US military spending as a percentage of GDP, 1940--2003
The reason I like this visualization so much is it makes our military spending seem rather trivial. Aside from WW2, military spending has remained pretty steady (in fact its generally declined). I always hear how much money we spend, but it never puts it into perspective just how much it is relative to how much money we have. This reminded me of the video Professor Olson showed in class with the pennies and how much Obama claimed to have saved. I think there is room for a lot of visualizations that put common misconceptions in perspective.
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