Comment by nopehnnope

The disparity is much greater among EU countries. The average Bulgarian income, for example, is well below bare survival income in Western Europe. US geographic disparities are much smaller, and less geographic than racial (which then bears out geographically through different demographic mixes). Also, for the first 150 years of existence, the US was not a federal welfare state. The federal government was even limited to taxing states at an equal per capita rate until after the 16th amendment, ratified in 1909.