Check out this report from Economic Policy Institute. (A hint? New York and Connecticut are the worst — the absolutely worst — for wealth and income inequality.)
(And this:)
The states in which all income growth between 2009 and 2012 accrued to the top 1 percent include Delaware, Florida, Missouri, South Carolina, North Carolina, Connecticut, Washington, Louisiana, California, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Idaho, Massachusetts, Colorado, New York, Rhode Island, and Nevada.
Dating Jesus 
Capitalism…gotta love it!
It’s…like…a law or something, I think.
I feel sorry for you that your inequality is not as awesome as ours.
I’m not sure what that means…unless you’re talking about where I live…then I’m really not sure what you mean.
I forgot a word. MORE COFFEEEEEE!
Aha!
Most of the money that owns Montana lives somewhere else…like Connecticut probably…or Switzerland.
Your poverty rates are lower than ours. Except for Supplemental Measure averages, which are about the same. Probably due to your minimum wage rates being higher.
We gotcha on unemployment rate, though. You guys need more fracking!
Our HUD homeless count is higher. (190 per 100,000 versus 125 for CT.) But Connecticut population is about 4 times larger and about 100 times denser than ours. so the visibility factor kinds evens that all out.
There is some rather warped comfort in knowing the majority of friends and neighbors one sees on the street here are in the same boat as you. Maybe not in steerage…but in the same boat.
I have lived here so long (going on 30 years) that I don’t know what it’s like to NOT live on top of people. This next week, we’re going out to count our homeless population. I’d love to see the numbers even lower. There’s certainly been a lot of effort to make that so. I want to live in a place where if we’re not all in the same boat, steerage at least offers sufficient and healthy food, affordable housing, and a shot at the Captain’s Table.
See what I did there? Extended your metaphor, because I’m awesome.
You be careful counting. That can get a bit risky where I live.
Agreement on what constitutes sufficient, healthy, and…particularly…affordable, is where we always end up tripping over ourselves.
No disagreement on awesome, though.
Thank you, my friend. I’ve been out with the outreach team before, and I’m going out with a total pro. I have every hope we who are volunteering will be contributing to the greater good.
As long as you come back in one piece.
Where I live, people volunteering for that kind of outreach go with armed guards.
Holy cow. We go armed with our smart mouths and our chirpy attitudes.
Out here, some people just don’t want to be counted..or reached. Transients and hobos mostly. Homeless by choice. We’ve had some serious problems with predators in that population. Murders and such…
It makes for an interesting ethical dilemma. If someone doesn’t want to be counted, you really can’t find them to count them, can you? And that makes the numbers you accumulate less than accurate, which means the policies you write based on those numbers could be flawed.
Are you still planning to do the “unsheltered” count? Are there still some refusing to come inside in this subzero weather? I’m hoping everyone is coming inside. I don’t know how they would survive out there in these temperatures.
I am. I don’t know that we will find any one, but I’m on the sheltered watch at South Park Inn Wed. night, and then on the unsheltered one in the wee hours of later that night. I don’t know how any one could withstand this weather, either.
Transient camps are not hard to find here. Some of them have been in the same general area since I was growing up here. But getting an accurate count of who’s who and what’s what can be frustrated by the ability to disappear…quickly…into the surrounding environment.
Transients also provide a handy stereotype to exploit by those opposed to furthering community support for the problem. The result is most of the community support goes to the working poor. That’s not a bad thing. But it can leave too many of the absolutely destitute…especially young people…particularly vulnerable.
Additionally…it’s essentially illegal to be homeless in my county. Being identified as such can get you a night in lockup, if you’re lucky, and a bus ticket to Spokane. With a personal escort to The Greyhound Center.
Ah. Is that because criminalizing poverty has worked so very well elsewhere? Assholes.
I’d like to see the effect of eliminating Fairfield, Westchester, Nassau, and Suffolk counties from the equation. NYC, I love it, but it has the gravitational effect of a black hole as far as wealth accumulation goes. Better yet, take Wall Street and its financial “wizards” out of the equation.
I wonder if someone has looked at, say CT without our Gold Coast.
It is stunning how extreme poverty can be such a short distance away from extreme wealth. Two opposite worlds, just minutes apart.
Related….Interesting that Washington D.C. is more wealthy than any of the states. What conclusions do we draw from that?
CT, in the ranking, comes after number 1 (real state), NJ. You would think the wealthiest Americans would, because they could, do more for the many who struggle to get by. The gap is troubling. http://www.forbes.com/pictures/fjle45imff/no-1-richest-state-washington-d-c/