[gruez]

>Some people see those charts and immediately recognize something they already knew

In other words, you know it's not trying to prove something, but rather reaffirm what some people already believe? I'm not sure that's any better. If anything that's worse, because you're knowingly engaging in lowering the quality of conversation on this forum.

>It's not as though there are that many links in this whole thread.

But why add a random site that does nothing but contribute to the noise?

>I appreciate anyone with the stones to counter an argument by data with an argument by xkcd.

The onus is on the person making the claim to prove it, not on the respondent to disprove it. If all you're presenting is a bunch of charts with arrows on them, I don't see why I have to debunk each individual chart[1]. It suffices to show that the argumentation style is flawed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

[jessaustin]

I don't consider the St Louis Fed to be "a random site", but perhaps you have some sort of special term for why citing government economists is also out-of-bounds. It almost seems as if you prefer to police rhetoric rather than actually engage with the argument.