Visualizations

Featured Thoughts

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness — Declaration of Independence

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. — Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

Government is essentially the negation of liberty. — Ludwig von Mises

It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government. — Thomas Paine

It does not take a majority to prevail, but an irate, tireless minority keen to set brushfires of freedom in the minds of men. — Samuel Adams

You do not know, and will never know, who the Remnant are, nor where they are, nor how many of them there are, nor what they are doing or will do. Two things you know, and no more: first, that they exist; second, that they will find you. — Albert Jay Nock

A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that ... it gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. — Milton Friedman

As the coercive power of the state will alone decide who is to have what, the only power worth having will be a share in the exercise of this directing power. — F.A. Hayek

The kind of rules we should have are the kind that we'd make if our worst enemy were in charge. — Walter E. Williams

Your principle has placed these words above the entrance of the legislative chamber: “whosoever acquires any influence here can obtain his share of legal plunder.” And what has been the result? All classes have flung themselves upon the doors of the chamber crying: “A share of the plunder for me, for me!” — Frederic Bastiat

This was all before politicians gave us the idea that the things we could not afford individually we could somehow afford collectively through the magic of government. — Thomas Sowell

While the short-run prospects for liberty at home and abroad may seem dim, the proper attitude for the Libertarian to take is that of unquenchable long-run optimism. — Murray N. Rothbard

Barbra Streisand told Diane Sawyer that we're in a global warming crisis, and we can expect more and more intense storms, droughts and dust bowls. But before they act, weather experts say they're still waiting to hear from Celine Dion. — Jay Leno

The great virtue of free enterprise is that it forces existing businesses to meet the test of the market continuously, to produce products that meet consumer demands at lowest cost, or else be driven from the market. It is a profit-and-loss system. Naturally, existing businesses generally prefer to keep out competitors in other ways. That is why the business community, despite its rhetoric, has so often been a major enemy of truly free enterprise. — Milton Friedman

Increasingly, it seems that the biggest difference between conservatives and liberals is that the conservatives know government is force. But that doesn't stop them from using it. — John Stossel

One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver's license. — P.J. O'Rourke

Late one night in Washington, D.C. a mugger wearing a ski mask jumped into the path of a well-dressed man and stuck a gun in his ribs. "Give me your money!" he demanded. Indignant, the affluent man replied, "You can't do this. I'm a United States Congressman!" "In that case," replied the robber, "give me my money!" — Related by Walter Block

The libertarian creed, finally, offers the fulfillment of the best of the American past along with the promise of a far better future. Even more than conservatives, who are often attached to the monarchical traditions of a happily obsolete European past, libertarians are squarely in the great classical liberal tradition that built the United States and bestowed on us the American heritage of individual liberty, a peaceful foreign policy, minimal government, and a free-market economy. Libertarians are the only genuine current heirs of Jefferson, Paine, Jackson, and the abolitionists. — From "For A New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto" by Murray N. Rothbard

No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: “But what would you replace it with?” When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with? — Thomas Sowell

Here’s Williams’ law: Whenever the profit incentive is missing, the probability that people’s wants can be safely ignored is the greatest. — Walter E. Williams

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. — Barry Goldwater

A society that puts equality — in the sense of equality of outcome — ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests. — Milton Friedman

When it becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself. — F.A. Hayek

The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. — H.L. Mencken

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. — C.S. Lewis

When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. — Benjamin Franklin

What is euphemistically called government-corporate "partnership" is just government coercion, political favoritism, collectivist industrial policy, and old-fashioned federal boondoggles nicely wrapped up in a bright-colored ribbon. It doesn’t work. — Ronald Reagan

Those fighting for free enterprise and free competition do not defend the interests of those rich today. They want a free hand left to unknown men who will be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow. — Ludwig von Mises

The problem is big government. If whoever controls government can impose his way upon you, you have to fight constantly to prevent the control from being harmful. With small, limited government, it doesn’t much matter who controls it, because it can’t do you much harm. — Harry Browne

Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place. — Frederic Bastiat

It is indeed probable that more harm and misery have been caused by men determined to use coercion to stamp out a moral evil than by men intent on doing evil. — F.A. Hayek

Freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself ... Economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom. — Milton Friedman

Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for. — Will Rogers

The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened. — Norman Thomas

[The political system] tends to give undue political power to small groups that have highly concentrated interests; to give greater weight to obvious, direct and immediate effects of government action than to possibly more important but concealed, indirect and delayed effects; to set in motion a process that sacrifices the general interest to serve special interests rather than the other way around. There is, as it were, an invisible hand in politics that operates in precisely the opposite direction to Adam Smith's invisible hand. — Milton Friedman

I'd rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than by the faculty of Harvard. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Liberty is not a means to a political end. It is itself the highest political end. — Lord Acton

The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another. — Milton Friedman

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens. — Adam Smith

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. — H.L. Mencken

This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the "hidden" confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard. — Alan Greenspan, “Gold and Economic Freedom” [1966]

Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion — the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation of individuals — the technique of the marketplace. — Milton Friedman

The compelling issue to both conservatives and liberals is not whether it is legitimate for government to confiscate one’s property to give to another, the debate is over the disposition of the pillage. — Walter Williams

In Germany, they came first for the Communists,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then ... they came for me ...
And by that time there was no one left to speak up. — Pastor Martin Niemöller

There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as "caring" and "sensitive" because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do good with his own money — if a gun is held to his head. — P.J. O'Rourke

The difference between libertarianism and socialism is that libertarians will tolerate the existence of a socialist community, but socialists can't tolerate a libertarian community. — David Boaz

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty. — Thomas Jefferson

After all, only the imagination limits the kind of laws and restrictions that can be written in the name of saving the planet. — Walter E. Williams

One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary. — Ayn Rand

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the publick. ... It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. — Adam Smith

Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. — Immanuel Kant

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it. — Frederic Bastiat

Following are featured visualizations available from Voice for Liberty. For all articles about visualizations, click here. For a gallery of all visualizations, click here

National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) by ethnicity

Source of data is National Center for Education Statistics, a division of United States Department of Education. Click here to use this visualization.

National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) by lunch eligibility

Source of data is National Center for Education Statistics, a division of United States Department of Education. Click here to use this visualization.

Employment by metropolitan area and major industry

Source of data is Bureau of Economic Analysis, an agency of the United States Department of Commerce. Click here to use this visualization.

Metropolitan area employment and unemployment

An interactive visualization of labor force, employment, and unemployment rate for all metropolitan areas in the United States. Click here to use this visualization.

Personal income by metropolitan area

Example from the visualization. Click for larger

Source of data is Bureau of Economic Analysis, an agency of the United States Department of Commerce. Click here to use this visualization.

State and local government employment

A visualization of federal, state, and local government civilian employees by state and function. Click here to use this visualization.

Local government employment by state and function

An interactive visualization of local government employment, grouped by state and function. Includes employees and payroll per resident. These are local government employees only. State and federal government employees are not included. Click here to use this visualization.

State government employment by state and function

An interactive visualization of state government employment, grouped by state and function. These are state government employees only. Local and federal government employees are not included. Click here to use this visualization.

County business patterns

County Business Patterns (CBP) is an annual series that provides subnational economic data by industry. This series includes the number of establishments, employment during the week of March 12, first quarter payroll, and annual payroll. Click here to use this visualization.

Zip code business patterns

An interactive visualization of business data by zip code. Click here to use this visualization.

Downtown Wichita jobs

A visualization of jobs and employment data for zip code 67202, which is downtown Wichita. Click here to use this visualization.

Wichita metro employment by industry

An interactive visualization of Wichita-area employment by industry.

Gross domestic product by metropolitan area and industry

Source of data is Bureau of Economic Analysis, an agency of the United States Department of Commerce. Click here to use this visualization.

Quarterly real gross domestic product by state and industry

An interactive visualization of state Gross Domestic Product by industry, reported quarterly. Click here to use this visualization.

Gross domestic product by state and industry

Real GDP for the states and industries. Source of data is Bureau of Economic Analysis, an agency of the United States Department of Commerce. Click here to use this visualization.

Tax collections in the states

Tax collections by state governments. Total and per capita. U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Survey of State Government Tax Collections. Click here to use this visualization.

Quarterly state and local government tax collections

State and local tax collections presented in an interactive visualization. Click here to use this visualization.

Kansas tax receipts

Kansas tax receipts by category, presented in an interactive visualization. Click here to use this visualization.

Kansas hotel guest tax collections

Kansas hotel guest tax collections presented in an interactive visualization. Click here to use this visualization.

Kansas agency expenditures

Data regarding State of Kansas agency spending. Click here to use this visualization.

Kansas vendor transactions

Data regarding State of Kansas payments to vendors. Click here to use this visualization.

State and local government employees

Annual payroll per state resident and state residents for each FTE employee count. U.S. Census Bureau, 2012 Census of Governments. Click here to use this visualization.

Airport traffic statistics

Airport traffic data presented in an interactive visualization, updated with annual data through 2018. Click here to use this visualization.

National transit database

An interactive visualization of data over time from the National Transit Database. Click here to use this visualization.

Highways in the states

Total lane miles, urban and rural, using data reported by the Federal Highway Administration for 2016. Click here to use this visualization.

Metropolitan area populations

An interactive visualization of populations of metropolitan statistical areas, or MSA, in the United States starting in 1969. Click here to use this visualization.

Populations of the states

An interactive table and charts of populations in the states and regions, starting in 1929. Click here to use this visualization.

Populations of the counties

An interactive table, chart, and map of populations in the counties. Click here to use this visualization.

Economic indicators in the states

Economic indicators in the states, coincident and leading indexes. Source is Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Click here to use this visualization.

School spending in the states

Data from ElSi, a service of the National Center for Education Statistics, regarding per-pupil revenue and spending in the states. Click here to use this visualization.

School staffing and students

Trends for the nation and each state in teachers, administrators, and students. Click here to use this visualization.

Wichita MSA employment

An interactive visualization of Wichita-area employment and unemployment. Click here to use this visualization.

Wichita check register

Wichita spending data presented as a summary, and as a list. Click here to use this visualization

Occupational employment statistics

Salary data presented in an interactive visualization by occupation, and by metropolitan area. Click here to use this visualization.

Government revenue, spending, and deficit as percent of GDP

Source of data is Bureau of Economic Analysis, an agency of the United States Department of Commerce. Click here to use this visualization.

State and local direct general expenditures, per resident

An interactive visualization of state and local direct general expenditures, per resident. Click here to use this visualization.

Kansas school employment by district

Kansas school employment and ratios to students in an interactive visualization. Source of data is Kansas State Department of Education. Click here to use this visualization.

Kansas selected school statistics by building

Source of data is Kansas State Department of Education. Click here to use this visualization.

Kansas school spending by district

Click here to use this visualization.

Kansas school fund balances

Source of data is Kansas State Department of Education. Click here to use this visualization.

Kansas school salaries

An interactive visualization of Kansas school salaries by district and category. Click here to use this visualization.

Wichita public school district checkbook

Source of data is Wichita Public School District. Click here to use this visualization.

Kansas state and local tax revenue

Click here to use this visualization.

NAEP scores and charter schools

An interactive table of NAEP scores for the states and races, broken down by charter school and traditional public school. Click here to use this visualization.

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Visualizations

National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) by ethnicity

National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) by lunch eligibility

Employment by metropolitan area and major industry

Metropolitan area employment and unemployment

Personal income by metropolitan area

State and local government employment

Local government employment by state and function

State government employment by state and function

County business patterns

Zip code business patterns

Downtown Wichita jobs

Wichita metro employment by industry

Gross domestic product by metropolitan area and industry

Quarterly real gross domestic product by state and industry

Gross domestic product by state and industry

Tax collections in the states

Quarterly state and local government tax collections

Kansas tax receipts

Kansas hotel guest tax collections

Kansas agency expenditures

Kansas vendor transactions

State and local government employees

Airport traffic statistics

National transit database

Highways in the states

Metropolitan area populations

Populations of the states

Populations of the counties

Economic indicators in the states

School spending in the states

School staffing and students

Wichita MSA employment

Wichita check register

Occupational employment statistics

Government revenue, spending, and deficit as percent of GDP

State and local direct general expenditures, per resident

Kansas school employment by district

Kansas selected school statistics by building

Kansas school spending by district

Kansas school fund balances

Kansas school salaries

Wichita public school district checkbook

Kansas state and local tax revenue

NAEP scores and charter schools

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