America's Wealth Is Staggeringly Concentrated in the Northeast Corridor [MAPS]

[xchrom]

http://www.businessinsider.com/americas-wealth-is-staggeringly-concentrated-in-the-northeast-corridor-maps-2013-12

At the county level, America is a tremendously unequal place. The median household income in the poorest county (Wilcox County, Alabama) was $22,126 in 2012. In Falls Church, Virginia, where highly educated defense contractors and federal government workers cluster, the median income last year was $121,250, more than five times higher.

What's most startling, though, in new local income and poverty data released this week by the Census Bureau, is the way these opposing poles of poverty and wealth in America concentrate geographically. The Census map below shows median household income data from 2012 for every county in the country:



There are more than 3,000 counties in the U.S. Of the 75 with the highest incomes, 44 are located in the Northeast, including Maryland and Virginia. The corridor of metropolitan statistical areas that runs from Washington, D.C., through Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston includes 37 of these top-earning counties (where the median family takes home at least $75,000 a year). Zoom in to the region, and it shows a kind of wealth belt unmatched even on the West Coast.
Poverty is similarly concentrated in the American South. Seventy-nine percent of the poorest counties in the country (where the median family makes less than $35,437) are located in the South:



Read more: http://www.thewire.com/national/2013/12/americas-wealth-staggeringly-concentrated-northeast-corridor/356143/#ixzz2nYIlT7PH

[WinkyDink]

1. AKA: "America's Wealth Is Right Where It's Been Since The 17th Century." :-)

And I DO mean the 1600's!

[Donald Ian Rankin]

2. I'm struck by how prosperous Wyoming is.

Is it because the population is so low that income from natural resources and tourism is only split a few ways, or something?

[annabanana]

3. or a rich people playground..

(concentrated in West. of state)

[Initech]

13. Lots of rich people own ranches.

George W. Dumbass made it look cool to the obscenely wealthy during his administration:

[Egalitarian Thug]

14. Mostly, it demonstrates the weakness of using statistics.

They are a wonderful tool, but they are limited by the skill of those who use them and they are not necessarily the right tool for every job.

Low population combined with dramatic inequity, it's the old Bill Gates walks into the stadium and everybody becomes a millionaire.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

17. I disagree - statistics are the only game in town.

It's just that it's important not ti assume a statistic says something it doesn't.

[Egalitarian Thug]

21. I didn't say they were not useful, nor that they shouldn't be used.

[Tanuki]

19. The statistic reported is median income and not mean income,

and would thus be less skewed by a small number of extremely wealthy people.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

29. But has its own set of flaws.

The median wealth of a society with n paupers and n+1 ordinary Joes will be unchanged if each and every one of the paupers wins the lottery and becomes a millionaire overnight.

[KurtNYC]

23. I had a job where I would grind out statistics and probabilities

and I would cringe at how the other departments wanted to use them. I was also forbidden from advancing any conclusions about how to apply the numbers but people easily reach the wrong conclusions when they don't understand what's in (and what's not in) the number, or why an average can be worse than worthless, it can be downright destructive to understanding or approaching a problem pragmatically.

Segmentation works much better than averages. Segmentation gets a group to agree 'okay we should design 70% of our cars for single people and another 30% for families' -- NOT 'we should make a car that holds 2.71 people' which is what averages get you.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

35. That's twice as many degrees of freedom.

If you have information about everyone, you have as many degrees of freedom as you have people. That's too many to understand or use.

Averages like the mean or the medium throw nearly all that information away, and give you a single degree of freedom. That's very easy to understand, but arguably it's not enough information.

Segmentation, like you describe, is a few degrees of freedom - more information than in a single-number average, and hence potentially more use but potentially harder to understand (although in the case you describe, clearly a better choice).

[TransitJohn]

15. Teton County is a billionaires playground

The saying goes, the billionaires are pushing the millionaires out of Jackson and down to Pinedale, it's kind of true. The IMF and World Bank have their meetings there. As for Campbell County in the northeast of the state, it produces about 40% of all coal that the United States produces, and the mines pay well. Wyoming is the energy capital of the country, in a lot of ways. 8th in oil production, 3rd in natural gas production, 1st in coal production by a lot, 1st in uranium, 15th or so in wind....it's treated like the third world by the rest of the country.

[AngryAmish]

32. Look at the frack-patch of North Dakota

[newblewtoo]

4. Just throwing this out there

A married couple who were friends moved to the DC area five years before retiring. One was a GS12, the other a GM13, when they retired, each over 35 years total Federal service. As soon as they retired they were back in New Hampshire where they live very comfortably. They get 70% of their pay and the same Cadillac Federal Health Plan Congress has. He was 58 and she was 60 when they retired. I believe they clear over 170K a year <RETIRED> Sweet or what?

[Lizzie Poppet]

5. Look at the high poverty rates in the Four Corners area.

The point at which Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado meet, that is. Much of that depressingly violet area is the "Big Rez," the enormous Navajo reservation. I suspect you'd find that a lot of the smaller high-poverty squares correspond to Indian reservations, too. Native Americans are still being fucked over...

[hunter]

6. Measuring by median household income is misleading in my county.

I'm guessing the curve has two peaks. There are the people who have nothing, that's one peak, and the people who have everything, that's another peak.

The middle sags between those peaks.

It's not like we don't have the computing power these days to do a proper statistical analysis; there's no army of clerks sitting in their cubicles calculating the averages and plotting them on a big map as there might have been in FDR's time.

Continuing to chart income this way obfuscates some of the deeper, fundamental flaws of our economic system.

An economy where the wealthy get wealthier as others struggle for food, safe shelter, higher education, and appropriate medical care is a broken economy. Our economy is broken. These maps are alarming, but the actual situation is worse.

Raising the minimum wage and restoring steeply progressive taxation would be a first step toward improving the situation. Beyond that, free health care for all, free education from early childhood to graduate school, and a generous welfare and public retirement system would end poverty.

People will complain that such a system would reduce "productivity" and encourage laziness, but that's a lie. The devil does not find work in idle hands, rather the devil crushes souls in his sweatshops.

[geek tragedy]

7. Makes sense--those areas are the most expensive so wages need to be higher plus

urban areas like NYC and DC have a lot more to offer educated professionals, including cultural opportunities as well as jobs.

No one grows up in Boston or San Francisco and dreams of making the big time in Tuscaloosa or Oklahoma City.

[Atman]

34. Bingo.

Gosh, I can't wait to leave Connecticut, with my easy access to both Boston and NYC, two of the major cultural hubs in the world, to move to the sand hills of Nebraska.

[Dawson Leery]

8. kick

[magical thyme]

9. just a nit, but Virginia is not in the Northeast, nor is Maryland

the midatlantic region is not the northeast. I don't think you really reach the northeast until you hit New England.

[Gormy Cuss]

31. The Northeast is generally defined as New England +NY, PA, and NJ.

However, some call everything from the DC area north the Northeastern states (not "the Northeast.&quot


There's no ambiguity over New England though.

[stevenleser]

10. Pet Peeve: title says wealth, body talks about income.

Probably doesnt alter the results much but its something to watch for as rw'ers do this to try to muddy the waters.

It's also not quite right to compare income without taking into account cost of living.

A family earning $40K a year in Alabama or Mississippi probably compares favorably to a family earning $70K a year in the NYC metro area.

Some of this is simply urban vs rural and is common to countries around the world. People in the urban centers earn more than those in the sticks.

[KurtNYC]

25. Good point. I wonder how different the map would look if it showed

how little real wealth is left in this country. Characterizing people who live from one check to the next and have debts as having some kind of "wealth" is an outright lie.

[stevenleser]

26. I have a link that shows that somewhere. It's staggering. I'll check it out.

there is a website where you can drill down into the neighborhood and down to the individual block. There really are very few wealthy people.

[DonCoquixote]

27. That is changing though

My Florida, case in point. It USED to be that you could afford a 2 or 3 bedroom house for under 100K, something unthinkable in NYC, but now, the cost of living (especially food) went up to the point where that savings evaporated, especially when combined with the typically low Dixie wage.

[rrneck]

11. ...

[JaneyVee]

12. We (NorthEast) still have unions.

[TransitJohn]

16. Well, that's where the government that doles out our money is

so the people who live there reap the largesse of the American taxpayers.

[Auntie Bush]

18. All those Southern states that vote ReThug is astounding.

They must all listen to Rush, FOX and send each other hate Obama emails. Fools!

[reformist2]

22. Capitalism has never rewarded farming, rural life in general.

I hate to say it, but the results are hardly surprising. Is it right or wrong? That's the question.

[DonCoquixote]

28. Farmers tend to reward captialists well

especially when voting. If Dixie did nto consistently vote to put in people who promised them they could get rich and screw their neightbor over, this country would be different.

[Rex]

24. They've kept it there since the beginning.

Wall Street, D.C. is where the power/money resides in this country.

[FarCenter]

30. You need to adjust for the cost of living

For example, a one-bedroom apartment that would be about $750 in Raleigh/Durham would be $1500 per month in Boston.

The Northeast Corridor has high median incomes, but it also has high cost of living. Housing and utilities are especially high. Transportation is also high -- where else do you find $15 car tolls on bridges?

[Jesus Malverde]

33. Gives me thought for a map.

Which universities produce the most national leaders. I suspect the northeast is even more over represented.

Very cool maps. Strange the less populated east of northeast nevada is such high earner...