Check out these data visualizations from Mother Jones. Well designed to promote the splenetic humors.

A Harvard business prof and a behavioral economist recently asked more than 5,000 Americans how they thought wealth is distributed in the United States. Most thought that it’s more balanced than it actually is. Asked to choose their ideal distribution of wealth, 92% picked one that was even more equitable.

A huge share of the nation's economic growth over the past 30 years has gone to the top one-hundredth of one percent, who now make an average of $27 million per household. The average income for the bottom 90 percent of us? $31,244.

Consider the following scenarios:

1. A designer is asked by a major soft drink manufacturing concern to create the packaging and ad campaign for their new soft drink. This drink, created from organic ingredients and without refined sugar, could supplant the role of sugary soda in many tens of thousands of peoples lives in an unhealthy America. The organic substitute has to be harvested in a poor region of South America, and if production increases to planned levels, will displace one or more small villages.
2. A designer is offered a significant sum of money to design compelling, "younger" packaging for a cigarette company. As it happens, this designer also has an ailing mother in dire need of expensive medical treatment. No alternatives for generating that level of income are apparent.

These scenarios are meant to highlight a problem with mixed-criteria maximizing.

Read More...