The market map that wrote off 39 states

Dark investor-deck-style US choropleth titled “The investable America” showing 2024 median household income in three bins: 39 states under $95,000 in near-invisible dark slate labelled “not yet viable”, four states from $95,000–$99,999 in mid green labelled “pipeline”, and seven states at $100,000 and up in bright emerald labelled “launch markets”, beside the KPI “7 launch markets” and the kicker “78% of the map isn’t a market — yet” — Showing the misleading chart

The same 50 medians in quintile bins, ten states per color: the map becomes a smooth green gradient, and a dot strip below plots every state’s value with the deck’s bin edges overlaid in dashed red — its “not yet viable” bin spans $36,370 from Mississippi ($55,980) to Minnesota ($92,350), the national median of $83,730 falls inside it, and Connecticut misses the top color by $760 — Showing the misleading chart

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Bin 2024 median household income at $95k and $100k and a wealth platform’s expansion map paints seven emerald “launch markets” against 39 states of near-black “not yet viable.” Rebin the same 50 numbers into quintiles and the cliff dissolves into a smooth national gradient.

US Census Bureau, Median Household Income by State, 2024 (current dollars); via FRED, series MEHOINUS〈state〉A646N, 2024Added July 10, 2026

01The claim

Only seven states clear the bar for a wealth-management launch. The investable America is a thin coastal-and-mountain fringe — 78% of the map isn’t a market yet.

02The trick

Every median on the map is the Census Bureau’s; the only thing drawn after the data arrived is the legend. The three class breaks are wildly uneven on purpose: the bottom bin swallows a $36,370 span — Mississippi at $55,980 and Minnesota at $92,350 wear the identical color — while the two green bins split $18,900 between them, so the map renders a smooth continuum as a cliff with a border. The break placement does the editorial work: the “viability line” at $95,000 sits $11,270 above the national median household income ($83,730), so the typical American state fails by construction, and Connecticut misses the emerald tier by $760 — less than one part in a hundred of its $99,240 median — while sitting $43,260 above the bottom of the bin it shares with Mississippi. A paint trick finishes the job: “not yet viable” is colored a near-background slate, so 39 states don’t read as data at all — they read as empty. (This exhibit is our own demonstration, drawn in the house style of a market-expansion slide, from the Census Bureau’s published state medians rather than from any real firm’s deck.)

03The fix

Rebin the identical 50 numbers with even hands — here, quintiles, ten states per color — and the cliff dissolves into the familiar geography of American incomes: a gradient running from the South up through the Midwest to the Northeast corridor and the West Coast, with the top and bottom states barely 2× apart ($55,980 to $113,900). The redraw also puts every state on a number line with the deck’s breaks overlaid, which is where the gerrymander confesses: one bin spanning $36,370, another spanning $5,000, and a “viability line” placed just above the national median. The tell to look for is the legend’s arithmetic — when a choropleth’s bins are weirdly irregular, one color covers a huge range while others cover slivers, or a round-number threshold lands suspiciously close to a big cluster, the legend is the chart. Quantiles and equal intervals are choices too; the honest move is to show the breaks on the data’s distribution, not just the map.