The ‘Fiscal Cliff’ explained in charts

A critical review of a recent gallery of charts from the Washington Post

Jonathan A. Schwabishjschwabi@yahoo.com@jschwabish

The Set Up

For a few weeks now, the Washington Post has posted a gallery of charts to help explain what is meant by the ‘Fiscal Cliff’: http://goo.gl/V46U6

Although the 7 charts are a collection of simple bar charts, from a data visualization perspective they leave a lot to be desired

The Challenge

This slide deck contains my redesign of all 7 charts.

I followed 5 basic rules:1.Use the actual data 2.Do not overly modify text or

labels3.Use a single color scheme and

font4.Only use Microsoft Excel5.Apply good data visualization

principles

Use the Actual Data (and do not add extra data elements)

Except for Slide #6—”Sequester cuts to the FEMA budget”—all of the data were either available on the source websites or in the gallery itself (for slide #6, I eyeballed the values)

Do not overly modify text or labels (unless absolutely necessary)

Even though some of the labels were shorthand or incomplete, the objective of the challenge was to improve the visualizations, not correct syntax

Use a single color scheme and font

The gallery is a collection of charts from multiple sources (4 appear to have been made directly by Post staff) so the color schemes vary as do the fonts

A single design scheme can improve the appearance and clarity of the gallery

(I use the ‘Corbel’ throughout)

Only use Microsoft Excel

Because many people use Excel extensively, I wanted to show that creating quality data visualization does not require complex software or knowledge of programming languages

Apply good Data Visualization Principles

My redesigns incorporate simple strategies:• keep data and labels close together• deemphasize tick marks, gridlines, axes (i.e., ‘chartjunk’)• where possible, include data

directly on the chart

Final Notes

Each of the redesigned charts is preceded by a copy of the original chart, either from the source website or as a screen shot from the Washington Post (hence the blurriness in some of the images)

These redesigns are a start. Please feel free to add comments to this SlideShare page or contact me directly with thoughts, critiques, or suggestions

A Detailed Parenthetical

I just wanted to insert a detailed note about the first two charts from the Tax Policy Center (TPC). In the first chart, I chose to focus on the distributional analysis and sacrifice the imagery of the rising average federal tax rate as incomes rise (that is, the height of the bars). I didn’t get much of the distributional story from the original TPC distributional chart because it was just a mess of stacks and colors. The second chart—Average Federal Tax Rates by Income Quintile—tells me that basic story more clearly anyways. An alternative approach would be to use several small charts (‘small multiples’) and stack them together in some way, but I chose to stick to the spirit of the challenge and only redesign the single chart. Plus, had TPC made a series of small charts, it’s not clear to me the Washington Post would have picked it up.

The ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Explained in Charts

Lowest Second Middle Fourth Highest 80-99% Top 1% All

Payroll Tax

Health reform taxes

2001- High Income cuts

Stimulus Credits

Extenders

Estate Tax

2001-03 low/middle cuts

AMT Patch

Fiscal Cliff Components (Percentage)

Quin-tile

2003 - High Income capital gains and

dividends

Quintile

Lowest 2nd Middle 4th Highest 80-99% Top 1% All0

10

20

30

40

0.6

8.0

14.0

17.4

25.222.8

31.2

19.4

3.7

4.1

3.8

4.2

5.8

5.1

7.2

5.0

Average Federal Tax Rate, by Cash Income Percentile, 2013(Percent)

Increase due to tax changes

Baseline

"Doc fix" expiration

ACA Taxes

Unemployment Benefit Expansion

AMT/Other

Debt Ceiling Deal

Payroll Tax Cut

Bush Tax Cuts

0 50 100 150 200 250

11

18

26

65

65

95

221

Size of Components of the "Fiscal Cliff"(Billions of dollars)

<10

10-20

20-30

30-40

40-50

50-75

75-100

100-200

200-500

500-1,000

>1,000

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

64.4

26.5

5.6

2.8

2.2

7.8

16.7

8.5

6.2

26.2

16.4

Thousand dollar

increments

Marginal Tax Rate Increase Under the Fiscal Cliff, by Income Bracket(Percent)

Tax Cuts Sequester Jobs Measures AMT Patch Tax Extenders ACA Taxes Doc Fix0

100

200

300

400

500

435

158150

130

6050

30

181

201 196

69

29 23 20

Economic Impact of Fiscal Cliff, Zandi Multipliers(Billions of dollars)

Economic ImpactBudget Impact

Disaster Relief State, local programs

Salaries and expenses

Emergency food, shelter

Flood hazard mapping

0

200

400

600580

175

75

25 25

Sequester Cuts to the FEMA Budget (Millions of dollars)

288

1.3

108

0.7

42

0.1

40

0.4

24

0.4

Payroll /UI

Bush cuts (high)

Bush cuts (low/middle)

Nondefense

Defense

Effect on Deficit(Billions of dollars)

Effect on GDP(Percentage)

Effect on Fiscal Cliff Components on Deficit and GDP

Total Ef-fect:

$503 billion

Total Ef-fect: 2.9%

Contact me

www.slideshare.net/jschwabish jschwabi@yahoo.com

@jschwabish