America Grew a Tail

But what about the other 3,100 counties? We didn't want to just turn the page. We wanted to show you how income has changed in every U.S. county over the past 55 years.

So today we have two new visualizations. Both are histograms. Instead of ranking counties, they sort them into $10,000 buckets and show how many land in each one. Press play. The buckets refill, year by year, from 1969 to 2024.

Every number is in 2024 dollars. We used the government's official inflation measure to convert each year. So a 1969 dollar and a 2024 dollar mean the same thing here. When you watch the mountain move right, that is real growth. Not inflation.

One note on what we are measuring. This is income per resident: a county's total income from every source, divided by everyone who lives there. It counts paychecks, investment income, and government benefits. It is an average, not a typical paycheck.

The first chart counts counties. Each county gets one vote. The 48-person county and the 9.7-million-person county each count as one. This chart answers a question about places: how have incomes changed across America?

The second chart counts people. Same data, same buckets. But now each county counts by how many people live there. Los Angeles County outvotes Loving, Texas about 200,000 to one. This chart answers a question about us: where do Americans actually sit?

Here are our quick takeaways:

So, America grew a tail. Why should I care?

You may be thinking this. I did this morning.

Intuitively, people know this tail has grown. Maybe you are seeing its formation for the first time, and that in itself is valuable. But there is still a lot of juice to squeeze from this lemon. To do that, we need to do what humans have done since the beginning of time. Tell stories.

So, 45 minutes before this hit your inbox, here is what I did. This is what I tend to do with data to bring it to life in my mind.

I looked at the unfavorable side of the curve and found a county I have driven through a lot: Jackson County, Ohio. Jackson is home to some of the best trail running in Ohio, so I love this area. But the people of Jackson are struggling. Income per resident was $45,475 in 2024, the 11th percentile among American counties. In 1969 it was $21,679. Their growth rate has been 1.36% a year, almost spot on with the average county in America. I can see the suffering when I drive through this most beautiful part of Ohio. I viscerally feel how difficult life must be there.

Next I looked up a county on the flip side of the curve: Williamson County, Tennessee. Williamson is absolutely booming, benefitting from the meteoric growth of Nashville (the "saturation and siphon" effect we wrote about a few months ago). Williamson's income per resident is $139,704. That is the 99th percentile. I have family down there, who have been in Williamson since it was a sleepy farming community. It feels like Boca Raton now. If you know, you know. Wealth just oozes from Williamson, seen in the flimsy micro mansions popping up all around the county. Since 1969, Williamson's inflation-adjusted income per resident has risen at double the rate of Jackson's.

Do this with areas you know. Just ask Claude: "Pull the per resident income in county AAA and county BBB in 1969 and 2024 from the BEA CAINC4 and use CUUR0000SA0 from the BLS to inflation-adjust the BEA numbers." Claude does this work in its sleep. It will spit out an answer in seconds. Then, like I did, immerse yourself in how the data FEELS.

Now consider this. We don't live in a vacuum anymore. Thanks to social media, everyone sees the lives of everyone else. The people of Jackson County see the people of Williamson County. They see the tail building wealth at two and three times the rate they are. And what do you expect them to do? Just think, oh well, good for them?

What do you do when you see someone else's curated comfortable life on socials? There is FOMO. There is longing and wanting and maybe even some anger and thinking, that's unfair. We are wired to think this way. It is a feature of being human.

Now do this repeatedly, for years. Rinse and repeat. Give control to algorithms that draw people into this wanting, and sell advertising based on it. It is a great business model, exploiting our desire to want what others have. Millions upon millions of people spending hours a day seeing into other people's good fortune, for years.

And that brings me to why this tail matters.

Look at where we are now as a country. At worst, you may be concerned about the sustainability of our democracy. At best, you are probably a bit concerned for your kid's future. But I doubt many people are thrilled with how divisive this has all gotten. So go back to our story. Why should we have expected anything different to come from this tail?

Back in the day we had Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous once a week. Today, social media is a 24x7 version of Lifestyles of Everyone Who Has It Better Off Than You. So not only have a lot of people truly gotten better off than the median American, as the data shows, but now we have addictive tech always ready and waiting to show us this.

And so here we are. As Childish Gambino says, "This is America." Whether you like it or not, this growing tail impacts you, your kids, and your grandkids. This is the cancer that underlies the many symptoms of dis-ease that arise every day in America.

So what will you do about this? Is shifting yourself out further into that oh so beautiful tail really worth it?

I can't answer that. Only you can. But I can tell you, that's some serious Data 4 Thought.