So much derp...

In re: "CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About... "

http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10#

I disagree with the protestors' proposed approach to solutions, but at least some of them are sufficiently numerate to articulate consistent arguments based on rational interpretation and presentation of facts and evidence.

This feels like the work of Beck: Lots of charts out of context, some misleading, some under-used, but all without even hinting at a theory linking it all together that someone might critique or apply toward a solution.

#1, #5: The plutocratic theory explains the blips better than recession, right? Also, population pyramids.

#2: Which Acts passed around 1960 do we want to repeal? Which Acts passed around 2005 do we want to strengthen?

#2-#7: Those who found employment in 2009 obtained steady, recession-proof positions? Also, why would WS/WH/etc. deliberately keep the unemployed masses from becoming eligible to take on new debt?

#10 and #13: CEOs (in aggregate) are being paid more for better performance (in aggregate). We'd applaud this if the CEOs were top bureaucrats of government departments.

#11: Scale: What's in the other 90%?

#12: So we've lost the non-profitable and unsustainable CEOs at the bottom end of compensation. What's the problem?

#13: What's a CSR or legislative solution to this that does not move CEOs out of US jurisdiction?

#14: People are being more efficient with their resources. This is good, right? Also, this chart is misleading: Examining the cost of consumer debt maintenance would show a far worse situation.

#15, #40: The financial sector isn't responsible for overall wages. There are huge SMB and public sectors in there as well. Also, CEOs are not responsible for success of the economy as a whole. If they were, CEOs would make sure that wage earners earn enough to buy corporate junk and go further debt.

#17: This is a tautology. By definition, the top n percent of wage earners in any field will earn disproportionately more than everyone else, because top has been defined in terms of income.

#18: Missing most recent decade of data for other countries, exactly where the largest difference is claimed.

#19: Other trend: Large countries appear at the bottom. More importantly: The measure of inequity has been increasing for the US, UK, India, and China over the last 40 years. One of those things is not like the others...

#20: It's as easy to move up in economic status as it is to move down. Why is this necessarily bad?

#21, #22: In other words, wealth distribution and net worth, should have very little to do with most measurable characteristics of the vast majority of the population.

#23: Figure 2a is more helpful: The top income earners front most of the risk and underwrite most of the non-governmental social security mechanisms. It makes sense for most of the population to own most of the assets and to owe most of the money.

#24: This chart says several different things, incorrectly. a) This is a chart of the tax rate on the top-most slice of income, not the tax rate on the top income earners. They only pay the highest rate on income above the highest cutoff. b) The top tax bracket has changed rather a lot over time: http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/fed_individual_rate_history_nominal&adjusted-20110909.pdf c) No one with serious money earns it as personal income.

#25-26: Yes, that is what a progressive income tax does.

#29: Note *commercial* banks. Also note: Data's too short to say much about the effects of this (non-)lending on jobs or SMB earnings or much else. Also note: We need a graph of met or unmet demands for loans in order to do attribution.

#30-32. #35: So, the banks have leveraged their interest-free loans to return to and resume their pre-bailout profit margins. That doesn't seem like very good use of free money.

#36: Steady growth trend since the 1950s. Needs additional data such as capitalisation, employees, etc. about this, and the rest of the comparators to see whether this line, or recent bumps, are to be expected.