If you own property there’s a good chance your local tax assessor requires a check for property tax payments (unless you pay exorbitant fees for credit card processing). Many government organizations require check payments. I suspect the the higher check usage is more caused by income and not age - higher your income/assets the more likely you’re dealing with the government. Higher your income/assets the more likely you’re older.

What does the bubble size represent? If it’s per capita income isn’t that redundant with the x axis?

Also, it’d be interesting to see this chart with road deaths per x miles driven. People in USA for example drive far more miles per capita and would therefore have more deaths per capita, all else being equal.

I’d guess the 3 guys following Bush are all ex-military and were used to wearing short shorts

Fact checked McConnell being born in 1042 and was surprised to find out it’s true

Inflation is calculated based on the prices people pay for goods/services. I’d suspect inflation is lower in Nov/Dec because retail usually offers sales/discounts in those months (people buy more but it’s perhaps at a slightly lower price)

A couple things to point out. #1 Apple spent about $300 billion in costs of revenue and operating costs which is more than they spend in stock buybacks. That’s not conveyed in the chart since the chart just has net income. #2 when a company does a stock buyback, they’re literally buying back their shares. ‘Normal’ tax rules apply if you’re a stockholder selling your shares back to Apple as part of their share buyback.

It’s an interesting stat but using it to interpret ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is a big leap given public companies on stock exchanges are mostly international/global companies. For example in the case of Switzerland or Singapore, all their large public companies are multinationals - so the fact that their combined market cap is higher than GDP doesn’t mean much in terms of good/bad.