but also the average or the trendline for growth rate. What i saw which really made me understand how bad the recession was, was the differences in falls from the Great Depression and the Recession of 2009. The prices between 1929 and about 1931 whent down about 250 in stock price compared to the Recession of 2009 which had us dropping about 600 in stock price between 2007 and 2009. What really caught my eye though, was the high point in 2000 which made us drop so much worse than the Great Depression and the Recession combined. Most likely due to the September 11 attacks and the war in Iraq, the Stock /market DRopped from about 1900 in 2000 to 1250 in 2001. This is weird to me since the times I have heard personally that the U.S. had major economic issues was not in 2001, but in the early 1930's and in 2009, but not in 2001 even though the drop is so much worse.

http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2007/12/09/comparing-population-growth-china-india-africa-latin-america-western-europe-united-states/ In this graph is showed the increase in population for china,india, latin america, western europe, and the united states over the past 500 years. The countries that increased population dramatically over the years were China, India, and Africa. Although India had a drop in 1950 due to partitioning of India creating Pakistan, it still beat out the United states easily, who out of all the countries shown in the graph, had the lowest increase in population, even being beat out by Western Europe and Latin America, but on the same note these are two "groups" of countries and not one single country like the United States. If it was single countries, the United States probably would have left these groups in the dust, especially since the united states was one of the 6 most populous countries in the world. The six countries alone make up 50% of the whole population of the world.

http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2009/05/12/how-much-do-you-earn-2000/ In this chart, it shows the salary for different jobs in the year 2000. Most of the United States in 2000 were earning between $31,700 and $50,900, which was the middle quintile. This quartile consisted of jobs like carpenters, mailmen, nurses, and chemists. The Average salary in the United States in the year 2000 was $57,000. This amount is a part of the fourth quintile, which was like the high middle class. In 2000, the jobs earning the bigger salaries were worth mostly between $100,000 and $200,000. Some of those jobs were dentists, Psychiatrists, and Chief Executives. BAsed off of this chart, if i was an engineer in the year 2000, i believe that my salary would have been between $50,000 and $74,000, since chemists earn about $50,000 and astronomers earn about $74,000. I think the lower paying jobs, like the minimum wage full time workers, get a higher salary then they did in 2000. In 2000, these workers got about $10,000 a year, i calculated it for the year 2010 for these same workers to be making about $12,000.

http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2007/08/11/united-states-poverty-map/ In this map, it shows the different poverty levels through the United States. The areas in the U.S. that have the highest poverty rates are in the north west, and in the south. If you include Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico has the highest poverty rate, followed by Alaska. The States with the least amount of poverty are New Jersey, Iowa and Wisconsin. I think the reasons that the southern states have such high poverty rates would be because they are on the border, having immigration issues and overpopulated areas with not enough jobs for everyone. I think Montana, South Dakota and North Dakota have high poverty rates because what they are getting most of their money from is farming, and there isn't any industry really in that area. Ten of the states that have the top 25highest unemployment rates in the United States, also have high poverty rates. Surprisingly, Michigan has the highest unemployment rate, but Alaska has one of the highest poverty rates in America and its 10th highest with unemployment rates.

http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2010/12/29/highest-paying-jobs-in-the-us-2005-2/ This Chart shows the highest paying jobs in 2005. The people with jobs in the top .1% of highest paying jobs earned more than $1,246,000 annually. The biggest amount of jobs in the top .1% is the executives that make up 43% of it. The second highest percentage, 18% of highest paying jobs comes from the financial professions. Surprisingly, only 3% of the top .1 percent of highest paying jobs is made up by the arts, media, and sports. This was surprising to me because you always hear of the rich actors,singers, fashion designer, or an athlete, you never hear of these rich wall street people or executives. I was also looking at if my future profession, engineering was in the top 1 or ever .1% of high paying jobs in 2005. I found out that there is a small percentage, probably about the same amount of the people from the arts,music,sports jobs (3%) that is in the top .1% and about the same amount in the top 1%. It is amazing to think that I could possibly one day earn more than a million dollars a year.

http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/tag/italy/ This chart shows each nations economy between 1970 to 2050. The larger the bubble, the higher their economy is compared to the other countries on the chart. I thought this was a great way to show the different economies changing over time since you can see the size of the dots getting smaller or bigger. What I saw that was really interesting was the fact that the United States started on top, while China was starting with the worst economy. After just eighty years, China will end up on top over the United States who will be second. I think thats really impressive for the Chinese economy to shoot up that quickly. On the other hand, since Italy's economy started in the bottom half for economy size, and didn't really increase that much, it's economy versus the other countries will be lower since the lower countries before increased their economies drastically. Germany's economy seems like it had the biggest drop. They started with the third biggest economy and by the year 2050, they say that Germany will move down to the third smallest economy.

http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2010/03/05/how-would-you-spend-your-refund/ This picture basically shows you how your decisions on the money you get back after taxes affect you later. The average amount a person gets as a refund after taxes filed through april 15th is $2,753. What I like about this picture is that it compares your money with the costs of Big Macs, I thought that was a creative way to keep people in touch with how much money this really is. Many people said they would use their refund on savings or paying down debt. The people who would use their refund on a savings account would after eight years and four months would only gain $333 in interest. They would also lose $1,050 in credit card interest for not paying off their credit card right away and would lose "200 Big Macs" because you would have a savings of $2,735, but a debt of $2,735 from the credit card, so when you get the $333 of interest you still have to pay off the card and lost 200 Big Macs worth of money. The person who said they would just spend all of the $2,753 would lose "239 Big Macs" worth of money since you didn't save any money and have a debt of $2,735 to still pay off the card. Now if they were smart, they would pay off their credit card right away so that they wouldn't have any debt on the card, and "no savings", but since you aren't having to pay off the card with the interest you had to in the first scenario, you are really saving $1,050 or 293 Big Macs worth of money.

http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2010/04/27/a-simple-image-showing-the-concentration-of-wealth/

This was a very creative way to look at how much money people in the world actually have. If you said the world was made up of one hundred people, six people would own 59% of the wealth in the world. So basically, six percent of the whole world owns more than half of the worlds wealth. The part that is amazing to me is that that six percent of the world that owns all of that money, are all in the United States, according to the chart at least. Then the majority of the world, 74% of us, own only 39% of the wealth. So what that means is that if all of the people who make up the 74% who put their money together, it still doesn't make u the amount that 6% make up. And lastly, 20% of the world make up a small 2% of the worlds wealth, if I was to guess where a majority of these people were from, I would say the third world countries that aren't built up. Of course some might be from built up countries like the United States, U.K. and others, but I don't think the majority of these built up countries have as many poor people as other countries.

http://visualizingeconomics.com/2010/02/17/federal-taxes-paidreceived-for-each-state/

This was a map of the United States showing how much different areas have to pay in Federal Taxes. The states that pay the most in taxes are Connecticut, New Jersey, DC, and Massachusetts. The states playing the least in federal taxes are West Virginia, New Mexico, Minnesota, Louisiana, and Arkansas. It seems that bigger cities have higher tax rates. Im saying this because New York, California, and Florida also have high Tax rates and they have big tourist areas, built up cities. Other areas like Alaska have low tax rates, Less people live there, less built up tourist attraction areas.

http://visualizingeconomics.com/2011/04/07/percent-of-households-filing-an-income-tax-return/ A tax return is a report filed with the IRS or state or local tax collecting agencies. In this graph, it shows the amount of tax returns from 1913 to 2008 since the modern tax system was created in 1913. There are two major peaks seen on this graph one in 1923 and one in 1942-1947. In 1923 there was high inflation after World War I which brought the amount of houses being taxed up to 40%. In 1942 for the first time the amount of income tax returns filed were more than the amount of households. After 1924 it went up to a maximum percentage of 140% in 1947 and after that stayed pretty high at an average of 120%. I think my biggest question would be how the newest recession effected the percentage of tax returns.

http://visualizingeconomics.com/2011/04/27/mapping-the-us-housing-bubble-2000-2010/ This group of pictures show how the housing bubble from 2000-2006 effected the different states after the stock market crash. During the housing bubble, the states that had the highest increase in prices for housing were California,Arizona, Nevada, and Florida. Although these were the highest increase states during that time, they were also the most effected when the stock market crash hit. Those four states ended up decreasing by the largest percentage of -60%. I also noticed that Michigan, during the housing bubble, had less of an increase than the high increasing states. Michigan's price change during the 2000-2006 housing bubble was almost none. After the crash, Michigan was one that suffered a huge price drop. I would probably have to guess that a lot of the car companies closing their factories in Michigan didn't help the economy there either.

http://visualizingeconomics.com/2008/04/27/income-inequality-democratic-vs-republican-administrations/ There are two graphs. the first graph shows the difference in incomes for Democrats than Republicans between 1948 and 2001. Democrats incomes decreased when the precentile was high, or for lower classes. The Republicans increased while the percentile was high. Another thing I noticed was that the Republicans income was increasing more than the Democrats was decreasing. Also both parties incomes met at the same amount at 2001 which was 2% annual growth. The second graph shows the overall increase or decrease from 1947-2001. Both Democrats and Republicans increased over the 54 years. The graph decreased until 1970 when it started to gradually increase.