Here’s an interesting example of how different graphical presentations of the same data can hit the eye differently. First, an explanation of the likely distributional impacts of the McCain and Obama tax plans, from The Washington Post:
Compare this with the depiction at chartjunk, which presents the same data, but this time with a scale that also emphasizes the number of people in each category:
It looks like it tells a different story, doesn’t it?
Here’s a third chart that gives emphasis to the total tax paid by each group rather than the number of people in each group. (Note that the numbers here are only approximate.)
You will surely protest that this scaling exaggerates the importance of the rich, which it does. But if you are concerned about balancing the budget, the rich are very important. The chart above does a useful job of trying to assess whether (and how) each tax plan pays for itself. (This chart would be more useful if it weighted people by their taxable incomes rather than their tax burdens.)
For those who prefer to see the raw numbers, the latest Tax Policy Center analysis was released on Friday, and is available here. (Note that the charts above were based on their previous analysis.) More generally, I highly recommend the Tax Policy Center analysis; it is careful, non-partisan, and broadly accepted by professional economists.
and 
. You can also watch it on 
Although I think that they all hit the eye differently, I would think that most people would look at them this way: Where’s my income bracket and what is the difference between the two plans?
The bottom 80% will get a better deal from Obama, the top 20% will get a better deal from McCain.
The only issue that I have with the chartjunk graph is that the brackets represent family income, but the median lines drawn are for individual incomes. There should be a line for median family income.
The problem of course is that these charts are not meant for economists, but for emotional voters. The real detail is what different people take away from the chart in terms of how it matches their world view and their pocket book.
The problem with the last one is of course that those at the bottom are more impacted by the tax cut/raise than those at the top. By impacted, I mean real world issues like paying for their house, gas, food, etc.
Of course, the current McCain campaign strategy (Rove playbook) is to move people from thinking about their fiscal well being to getting them fired up about some hot button social issue that will get them to forget what those charts mean to them. So, find some group for those voters to hate, and focus their attention away from their pocketbook: “ignore the man behind the curtain”.
Since most experts expect the Democrats to hold congress, McCain’s plan is pretty much dead in the water anyway.
You can prove anything with statistics, 14% of all Americans know that.
So the top 0.1% pays 20% of the taxes – wow. That reminds me of a hilarious interview between John Stossel and Rev. Al Sharpton when he inadvertently argued that the rich should bear a smaller burden then they do. He had no idea the magnitude of the contribution. I never understood the Robin Hood doctrine – and no, I’m not anywhere near the top.
Tax policy encompasses so many variables that it seems to defy analysis or dispassionate discussion. These graphs do not take into consideration, corporate taxing, estate taxing, social security or a number of other factors. Not the least of importance in factors is incomplete reporting of income as a means of avoiding taxes. As the marginal rates increase, there is increased incentive for high earners to hide income or underreport in other ways.
I find that many of us (probably the majority) will see little effect from either plan. That leads to a real possibility that we will vote in ways unrelated to the proposed plans. After all, if it does not effect me, why should I care?
Two things consistent across all the charts: under McCain’s plan, everyone’s taxes go down, while under the Obama plan, those who pay the most pay more and those who pay the least (or not at all) see the biggest decrease.
It’s easy to see why Obama’s plan is so appealing. It provides benefits for the largest portion of Americans, whether or not the majority of them pay anything in income taxes. McCain’s is much more focused on the top tier, but while that group is much smaller, the impact is much greater.
Why should we care about giving the rich a tax break? As far as I can tell, those tax breaks go to helping a lot more of the small business groups than the mega-rich CEO’s that everyone wants to put the screws to. As it appears that small business today is the only engine of growth in the U.S., wouldn’t it be prudent to give them some help so the rest of us have jobs? BTW, does Obama’s plan to tax people making over $250k an additional social security tax factor into these? Didn’t think so.