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Comment by manfredo | Hacker News Reader

Interestingly, the US States with the highest levels of inequality often have some of the most progressive taxation and government policies. New York and Connecticut at the top. Alaska, Utah, and Wyoming at the bottom: https://www.zippia.com/advice/states-highest-lowest-income-i...

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I haven't dug into your stats, but Alaska has the 46th smallest economy and Wyoming the 49th. They don't really have enough of an economy by US standards to have high wealth disparity.

New York is #3.

Connecticut is and exception at #23, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of it is finance commuters from Wall St. In New York.

While there are exceptions, that list seems to correlate pretty well with the list of states ranked by GDP.

While probably intentionally non committal, I think your post is still a bit misleading.

You are indeed correct that inequality is correlated with GDP. But interestingly, it's also correlated with median GDP per capita (Connecticut is #1 there iirc). Basically, it counters the assumption that "higher inequality == worse condition for the average folk". I saw a graph that plotted both together, I'll see if I can dig it up.

"Median GDP per capita?"

Do you mean median income?

In that case I think comparing Texas would be a good fit instead perhaps?

No sense adopting the progressive tax codes when inequality isn't a huge factor

Progressive taxation causes income inequality

Everywhere has poor people, but places with progressive taxation and gov policies have lots of rich people too.

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