In Wisconsin, the top 1 percent made, on average, 19 times the average annual income of $48,000 that the remaining 99 percent of residents made, according to a new report released from the Wisconsin Budget Project and the Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS) in Madison. Wisconsin ranked 33rd among U.S. states in the ratio of the top 1% of income to the remaining 99% of income. The average income of the top .01% in Wisconsin was 399 times the average income of the bottom 99% of Wisconsin
A new report titled “Pulling Apart 2017” shows how in the last 40 years, Wisconsin’s richest residents have experienced dramatic increases in income, yet the rest of the state’s residents have experienced little or no income growth.
The widening chasm between the very highest earners and everyone else poses hardships for Wisconsin’s families, businesses, and communities, the report states. Families can’t thrive when income growth is nearly non-existent for everyone except those at the top, and businesses need a strong middle class bolstered by broad-based income growth to generate customers. Wisconsin communities pay the price if too many families and businesses fail to prosper
The report concludes that there is no magic bullet to rectify the growth in inequality in our state — any more than there was a single cause. Many of the underlying trends causing the changes in the economic landscape are national and are related to broader changes in education, technology, and trade. Nevertheless, the report concludes, there are a number of steps we can take at both the state and federal level to keep income inequality from growing including building the skills and education of Wisconsin’s workforce, raising the minimum wage, supporting workers and making sure they have affordable access to health care, and making taxes more equal across income groups.
