[...] Data show that the majority came from financial investments, rather than wages or salaries people take home from a typical 9-to-5 job. It was not always this way. During the early and mid-twentieth century, income from investments in Teton County mirrored that of the rest of the United States. But come the 1980s, investment income began to climb, making up 30 percent of all income in the area. It accelerated further, hitting the 40 percent mark in the 1990s, and still even further in the 2000s, when investment income made up more than half of all income in 2004.

Unrelenting, income from finance refused to slow. Surging further, in 2015, nearly 8 out of every 10 dollars of income made here was coming not from traditional wages or salary, but from financial interest and dividends. Put in real terms, in 1970, only $52 million in annual income came from investments, but by 2015, this number grew to $3.4 billion—an increase to the tune of 6,500 percent. These local numbers are astounding, yet they fit within data on national and global trends, where the finance, banking, and investment industry has created more billionaires than any other industry. In other words, we see skyrocketing income levels in this community because people moving in are leveraging wealth they have already made to create more.