I just googled the data[1], removed the duplicate entry for 2013 from the Excel spreadsheet when the methodology changed (shoddy on my part, I know) and made a graph from it that was readable in the five minutes before I posted my comment.

Feel free to post a better presentation of the data.

[1] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2018/demo/income-poverty/...

The parent post has a point.

Five minutes or not, it is ultimately deceptive. What really is a ~22% drop since 1970s looks like a 100% drop on first sight.

By all means, make a better graph, so I can tell you what you really meant by your choice of presentation after the fact :p

For real.

> terrible choice of axis

> honest scale

> deceptive

Be kind ya'll.

I didn't know OP made the graph. If I had I would have been less upfront, e.g. "I would have chosen different axes".

> If you’re interested in the yearly swings

Why would they be? They certainly didn't say they are.

> What you really means is that using an honest scale makes the trend look less dramatic.

I think "honest" is a loaded term here. It's a well known fact that income inequality has been growing in the US for decades now, and the trend is dramatic and undeniable. Are there ways to minimize it visually in a graph? Sure, you could blow out the axes, or you could do yearly deltas which wouldn't have the line moving past a few percent ever. Both of these suggestions would flatten this phenomena, and coincidentally both have been suggested here. But the phenomena itself is not flat, and therefore it is the flat representation that, by definition, would be misleading.