The graph is from the Wall Street Journal based on a study here.

Connecticut is off playing in its own league, probably due to the hedge fund industry being headquartered in Greenwich, CN.

By the way, the lack of economic dynamism in very expensive Hawaii is pointed out once again.

New Mexico’s lack of economic vigor always reminds me of The Simpson’s episode where 110 year old robber baron Montgomery Berns incredulously replies to Smithers’ announcement that he’s vacationing in New Mexico: “There’s a New Mexico?”

The low living standards of even affluent Californians jump out from this chart. If you use the old rule of thumb that you can afford a house that costs three times as much as your annual income, then a family at the 99th percentile in California, making $438,000 per year, can safely afford a house that costs $1.3 million. In Los Angeles, that gets you a very pleasant house, but hardly exceptional by the standards of the rest of America. For example, according to Zillow, here’s a house in the flatlands of Encino, a nice neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley, that is on the market for $1,350,000: four bedrooms, two baths, 2,860 sq. feet, 0.48 acres. (That’s a lot of acreage for L.A.: they squeeze in a pool and a tennis court. But you’re in the LAUSD, so the owner would probably pay private school tuition.)

(In contrast, is Texas where the the 99th percentile is almost as high income, $423,000, as California. Here’s a $1,295,000 listing on Zillow in Plano, TX in the DFW metroplex: 6 bedrooms, 7 baths, 6400 square feet on 1.2 acres. That’s living large. Although property taxes are probably staggering there.)

That’s what being at the bottom of the hated One Percent of Californians gets you in Los Angeles: a very pleasant life, but not exactly a private jet lifestyle. In Silicon Valley, it probably gets you 2,000 square feet of 1950s tract housing. If you are at the bottom of the One Percent for the whole United States, you can probably afford a two bedroom condo in Silicon Valley.

But the weather’s nice.

Anyway, this suggests why I’m always puzzled by all the organized hate directed at The One Percent. Didn’t anybody among the organizers ever get out a calculator and discover that One Percent of the population is over 3 million people? Don’t most people personally know, and probably admire, at least one person in The One Percent?

Wouldn’t some alliterative phrase like The Top Ten Thousand have been smarter from a political demonization standpoint?