Another day, another corporation receiving massive tax breaks by the government. Most recently, it was $7 million from the Trump/Pence administration to Carrier (owned by United Technologies) to stop the company from moving a factory to Mexico. Not all the jobs will be saved, but it’s still being considered a win by the Capitalist-in-chief. Even before he entered politics, Trump the businessman knew how to work the system to get himself millions of dollars in tax breaks. This practice of corporate welfare isn’t new or even that unusual.

Here is a map of the United States, filled in by which company got the largest handout (via targeted tax breaks, grants, and other subsidiaries) in each state.

This infographic was published first on reason.com

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Prison reform and prison labor are topics we’ve written about before on the Occasional Planet. American prisons are making tons of money hiring out their inmates for minuscule wages. It’s more than just breaking rocks and stamping license plates too. Companies like Victoria’s Secret, Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and even Boening use inmates to sew, run phone centers, assemble missiles, and other manufacturing jobs instead of paying full wages to other Americans. But that’s not all. Private prisons make millions of dollars for filling beds and hosting a large number of occupants. When you start doing the math, it makes you wonder if our legal system is more interested in filling quotas than reforming people who break the law.

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Every quarter, Factcheck.org likes to take a look at the numbers since Obama became President. They go deeper than just unemployment and study metrics like corporate profits, the number of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and how other countries view the U.S. Here’s a look at where we stand in July 2016, with just a few months of his presidency left.

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Every election year a familiar threat resurfaces, “If my candidate doesn’t win…I’m going to move to Canada!” The sentiment is posted on social media and drudged up in conversation whenever the opposing politician does something newsworthy.

Fast forward to January when the new President has been sworn in, D.C. is full of politicians you can’t stand, and yet you and the rest of your Facebook friends have not moved up north. Is moving to Canada just an idle threat? How hard would it be to emigrate if Trump becomes president? This infographic by Sparefoot helps fill in some of those answers.

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Whether you’re pro or anti Hillary Clinton, you have to admit that a woman running for President of the United States is a good thing. We live in a county where 50.8% of the population is female and yet historically all 44 presidents have been men. The U.S. is a bit behind when it comes to diversity in political leadership. Other countries have elected female heads of state (Israel, Germany, the United Kingdom, Portugal, India, Norway, Pakistan, and quite a few others) and about 18 nations are currently run by a woman. Despite this, women have been running for president for a very long time. This inforgraphic gives a quick rundown of other times when a woman has run for office. It’s interesting to note that some of them were running before women even had the right to vote.

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Most people understand that there is a problem with money in politics in the United States. Politicians spend countless hours fundraising instead of doing their elected jobs, lobbyists and corporations get special treatment over voters, and a few eccentric billionaires can buy politicians and elections in a way that seems…well undemocratic. The wonderful folks over at the Center for Responsive Politics have been working hard to make sure that someone is paying attention to where the glut of political money comes from and which politicians are accepting it. They’ve just released an interesting infographic that talks about Dark Money (money that’s used to influence voters where the source is unknown) and where it comes from. The infographic and more information on Dark Money can be found here.

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A person in New York is less likely to die by a gun (murder, suicide, or accident) than in Missouri. Are the behaviors of a person so divergent according to where they live, or could the differences in gun laws play a part? (I’m a Missourian myself, so I can attest that the state isn’t filled with violent gun-toting miscreants.) This infographic shows a look at all firearm deaths by state and provides a bit of insight as to how easy (or hard) it is to procure a gun there. Infographic found at https://img.njdc.com/media/media/2015/10/05/firearm-mainchart-oct5-3.png

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Americans go to the doctor far less than their foreign counterparts. The most likely reason? It’s expensive. While the quality of healthcare in the U.S. might be high, it does little good if citizens can’t afford to go. (I’m also going to guess that most workplaces are not keen about handing out sick days so employees can visit a doctor.) It will be interesting to see if the average number of visits per year increases with the ACA in effect.

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For Literacy Day, the United Nations made an infographic looking at literacy statistics around the world. Education is listed again and again as one of the top ways to reduce poverty. Although the literacy rate has been increasing globally, it looks rather grim in some developing nations. If you’re one of the lucky 84% of the world that is literate, you should take the time to check it out.

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Most of us have seen the pictures of the riots from Ferguson, Missouri this past weekend. One of the most startling aspects of the riots (besides seeing the amount of destruction) is the way the police look in contrast to the protesters. It’s hard reconciling the fact that the authoritarian government looking sort are not military personnel at a check point in Egypt, but are the local cops who might pull you over on I-270 for speeding. Here’s an inforgraphic from the New York Times talking about how riot gear has changed in the past 50 years.

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