The Big Picture

Are you interested in what's been going on in the United States over the past several decades or more regarding education, poverty, discrimination, health care, taxes, the legal system, regulations, and other public policy issues? Would you like to see a presentation of those trends in many hundreds of charts, graphs, and tables that display just-the-facts data? And would you prefer to see that information relayed in a concise and readable manner, suitable to the layperson and policymaker alike, updated every few months and with links to all the original sources used so you can immediately dig deeper into these issues if you'd like? If so, this is the site for you. How do entitlement programs affect inequality, the labor force, and federal spending? How does current federal spending policy affect the next generation’s prospects? How do marriage and children affect income and poverty? How does insurance affect health? How do lawsuits affect personal responsibility? How does religion affect well-being? How does geography affect politics? These are just some of the questions paired with data-heavy, contextual answers inside the three volumes of the “Big Picture.” While correlation doesn’t imply causation, when lots of correlations show movement in the same direction, the Big Picture’s contours, and what to make of it, become clearer.