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Claude Charts

I had an interesting chat with a friend this weekend about household spending by category. He went into Claude and immediately produced a compelling visualization and report (screenshot below): https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/c4ebed8b-96f3-4974-8057-7ffca3acc3d7. Claude 1

My Attempt

I tried to produce something on my corporate Claude account, but it was notably less compelling: https://claude.ai/artifacts/27d13513-6914-4348-9c6d-1defc97b8e91. It's embedded below as well:

130 Years of US Household Spending

Share of total annual expenditures · BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey, 1901–2024Dashed lines show major historical events

Food: 42.5% → 12.9%
The biggest shift of the century — mass agriculture and supply chains slashed food's share of the budget.
Housing: 23% → 33%
Despite seeming higher, most of the rise reflects spending less on other basics, not housing becoming unaffordable in absolute terms.
Transportation: 0% → 17%
Essentially a new category. Cars went from nonexistent to consuming 1 in 6 dollars spent.
Healthcare: ~0% → 8%
Modern medicine, insurance, and an aging population have made healthcare a major budget item since WWII.

Sources: BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey; BLS Report 991 "100 Years of U.S. Consumer Spending" (2006). Pre-2010 data from decennial/biennial surveys — years between are interpolated. Categories harmonized across eras; "Other" includes insurance, pensions, education, personal care, entertainment (pre-1950), and miscellaneous.

Takeaways

  • There's still a lot of randomness to how AI assistants produce charts.
  • Claude's defaults looked pretty great for my friend, but less so for me.