A little history...
Initially launched as TheBudgetGraph.com, Jess Bachman wanted to create a way to visualize and conceptualize the United States federal budget.
"There was nothing in between the reductionist pie graphs and the thousand page long official budget documents."
So in 2004 Jess created Death and Taxes. The first version can still be seen here. It's popularity did not catch until two years later when it was picked up by boingboing.net and interest exploded.
"I realized that this information was important and people really wanted to know where their taxes went."
Over the next several years Jess released a Death and Taxes for the years, 2007, 2008 and 2009. Each version had increase complexity as well as aesthetic design changes. Each year also brings greater accuracy to the data.
"It took me a few years to understand the complexity, redundancy, and general obfuscation the government uses in the budget process, then I had to make sense of it all to the viewer."
Finally, for the launch of the 2009 version, Jess migrated the operation to a new website, WallStats.com which will include other interesting and useful informational design and posters.
"I needed something to occupy myself in the budgetary off-season"
And so WallStats.com was born, welcome.
