How do College Students Spend Money?

 I certainly don't remember having 40% of my budget as "discretionary" when I was in college!

This is from the Westwood College website, but I don't see a specific creator listed.

Visualizing the Stimulus Bill

Here's a great, simple graphic that breaks down the stimulus bill.

Nicholas Rapp does some great infographic design work.  Check out some of his other work at nicolasrapp.com

Taking Apart the $819B Stimulus Package

Very detailed infographic from the Washington Post showing how the proposed stimulus package is broken out between ares of spending and tax cuts.

The centerpiece of President Obama's domestic agenda is an $819 billion economic stimulus plan. The Senate will consider the measure this week, with an eye toward the amount of tax cuts and spending. Republicans and Democrats spar over what to consider a tax cut. An analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office tallies the tax-cut portion to be significantly less than the one-third Democrats claim it to be.

SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office | Reporting by Karen Yourish, graphic by Laura Stanton - The Washington Post - February 01, 2009

Modern Day Pirates

Pirates infographic from the Russian News and Information Agency.  These are real pirates at sea (not online pirates stealing software, music and movies).  433 victims and 292 kidnappings in 2007! (EDITED: there were only 5 deaths, not 433)

Article 100 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) requires that all states fight against piracy.  The annual damage from piracy to the global economy is around 15 billion Euros ($12 Billion).

This one and many other infographics are available online at the Russian News and Information Agency's infographics page.

The Hidden Cost of War

Found on both Information Aesthetics and Visualizing Econmics.

A Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis

This is a tall flow chart helping describe the financial crisis, from blog.mint.com.

Thanks Alwyn!

Where your Apple Tax goes...

A little humor Monday morning from the brilliant minds behind The Joy of Tech.  Click the link to see the full version.

It's the Economy, Stupid!

Great timeline from GOOD Magazine (via picdit.com).

What most of the doom-and-gloom reports on our economy don’t provide is perspective—a historical survey of an economy that’s been through more than a few ups and downs in its day. Here’s a farsighted view of how our temperamental economic machine works, and a close-up of how it stands today.

Thanks Adam!

NEW Death and Taxes 2009 poster

New Death and Taxes infographic for 2009!  Interactive viewer let's you zoom in to see all of the details.

"Death and Taxes:2009" is a representational poster of the federal discretionary budget; the amount of money that is spent at the discretion of your elected representatives in Congress. Basically, your federal income taxes. The data is from the President's budget request for 2009. It will be debated, amended, and approved by Congress by October 1st to begin the fiscal year.

The poster provides a uniquely revealing look at our national priorities, that fluctuate yearly, according to the wishes of the President, the power of Congress, and the will of the people. If you pay taxes, then you have paid for a small part of everything in the poster. 

The Death and Taxes poster from 2007 was my initial post on Cool Infographics, so I'm very excited to see this update.  Now the 2009 version is available to purchase as a poster here.

National Debt and the Presidents

First, I'm not pushing any particular political agenda.  There's considerable debate around this chart, so I don't want to start any arguments.  The debate isn't around the validity of the data, but about how it's being presented.  The information is freely available from the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Bureau of the Public Debt.

Second, I like that this chart takes a simple bar chart and adds a few more layers of information.  At its root, this is a timeline of the increase in the national debt based on the federal budget by year.  Then layered on top of that are the presidents in office that year, some color coding, the political party controlling the White House and highlights for record years.

Third, just to share the reasons for the debate.  This is a great example of data being visualized with a specific agenda in mind.  Obviously, this is a chart framed to make Republicans look bad, and Democrats look good.  The debate centers around a few issues like programs started by one President will carry into the term of another President and more importantly that the political party controlling Congress actually has more impact on the federal budget than the President does.