Trickledown Theory

Champagne Glass Distribution from Dalton Conley (2008) You May Ask Yourself

The balance of economic power between individuals and countries has shifted over time, but there have always been massive gaps between the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor. Data visualizations such as the Champagne Glass Distribution (shown above) emphasize the rapidly diminishing curve between the full glass and the empty one. 

The seed for a quilt design based on this disparity has been tucked away in my mind for a long time. But to be honest, I have spent my designated blogging time this morning researching and learning rather than writing or sketching... and although this is the topic on the top of my mind this morning, I feel like my thoughts on the subject need a chance to air out and be pressed into some sort of presentable shape before I share them with you.

One fascinating resource I did discover this morning was a website called Gapminder. This website was created with the goal of "Fighting devastating ignorance with fact-based worldviews everyone can understand." It provides factual and visual representations of data about global economics, health, etc. as they shift over time using a software tool called Trendalyzer. Talks by one of the founders, Hans Rosling, are also available on TED and on the website; I plan to include them in my research process before revisiting this subject in a future post.

In the meantime, I hope these small seeds of interest and curiosity will start to sprout in more than one garden.