In December, Teton County, Wyoming, residents learned they were the wealthiest people in the country , making an average of $471,751 a year. That’s almost a half a million dollars a year for “every person living in Teton County in 2023 — regardless of age, health, employment status.”

At the county seat in Jackson, town council member and economic consultant Jonathan Schechter made the “wealthiest” calculation in his “cothrive” newsletter. He’d crunched the latest U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates from 3,244 counties, parishes, and boroughs nationwide.

Schechter’s analysis made a small group of us — social critics with more than 100 collective years of Jackson Hole living — consider our new status in what Schechter called “the wealthiest county in the wealthiest country in the

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