If you must label people...

The chart tweeted out by Oxford Economics is made for a Junk Charts post.Let's address the visual design in a future post. I’d like to focus instead on analyzing the analysis.Let’s take a tour of this scatter plot.The two variables being plotted are the share of 65+ population, and the share of “high-income” households. Each dot is an American city ("metro area").The dot has a size dimension, which maps to the total nominal (i.e. non inflation adjusted) spending in billions of US dollars.The 65+ proportions range from 12% to 23% while the high-income proportions span 25% to 70%.Ignoring the embellishments, and studying the x-y correlation, we find a negative correlation: cities with a higher proportion of 65+ tend to have a lower proportion of high-income households.Notice the two potential "leverage" points on the right side, two cities where the majority of households are classified as high income. They are San Francisco and San Jose, at the heart of Silicon Valley.The negative…