It would be beyond awesome to get one of these for New Zealand. It's
the rare person who can read data and comprehend its significance.
I'm a huge fan of interaction rather than visualisation--you need to
bang against a problem several times to understand its shape.
Rest of post
--Nat
http://www.good.is/post/try-to-fix-the-budget-yourself-it-s-hard/
> Try to Fix the Budget Yourself. It's Hard
> GOOD Blog > Andrew Price on July 14, 2010 at 6:30 am PDT
>
>
> Right now, the United States' federal debt is about 66 percent of
> GDP. It's projected to grow to 100 percent by 2022, and keep growing
> thereafter. Fixing it should be easy, right? We just raise the gas
> tax. Or let the Bush tax cuts expire. Or maybe we just cut those
> expensive entitlements.
>
> Well, the peanut gallery can now give it a try.
>
> The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has a simulator
<http://crfb.org/stabilizethedebt/
> > (some are calling it a "game"
<http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/new-role-playing-game-you-vs-the-national-debt-19046/
> >) that will let you run through a list of major programs and decide
> which to cut. Your goal: Lower the debt to 60 percent of GDP by 2018.
>
> Some choices are easy (do you want to "Eliminate Certain Outdated
> Programs"? Sure!) but most are not. Who wants to end school
> breakfast programs? And many choices that would help reduce the debt—
> passing a cap-and-trade bill or raising the corporate tax rate—would
> be hard to do politically anyway.
>
> I ran through the simulator quickly and raised taxes in a variety of
> ways, cut a handful of programs, passed cap-and-trade, left the
> stimulus unchanged, and got this message:
>
> "Uh oh! You failed to reduce the debt to a sustainable level.
> Without further changes, a fiscal crisis is likely to occur."
>
> Ouch. Try it yourself if you have a few minutes. At the least it
> gives you a nice new perspective on what the big-ticket items are
> (TARP, stimulus, war, and the Bush tax cuts).
>
> Smartly, as people work through the simulator, the Committee for a
> Responsible Federal Budget is going to share the results with
> politicians
<http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/new-role-playing-game-you-vs-the-national-debt-19046
> >, to show them what the public is willing to cut.
>
There were a couple of simulators in the UK - my favourite was created by Delib
as it was really user-friendly. Wellington CC used this last year
http://www.budgetsimulator.com/info
Bang the Table in Australia have a version too - not aware of any NZ councils
who've tried it out though.
