Folks, you made it: it is Friday. And that can mean only one thing: it’s time to #NameThatData!
Here at the ‘Axis there are few things we love more than when a line on chart goes one way and then suddenly goes another way. It’s dramatic! Exciting! Good or bad, doesn’t matter! It means change is afoot, and in the media biz, change is content, baby.
This week’s #NameThatData features a line that has recently started doing something unusual after years of boring mediocrity. Some hints: it’s a year-over-year change. In June 2021, it was up 45 percent from where it was a year ago: wow!
Is that good or bad? There is disagreement among the people who spend their lives examining lines like this one. Some say it’s very, very bad indeed. Others say the doomsayers should shut their yaps and sit tight because we’re in unprecedented times as far as lines like this one are concerned, and we should see what shakes out over the next few months.
You, fortunately, get to sail serenely above these petty skirmishes because your job, today, is to simply figure out what the dang line is. Think you know the answer? Drop me a line, or comment down below, or Tweet at me, or write your guess on a box containing no fewer than 500 live crickets and mail it to Chris Ingraham’s Rapacious Lizard, Red Lake Falls, Minnesota.
Here’s the chart:
Paid subscribers will find out the correct answer in Monday’s paid subscriber-only post. The rest of you will have to wait until next Friday, alas.
Oh, speaking of which: here is the solution to last week’s #NameThatData. It’s the share of total U.S. wealth owned by the top 0.00001 percent of American families, as calculated by U.C. Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman. As you can see they are getting a lot richer.
If you are not a paid subscriber think about how much richer your own life would be, if only you had found this out on Monday. It could have transformed your entire week!
Have a great weekend, and if you haven’t already please consider subscribing to The Why Axis, your trusted source for lines that do unexpected things.