Blue State Inequality: Model For Unequal Incomes

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

When it comes to the 1 percenters versus the rest, as goes the nation so goes California. In some cases, more so.

The Golden State's wealthiest took in more than one-third of the total income gains in the past two decades. Almost everyone else - 80 percent - have seen their real incomes decline, according to a new report from the California Budget Project.

That puts California in the top tier of inequality, along with other blue states such as New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. And it has a wider income gap than the deep red state of Texas - and that of the United States as a whole, according to a separate Census Bureau report released last month.

Among the nation's major metropolitan areas, San Francisco ranks seventh in the income gap league, according to the report. Los Angeles is third, just behind New York and Miami.

Californians "are living in a time of unprecedented income inequality," said Alissa Anderson, deputy director of the project and author of the report. "Most of the income gains have gone to the wealthiest sliver of the population, which means that the benefits of economic growth have not been widely shared."

Just a reminder the next time "expert stock picker" Nancy Pelosi lectures you on inequality and the cruelty of living in a no-income-tax state with right to work laws. Why don't progressive care about the middle class?