TETON COUNTY, WYOMING HAS THE WORST, SHOCKING WEALTH INEQUALITY IN AMERICA
I’ve been talking (and thinking) about increasing wealth inequality for years now. As a kid growing up in New York City in the 80’s, there were still quite a number of single income families that did just fine. Fine, meaning these families had a stable home, could afford medical expenses, send their kids to college, AND still have savings accounts. But in NYC, most families can barely make ends meet with both parents working full-time. And paying for college? Affordable medical care expenses? Savings? Not so much, not anymore. Yes, there are plenty of people with a ton of disposable income there and they do just fine. But the gap in wealth is stunning. So with that metric, it’s pretty shocking to know that Teton County, Wyoming, has the largest wealth gap in America.
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THE PRICE OF AN AVERAGE SINGLE FAMILY HOME IS A STAGGERING $7 MILLION
And shocking is the word. A single resident in the county’s top 1% makes roughly $35 million a year. That’s nice. But that income is 221 times more than any resident in the rest of the 99%. That’s essentially an entire county as allegory to CEOs compared to employees. And as for the cost of living, the cost of an average (AVERAGE!) single family home is…… $7 million. Hey, that’s not so bad if your’e the 1% in Teton County, is it? It’s just 20% of a single year’s income! But if you only make $160,000 a year, or 1/221 of the average 1% resident, an average home is way, way out of reach. And yes, I’m totally aware that $160,000 a year is a nice household income. Or it was, anyway.
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TAX CUTS, DOUBLED TAX-FREE INHERITANCES GIVES MADE TETON COUNTY POSSIBLE
This increase in wealth inequality is happening everywhere in America, and it’s only going to get worse. So how did we get here? Well, only 8 years ago America had about 600 billionaires. But by the end of 2025, that number jumped by half to roughly 900. Maybe even over 1,000! And even better for them, their wealth grew by 120% in those years. Elon Musk’s wealth increased by 2,100%. Some of that new, increased wealth and number of billionaires is because of the tech boom. But the 2017 tax law that reduced the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% is a big part of it. Well, and how that same tax law DOUBLED tax-free inheritance. That’s certainly one real way to increase wealth inequality generation to generation. And as of now, Teton County, Wyoming is the ultimate result.
So far.
