Thank you for all the evidence of income inequality.

We often hear politicians and others claim to be Christians, while their actions prove no true compassion for the poor.

I believed the Republicans set the worst example, but now I think the Democrats are about equal.

Example : Obama spent $196 million on his victory parties. He could have given 196 cities one million to set up food co-ops throughout the U.S. and hire the unemployed to help.

Average citizens face such injustices they can quickly be very poor, as evidenced by the following :

The governments protection of insurance companies destruction of lives is so severe two professor’s wrote these quotes :

Joseph Belth, Professor Emeritus for Insurance at Indiana University wrote :

“They’ve turned Erisa on its head,”  “It was supposed to protect employees, and it’s being used to protect insurers.”

John Marshall Law School Professor Mark Debofsky wrote:

“empirical evidence is now available that shows insurers operating under ERISA have systematically engaged in the wrongful denial of claims. Cases of abusive benefit denials involving other disability insurers abound.

Quotes from Numerous Federal Court Judges prove insurance company doctors’ ignore life threatening medical conditions including Brain lesions and Multiple Sclerosis, cardiac conditions of many patients, and a foot that a new mother broke in 5 places.

The Judges quotes can be seen by pasting :

deadlyorganizedcrimes.blogspot.com

Multiple insurers also committed identical crimes in five different types of insurance while Obama and Bush protected them, as seen by pasting :

treasonevidence.blogspot.com

WFAA – TV in Dallas Texas Wrote :

“a remarkable number of Texans committed suicide because they could no longer endure the pain caused by their injuries and they had been repeatedly turned down for worker’s comp care.”

( During the time period of the suicides AIG rigged billions of dollars in bids to increase sales of Workers Comp policies; No one was prosecuted by Bush and Obama will not investigate !! )

While many die or become destitute wealthy corporations know they can repeatedly violate laws with no fear of prosecution !!

(1) Wachovia Banks laundered of $378 billion for murderous Mexican drug cartels. No one was prosecuted by Obama’s DOJ and SEC

(a) Bank of America, American Express Bank International and Western Union also laundered drug money and no one was prosecuted.

(b) AIG, JP Morgan Chase, MetLife, Prudential, Unum, rigged huge bids and no one was prosecuted!!

See more by pasting :

obamadrugmurdersconnection.blogspot.com

I respect those who do not believe the overwhelming evidence of corruption is of Biblical proportions. For those who think it is, the Bible has many quotes about seeking justice including Psalm 82:3 :

“Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.”

I hope people of all faiths and non believers will work together to try to stop the destruction of our world.

This chart/infographic is really ambiguous and difficult to understand. I would love to use it to evaluate income inequality but the information design of the chart is really ambiguous. It’s very difficult to tell if a higher index is better or worse than a lower index. The index and the percentage figures run exactly opposite to each other. This kind of confusing implementation and lack of contextual support does readers a disservice and ultimately makes no useful point. :P As it stands this is just a waste of time and a loss to anyone who would actually like to be informed. :P

I find this a very interesting and accurate data visualization. I work with similar data, including Gini coefficients, although not with US census figures. Perhaps it needs additional explanation for those not familiar with the terminology. Another interesting way to show the census data would be as a heat map of the US.

Thank you for the use of this enlightening tool! It is, indeed, the extreme income inequality that passes for business as usual in the United States that is causing our country to disintegrate. Friggin’ rugged individualism my asshat!
We all require access to health care, housing, nutritious food, work at a living wage, and education..not be mention a safe infrastructure.Bosses making 475 times more than workers is an abomination, and serves no purpose other than the complete desecration of American society, Weren’t we once known for our friendly egalitarianism, or was that a mirage too?
I am tired of the intellectuals among us being heckled and called, among other things, socialist whores!! It is time to ferret out the real sellouts of our financial and government systems, and start ofver, beginning with ethics and egalitarianism…...Love your work and follow it closely ProPublica…....

Now I understand why it is hard to get those in my county to “Occupy” our county has the highest income equality.

It would be helpful if you added median income to the stats.  For example, Loudon Co might have the lowest level of inequality, but is 1 of the richest counties in the country… so I wouldn’t exactly ‘feel good’ about the equality score of Loudon when the cost of real estate is so high that only the rich can live there.

@Mike Horton Good idea.. I’ll look into that.

Al

I admire and appreciate your effort to distribute this information.  It is unfortunate that it only targets gross income (from what I can understand from your description).  I know of one person in our county who would probably rank in the top 1% in income, yet he lives at or near the poverty level and gives the rest to progressive nonprofits.  And then, there are those who make little income, but qualify for housing, medical, food, etc. help.  Be assured that I am all for giving them that necessary support.  It would, though, be very interesting to see the stats on the adjusted income of citizens.  For example there are those with a moderate income, but heavy medical costs and no insurance who realistically would place far lower on the net income scale.

Some people have more education, more drive and energy, and work harder. They earn more.  Other people have less education, and are not motivated to achieve and are not hard workers. They earn less.

If governments would stop subsidizing higher education with student loans then college tuition rates would drop and more people could afford to go to college. If you were selling hot dogs and you knew that people were being given money to buy them, would you charge more or less for each hot dog? You would charge a lot more and embellish each dog with custom deli mustard, imported onions etc.

Barry Schmittou’s comment about the cost of President Obama’s “victory parties”  is about $36 million high, and misleading in that the media’s figures were actually the total estimated cost of all inaugural related activitites including state police support and federal security. The Washington Monthly ran an article back in 2009 (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_01/016501.php) as did Media Matters(http://mediamatters.org/columns/200901170003) which show that the total for George W. Bush’s inauguration were no better. But, with hungry, homeless children right there in Washington D.C., that doesn’t excuse either Bush or Obama.

This is a very interesting graph, but it kills me that they messed up the captioning so badly - it should read “xx% of counties have LESS income inequality than you” - I highly doubt that 99% of populous counties have more income inequality than New York County, NY considering that it’s on the extreme end of the “more inequality” part of the horizontal axis

If you want people to listen, you’ve got to get the details right

It would also be good to note other countries’ Gini indices on the graph so that there’s a more salient comparison

admire and appreciate your effort to distribute this information.  It is unfortunate that it only targets gross income (from what I can understand from your description).  I know of one person in our county who would probably rank in the top 1% in income, yet he lives at or near the poverty level and gives the rest to progressive nonprofits.  And then, there are those who make little income, but qualify for housing, medical, food, etc. help.  Be assured that I am all for giving them that necessary support.  It would, though, be very interesting to see the stats on the adjusted income of citizens.  For example there are those with a moderate income, but heavy medical costs and no insurance who realistically would place far lower on the net income scale.

@Mark Yee:  “Some people have more education, more drive and energy, and work harder. They earn more.  Other people have less education, and are not motivated to achieve and are not hard workers. They earn less.

If governments would stop subsidizing higher education with student loans then college tuition rates would drop and more people could afford to go to college. If you were selling hot dogs and you knew that people were being given money to buy them, would you charge more or less for each hot dog? You would charge a lot more and embellish each dog with custom deli mustard, imported onions etc.”

And some people have plenty of drive and ambition but no money for more education.  I made it to graduate school and had a good career in government without being Will Hunting.  How?  The G.I. Bill after I returned from Vietnam.  My family had no money for college but the nation needed proles to fight their war du jour.

There is evidence that student loans may drive up tuition costs but the hot dog analogy seems off base.  Assuming there is more then one hot dog stand in the universe, the competition would lower their prices to feed malnourished college students with little money and put the guy who jacked up his prices out of business.

My zipcode was not included - we’re too small. I wish I could look up by state and then see the counties in that state. Is there a list somewhere that shows the 818 largest counties?

I should not surprise anyone that NYC and Washington DC are near the top of the list. Only some counties in PR are higher. The politicians and bankers must believe that that is the way we all live.

Hi G Harris- Howe,

The $196 Million total Obama disbursed for his party is seen by pasting :

campaignmoney.com/political/committees/obama-victory-fund.asp?cycle=08

I trusted that website to have accurate figures. I’m sorry if they are incorrect. As you mentioned “that doesn’t excuse either Bush or Obama

(I appreciate your sharing that Bush’s totals were just as high)

G.Harris, it was multiple surgeries that kept me from being able to document the evidence of Bush protecting crimes like the Obama administration has done.

There’s so much evidence I’m still struggling, my vision caused me to fall hard two days ago. Seven days ago I turned into the sharp edge of a door entrance, I had a big bump on my forehead and almost knocked myself out.

So many lives are being destroyed I’m unable to make myself stop trying to seek justice. I believe both Obama, Bush and the leaders of both parties have caused millions of lives to be destroyed.

The Obama administration finally responded to my evidence in Fall of 2010 after I repeatedly contacted them after his election in 2008 :

On January 26, 2011 Department of Labor Director of Participant Response Ms. Sharon Watson sent a letter from Washington saying :

“As we previously indicated, we take the allegations you have made that MetLife has engaged in a pattern of fraudulent activities regarding your claim and other participants’ claims very seriously and have taken the information under advisement.”

Ms. Watson closed by saying :
“At this time, there is nothing more EBSA can do for you”

It took me four years of contacting the Bush and Obama admins to get the DOL to even acknowledge and respond.

They still did nothing after seeing quotes from Numerous Federal Court Judges prove insurance company doctors’ ignore life threatening medical conditions including Brain lesions and Multiple Sclerosis, cardiac conditions of many patients, and a foot that a new mother broke in 5 places.

The Judges quotes can be seen by pasting :

deadlyorganizedcrimes.blogspot.com

If you go to Exhibit C of obamadrugmurdersconnection.blogspot.com you’ll see how Obama Received Huge Contributions From MetLife and Two Men Who Signed MetLife’s third Non Prosecution Agreement for rigging bids to increase sales of the policies mentioned above !!

Obama took $30,000 from MetLife VP James Lipscomb, and $2,600 from attorney Bruce Yannett.  Both of these contributions were for Obama’s victory party.

Then Lipscomb and Yannett signed the agreement where multiple frauds were admitted but no one was prosecuted.

The links also show Obama took hundreds of thousands of dollars from MetLife and the law firm named Debevoise & Plimpton LLP that employs Mr. Yannett !!

**** Obama’s DOL and DOJ Directors also did nothing after seeing that multiple insurers also committed identical crimes in five different types of insurance while Obama and Bush protected them, as seen by pasting :

treasonevidence.blogspot.com

Obama fooled me. I believed that he was going to bring change and help average citizens and those who have great needs. I am surprised to say that I think he and the Democratic leaders may be responsible for the destruction of as many lives as Bush and Cheney and the puppetmasters who control bothparties leaders.

G.Harris, I wish ProPublica and PBS would provide coverage and help regarding children and adults being homeless and hungry while the elite including government officials spend enough on one meal to feed one person for months.

I appreciate and agree with your quote :

“But, with hungry, homeless children right there in Washington D.C., that doesn’t excuse either Bush or Obama.”

This is a great idea, but it would be much more useful if it were set up by metro area rather than county.  It’s difficult to get a sense, for example, of what income inequality is like in the New York City area, as I can only get inequality figures by county.

Excellent use of data to inform.  Bravo! And, more please.