I was looking for a calculator that would visualize income disparity for me as an individual but I couldn't find one. The closest I came was a javascript tool created as part of the great article series: The Great Divergence by Tim Noah at Slate. He also did the excellent healthcare plan comparative series during the 08 Democratic primaries. The visual essay compiled for the series is available here . I also suggest you read the articles here.
As for that comparative income calculator:
Where do I stand?
Enter your zip code and income to find out where you fall on the curve.
NOTE: All information you enter is private and will not be recorded or stored in any way.
Anyway this was compiled by the folks at Slate using publicly available data This is based on a normal distribution. The actual distribution of incomes has a key outlier though, the people at the very top make a lot more than the mean. There is a football field metaphor description of this at the L-Curve. Here is a video explanation, I warn you though the voice over sounds like Ben Stein on Ambien.
So grab your tax statement, find your income percentage with the tool, and take a look at what yard line your on.
Hey its a new president, the economy is poor and impotent rage is gripping the nation. If you were thinking man I wish people were more hyperbolic and irrational fear not. The TARP money, the stimulus bill, the budget, the 4% increase in defense spending are all mere parlor games before the big dance, Health Care Reform.
That seems to have been a Republican and Other Right Wing enclave tactic to ignore things that don't coalesce into their little world view. A few examples from last weeks news.
Argument: Sex is Bad therefore Contraception is Bad. Most people think abortion is something to be avoided so lets equate contraception with abortion to try and keep women from having sex.
Oral contraception does three things prevents ovulation prevents fertilization and prevents implantation. The last one is used to call it abortion. To make that case you have to believe that Oral contraception fails at step one and at step two but is 100% at step three.
As you know, the risk that oral contraception will prevent implantation of an embryo is purely theoretical. There is no documented case of such a tragedy, since we have no way to verify conception inside a woman's body prior to implantation without causing the embryo's death. Even theoretically, the risk is vanishingly small, since the primary effect of oral contraception is to prevent ovulation, and the secondary effect is to prevent fertilization.
Argument: Oil drilling is good for America we need to do it. Conservation such as step to increase fuel mileage is mockable.
Fact required to be ignored: The bottle neck in supply is in gasoline production not in crude supplies.
Oil companies make money turning crude Oil into products we buy. Oil executives make money when Oil companies stock prices go up. If increased drilling and production would raise profits oil companies would be doing it in the lands they already have leases to. The prospect of new leases would raise stock prices soon but not do much to the price of gasoline especially in the near term. Read a well formulated explanation here
Argument: Obama is to famous and popular with the media. This is leading to irrational exhuberance instead of looking at who is better which would lead people to McCain.
Fact ignored: McCain has gottten a pass on all the dumb things he has said because he used to be cool to the press back in 2000.
No long example here just watch the daily show and read talking points memo. They catch most of the horrible things that come out of his mouth, rape is funny so is killing Iranians and verbally abusing his wife.
Speaking of funny look at this. Paris Hilton lampoons McCain ad.
