The 15 States Where Income Growth Went Only to the Rich
Since the end of the Great Recession in 2009, incomes in America have, on average, gone up. But in 15 of the states in our country, all of those gains have gone to the top 1%.
It’s not hard to understand that if all of the income growth since the depths of the recession is going to the very richest sliver of the population, then that income growth hardly matters at all in the real world where the other 99% of us live. This is the stark reality of economic inequality in action. A new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute examines state-by-state income growth from the end of the recession in 2009 through 2013, and finds that in a large chunk of U.S. states, the bottom 99% of earners saw none of the income gains in that period
In these 15 states, the gains went completely to the rich:
- Connecticut
- Florida
- Georgia
- Louisiana
- Maryland
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- Nevada
- New Jersey
- New York
- North Carolina
- South Carolina
- Virginia
- Washington
- Wyoming
Even worse, in ten of those states—Wyoming, Nevada, Washington, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Florida, Missouri, Georgia, and South Carolina—incomes for the top 1% grew by double digits, while incomes for the bottom 99% actually went down.
This chart, also from EPI, puts the national situation in perspective:
The class war is real, friends. And 99% of you ain’t winning.
