As Americans tighten their belts due to SNAP cuts, escalating housing costs, and mass layoffs, the wealthiest individuals are experiencing unprecedented wealth gains. In the years ahead, we might even see our first trillionaire: Elon Musk.
TL;DR
- America's richest billionaires gained $698 billion, while typical households saw minimal gains.
- The wealthiest 10 amassed 833,631 times the income of average American households.
- Trump's tax reforms, job scarcity, and economic downturn are expected to widen the wealth gap.
- Inequality disproportionately affects women and people of color, with wealth gaps widening significantly.
A recent new report from Oxfam indicates that the ten wealthiest American billionaires collectively increased their net worths by $698 billion over the last twelve months.
The vast majority of the ultra-wealthy are tech executives capitalizing on the current boom, such as in tech and AI cofounder Oracle, Larry Ellison founder Amazon, and Jeff Bezos cofounders Google. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, and Dell's founder Michael Dell.
Over the last year, individuals on America's top 10 richest list saw an average increase of $69.8 billion, earning 833,631 times the income of a typical American household.
While Musk's defends his eye-watering $1 trillion pay package, the average U.S. Last year, the household's earnings were only $83,730, according to U.S. According to data. Demographic statistics.
Oxfam reports that 40% of American households are considered ‘poor.’
While billionaires are getting richer, Americans are scraping by on their measly paychecks.
More than 40% of the U.S. The report indicates that almost half of all children, along with a significant portion of the general population, fall into the category of poor or low income. Examining trends over the past few decades reveals an even more pronounced widening of the wealth gap. From 1989 through 2022, a substantial U.S. The wealthiest 1% of households saw their wealth increase 101 times more than the typical household.
In fact, the wealthiest 0.1% of Americans today own 12.6% of assets and 24% of the stock market. The lower half of the U.S. Holds a mere 1.1% stake in the exchange.
Mounting inequality has disproportionately affected women and people of color; the average household headed by a man saw its wealth increase four times more than the average household led by a woman. White households saw their wealth increase 7.2 times more than the average Black household, and 6.7 times more than the typical Hispanic/Latino home. And though they constitute a third of the U.S. Black and Hispanic/Latino households collectively possess only 5.8% of the nation's total wealth.
The report cautions that America's wealth disparity is projected to increase further, attributed to the Trump administration's One Big Beautiful Bill, job scarcity, and an impending recession.
America's wealth gap is widening, echoing the Gilded Age.
History seems to be repeating itself; the wealthiest 0.0001% control a greater share of wealth than in the Gilded Age, according to the report. Wealthy individuals have become king in the U.S. Are seeing new laws enacted by the current administration aimed at protecting their substantial assets.
“The Trump administration risks exponentially accelerating some of the worst trends of the past 45 years,” the Oxfam study notes, “having already overseen in less than one year a massively regressive tax reform, major Reductions in social welfare programs, and substantial reversals of employee protections.
President Trump passed his One Big Beautiful Bill this July, which entails reducing the tax bill of the top 0.1% of earners in the country. By 2027, the law is projected to reduce tax expenses for the extremely wealthy by $311,000, while simultaneously increasing the tax burden on the poorest Americans, those earning under $15,000 per year. Within the top 10 economies of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the U.S. Its tax and transfer system ranks second-to-last in its effectiveness against inequality. Within that group, America also exhibits the highest rate of relative poverty.
The United States boasts the highest number of billionaires globally, yet the typical American The average citizen isn't seeing any benefit from the enormous economic prosperity. Moody’s chief economist, Mark Zandi, told Fortune last month that lower-income households are “hanging on by their fingertips financially.” Cost of living is raging, high-paying job opportunities are scarce, and layoffs Are increasing. Adding to the turmoil, America is heading towards an economic downturn; and 22 U.S. Economies are contracting in various states are already, placing finances under significant strain.
The hold feels weaker since hiring has stopped. That's a situation you can endure for some time, but not indefinitely. If job cuts accelerate, that lower-middle-income demographic will be severely impacted, and they'll have no alternatives,” Zandi said. “They have debt: They have auto debt, they have student loan debt, they may, if they’re lucky, have a mortgage, but they’re gonna struggle, and their world is going to descend into recession pretty quickly.”