Dennis RomeroNo big surprise here.
Yet another report has found that California is America's wealthiest state. In this case, researcher firm Wealth-X, with the help of big bank UBS, concluded that the Golden State is home to more “ultra high net worth” individuals than any other state in the union.
What's bizarre, of course, is that California is also the poorest state in America, according to the fairly recent U.S. Census supplemental poverty measure.
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The U.S. Census found that, when accounting for cost of living (which includes our astronomical home prices and rents), poverty is highest in the Golden State. By that supplemental measure nearly 1 in 4 of us (23.8 percent) are poor.
Yet, as the Wealth-X/UBS survey found, at the same time there are 13,445 ultra high net worth people—worth $30 million or more—in California.
Yeah, this is turning into a banana Republic, a place of gross wealth and survival-mode despair, with not much in between.
According to the Wealth-X “Special Report on America’s Ultra Wealthy Population,” San Francisco's 5,460 super rich people outnumber L.A.'s 5,135.
Credit: Wealth-X
New York's 8,655 outdoes either city, but New York state (with 9,530 ultra-wealthy people) ranks second to California, according to the survey.
According to Wealth-X:
California and New York added 865 and 585 UHNW individuals respectively to their populations in 2014, the largest increase in UHNW population size among US states.
The rich are getting richer. The poor—not so much.
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