Rich state, poor state, red state, blue state: What's the matter with Connecticut?

Chris comments:

The reason I [Chris] suggested looking at income inequality was the thought that all the extreme wealth that has been created in places like Greenwich and Stamford might skew an aggregate income value for Connecticut. I'm not sure how well Gini would pick up on this. NJ and MA are CT's closest neighbour on the slope/int/avg income plots, two other states with a relatively large percentage of extreme high net worth individuals. A kernel density plot of Gini for all states (from http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/state/state4.html) site paints a very complicated picture of this country. Even more discomforting is the progression of these values over time. It's nice to see cognitive bias theories making their way into work outside psych and econ.

You may also look at secularism. McCarthy, Poole and Rosenthal find that the relationship between income and voting is much stronger for religious voters than for secular voters.

I wish someone would publish a math or stats textbook with a picture that illustrates the point as well as your graph does. I think the productivity of math education would jump dramatically. My math advisor was adamant that you didn't really understand the math until you could
draw a picture.