Sometimes I think that governments go out of their way to try and confuse people. Case in point, the pie charts the New Brunswick government have been using widely to show people where the money comes to pay for government services.
Now, the folks up at ‘Communications New Brunswick’ know full well the rules of charting. If ‘other’ is the largest component of a pie chart, you have a serious problem. There must be a better way to show the data than that.
Are they trying to say that you can’t group any revenue buckets in that 28.4% to more than 2.5% (the smallest category). When I see this chart, I think they are purposely throwing a bunch of revenue sources in that 28.4% to try and hide something (maybe that’s just my skeptical nature). I think they are trying to hide the fact that there are more federal funds in the 28.4% and they don’t want NBers to realize just how dependant we are on the tax dollars generated in other provinces.