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10 Charts of the Year — Oil Profits vs. Oil Prices

December 31, 2011 by seanolsen 9 Comments

Today’s (final) Chart of the Year is from the Center for American Progress, and it shows the relationship between oil prices, gasoline prices, and oil company profits.

Source: Center for American Progress via The Atlantic

What does this chart mean?

Big oil companies make larger profits when oil and gasoline prices are high.  These revenues come from the pockets of everyday Americans.  The five biggest oil companies – BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell – have already made $100 billion in profits during the first three quarters of 2011 due to high oil prices. Yet they and other big oil companies have fought tooth and nail this year to retain tax breaks worth $4 billion annually. — Daniel J. Weiss, senior fellow, Center for American Progress

Economy, National
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10 Charts of the Year – GDP Gap

December 30, 2011 by seanolsen 0 Comments

Today’s Chart of the Year comes from the U.S. Department of the Treasury.  It shows the gap between actual GDP and potential GDP (the historical trend).

Source: U.S. Department of Treasury via The Atlantic

What does this chart mean?

The economy suffered a severe shock during the recession, with the result that economic activity, represented by the blue line, contracted sharply. Since then, GDP has recovered at a steady pace and now stands above its pre-recession level. However, GDP growth has merely kept pace with its trend (or potential) rate, the red line, which is a function of population growth, changes in labor supply, and productivity growth.  As a result, the gap between what our economy is producing and what it could produce if it were operating at the level implied by the trend has not closed much. The green bars show this unused capacity to have equaled 7.4% – or more than $1 trillion – of potential output in Q3 2011. This unused capacity represents workers who cannot find jobs, idle machinery, and foregone opportunities for growth; in this challenging economy, this chart underscores why we must continue to focus attention on investments in the economic recovery and long-run growth.  – Treasury Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy Dr. Jan Eberly

Economy, National
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10 Charts of the Year — The “Toil Index”

December 29, 2011 by seanolsen 3 Comments

Today’s Chart of the Year comes from economist Robert Frank of New York University.  It shows how many hours per month it takes a worker making the median income to afford renting the median home or apartment.

What does this chart mean?

[This is] what I call the Toil Index. It’s an index I constructed to portray the most dramatic element of the middle-class squeeze — the effort required to rent a house served by a school of average quality.

Economy, National
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10 Charts of the Year — Job Creation

December 28, 2011 by seanolsen 0 Comments

Today’s Chart of the Year comes from The Hamilton Project and it shows just how long it could take for our economy to make up the jobs lost in the last recession.

What does this chart mean?

This chart shows how the jobs gap has evolved since December 2007 and shows three different scenarios for different rates of job growth. If the economy adds about 208,000 jobs per month, which was the average monthly rate for the best year of job creation in the 2000s, then it will take until February 2024 — over 12 years — to close the jobs gap. – Michael Greenstone, Director, The Hamilton Project

Economy, National
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10 Charts of the Year — Delinquent Household Loans

December 27, 2011 by seanolsen 0 Comments

Today’s Chart of the Year comes from Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics.  It looks at the number of delinquent home loans in the United States since 2006.

What does this chart mean?

Households are rapidly deleveraging and getting their proverbial house in order. The number of delinquent household loans has plunged from a peak of close to 35 million in early 2009 to less than 25 million in November.

Economy, National
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10 Charts of the Year — Tax Rates and Job Creation

December 26, 2011 by seanolsen 5 Comments

Today’s Chart of the Year comes from the Center for American Progress.  It shows the average percent growth in employment by the top marginal income tax rate for the last 60 years.

Source: Center for American Progress

What does this chart mean?

All year long, the country has been engaged in a debate over the best way to spur job creation, especially in the context of widening budget deficits. The year began with a deal to preserve the Bush tax cuts, including those for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans, and it concluded with a fight over whether millionaires should pay higher taxes to offset the cost of the payroll tax cut. This chart neatly puts the lie to the notion that lower marginal tax rates for the wealthy will produce enormous job growth by showing that, over the past sixty years, the economy has actually produced far more jobs when the top income tax rate was higher. — Michael Linden, Director of Tax and Budget Policy, Center for American Progress

Economy, National, Taxes
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10 Charts of the Year – Income Inequality

December 25, 2011 by seanolsen 7 Comments

Today’s Chart of the Year comes from the Roosevelt Institute.  It shows the difference in after-tax and after-government transfer income by income level over the last 30 years.

Source: Roosevelt Institute via The Atlantic

What does this chart mean?

There was a moment of synchronicity between a report years in the making from the economic wonks at CBO and the activists planning on occupying a square near Wall Street. Both turned critical attention towards the idea of the 1%. As CBO found, even after taxes and transfers, the top 1% were taking a much bigger slice out of the America economy than 30 years ago. Meanwhile corporate and Wall Street profits are up, giving the 1% a nice boost, while 2011 was a lost year for the American worker – adding to the sense the something is broken with the American income distribution.” — Mike Konczal, Roosevelt Institute, Rortybomb Blog

Economy, National
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10 Charts of the Year – Political Polarization

December 24, 2011 by seanolsen 7 Comments

Today’s Chart of the Year comes to us from Peter Orszag, former Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget and current Vice Chairman of Global Banking at Citigroup.

What does this chart mean?

Our political system is so plagued by polarization, it’s difficult to move any legislation forward. In the late 1960s, significant overlap existed in votes cast by the most conservative Democrats in Congress and those cast by the most liberal Republicans. By the late 1980s, the common ground had diminished. Today, it has virtually disappeared.

Economy, National, U.S. House, U.S. Senate
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10 Charts of the Year — Federal Spending and Revenues

December 23, 2011 by seanolsen 2 Comments

Our Chart of the Year for today comes from the Senate Budget Committee, showing the gap between federal spending and federal revenues.

Source: Senate Budget Committee

What does this chart mean?

This chart demonstrates that revenue has to be part of the solution to the deficit. It shows that the last five times the budget was in surplus (in 1969, 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001), revenue was near 20 percent of GDP. Revenue is now at 15.4 percent of GDP, near its lowest level in 60 years. – Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND)

Economy, National, U.S. Senate
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10 Charts of the Year — Health Care Costs

December 22, 2011 by seanolsen 1 Comment

Every day for the rest of the year, we’ll be looking at one important chart that helps to explain current economic problems.

The first, from the Bipartisan Policy Center, shows the projected components of federal spending over the coming decades.

Source: Bipartisan Policy Center

What does this chart mean?

Government spending drives the debt, and the growth of government health care programs drives the spending. Relentlessly rising health care costs (coupled with demographic changes) are driving the growth of these programs, while the open-ended structure of these programs is responsible for much of the increase in health care costs. — Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)

 

 

Economy, National
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