Who Is Wealthiest Per State & Why?

Recently Kevin Short of The Huffington Post published a fun article about the richest persons in each of the 50 US States (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/31/richest-person-in-each-state_n_5617993.html). It strikes me as good clean fun and flirting, as well as relatively interesting and newsworthy!

I’ll start with my home state Indiana:  Gayle Cook. Of course all Hoosiers have heard of this Bloomington, IN native who is worth 6.1 Billion.  Fortunately, she’s only the 241^st richest person in the world so she has room to grow. She and her husband, the late Bill Cook, founded a medical device supply company in their Bloomington apartment in 1963. Suffice it to say, the company has done well – worldwide.  While it’s not likely that Ms. Cook’s entire net worth is liquid, I doubt that she has any serious personal money woes or significant unmet needs which can be satisfied with cash or collateral. At 80 years of age I further suspect she is “quite well off” at least in money matters, though she is surely not without overall difficulties (http://www.forbes.com/profile/gayle-cook/). 

While Ms. Cook’s name didn’t automatically tip me off to the source of her wealth, some of the names of the richest people of other states are rather self-explanatory! For example, Washington; that would be the nation’s current number one, a guy named Bill Gates. I’ll consider it common knowledge that Mr. Gates’ picked up his pocket money from Microsoft Corp. one way or another. 

But I want to move to other states with interesting wealthiest-resident-names…

How about Wyoming and Christy Walton at 37.9 B? She appears to be doing better than Ms. Cook, but woefully worse than Mr. Gates of Washington. Still, I wonder if she shops at the family store, WAL-MART  ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christy_Walton)? Wait, Ms. Walton appears to have a stepson, Jim Walton, who ranks number one in Arkansas at a mere 35.7 B (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Walton). And alas, Ms. Walton may well also have a stepdaughter, Alice Walton, who appears to have the top spot in nearby Texas at just 35.3 B (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Walton)... Isn’t there often controversy in the news about the Wal-Mart Corp and employee benefits? Just pondering… flirting. Must be complicated?

Now guess at cash sources for the number one net-worth-folks in a few other states: Hank & Doug Meijer have MI with a combined 7.9 B. Meanwhile; next door in WI John Menard is holding honors at just 7.5 B; a Warren Buffett is leading Nebraska at an admirable sum of 63.1 B; Jacqueline Mars of Virginia must really like chocolate at 20 B. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_Mars) I had to check my guess…

Now, I invite you to go to the Huffington Post link and see if any other number ones ring a bell with you. In the meantime, let us all pull for Robert Gillum, number one in Alaska at 700 M., to make his first Bill… Does all this effect the way you feel about our country/economy etc.?

(Unless otherwise noted, all factual content is drawn from <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/31/richest-person-in-each-state_n_5617993.htm>l)