Jensen Huang of Nvidia speaks about the future of artificial intelligence and its effect on energy consumption and production at the Bipartisan Policy Center on September 27, 2024 in Washington, DC.
'Unsettling New Milestone': Top 12 US Billionaires Now Control $2 Trillion in Wealth
"The oligarchic dozen is richer than ever, and they are endowed with extreme material power that can be used to pursue narrow political interests at the expense of democratic majorities," according to the author of a new analysis.
Just 12 U.S. billionaires now have a collective net worth of over $2 trillion—a figure that amounts to a little less than a third of total federal spending in 2023—according to an analysis out Tuesday from Inequality.org, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).
The $2 trillion number is also twice the amount of wealth that the top 12 US billionaires held in 2020, according to researchers at IPS, a progressive organization.
The full list of 12 billionaires includes Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Steve Ballmer, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jim Walton, Rob Walton, and Jensen Huang.
"This is an unsettling new milestone for wealth concentration in the United States. The oligarchic dozen is richer than ever, and they are endowed with extreme material power that can be used to pursue narrow political interests at the expense of democratic majorities," wrote the author of the analysis, Omar Ocampo, a researcher at IPS.
New to the "oligarchic dozen" is Jensen Huang, the co-founder and CEO of the tech company Nvidia. Nvidia, which became the most valuable publicly traded company this year, has seen its profits jump thanks to the world's ravenous appetite for the artificial intelligence chips that the firm produces. According to the analysis, Huang's personal wealth "has skyrocketed from $4.7 billion in 2020 to $122.4 billion—a mind-boggling 2,504 percent increase—over the last four years."
Each of the billionaires on the list "owns or is a controlling shareholder of a business that is investing billions of dollars in artificial intelligence," according to Ocampo, which raises concerns about their respective carbon footprints.
Fueling AI is energy intensive, and AI data centers in the U.S. are largely powered by fossil fuels, meaning their proliferation poses a threat to the environment and a transition to a green economy.
Ocampo also discusses the political reach of the billionaires on the list. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, who respectively own X and The Washington Post, "have both purchased large media platforms, which has granted them the ability to set the terms of public debate with the hopes of influencing public opinion in their favor."
Musk specifically has established himself as a major power broker within the GOP. The billionaire spent hundreds of millions helping to re-elect Donald Trump and is now poised to play a major role in the president-elect's administration, helping oversee a new advisory committee tasked with slashing government spending.
As of early December, Trump had tapped an "unprecedented" total of seven reported billionaires for key positions in his administration, according to a separate piece of analysis by Inequality.org.
"We see the effects of this growing concentration of wealth and economic inequality everywhere—plutocratic influence on our politics, wealth transfers from the bottom to the top, and the acceleration of climate breakdown," Ocampo wrote on Tuesday.
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Just 12 U.S. billionaires now have a collective net worth of over $2 trillion—a figure that amounts to a little less than a third of total federal spending in 2023—according to an analysis out Tuesday from Inequality.org, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).
The $2 trillion number is also twice the amount of wealth that the top 12 US billionaires held in 2020, according to researchers at IPS, a progressive organization.
The full list of 12 billionaires includes Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Steve Ballmer, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jim Walton, Rob Walton, and Jensen Huang.
"This is an unsettling new milestone for wealth concentration in the United States. The oligarchic dozen is richer than ever, and they are endowed with extreme material power that can be used to pursue narrow political interests at the expense of democratic majorities," wrote the author of the analysis, Omar Ocampo, a researcher at IPS.
New to the "oligarchic dozen" is Jensen Huang, the co-founder and CEO of the tech company Nvidia. Nvidia, which became the most valuable publicly traded company this year, has seen its profits jump thanks to the world's ravenous appetite for the artificial intelligence chips that the firm produces. According to the analysis, Huang's personal wealth "has skyrocketed from $4.7 billion in 2020 to $122.4 billion—a mind-boggling 2,504 percent increase—over the last four years."
Each of the billionaires on the list "owns or is a controlling shareholder of a business that is investing billions of dollars in artificial intelligence," according to Ocampo, which raises concerns about their respective carbon footprints.
Fueling AI is energy intensive, and AI data centers in the U.S. are largely powered by fossil fuels, meaning their proliferation poses a threat to the environment and a transition to a green economy.
Ocampo also discusses the political reach of the billionaires on the list. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, who respectively own X and The Washington Post, "have both purchased large media platforms, which has granted them the ability to set the terms of public debate with the hopes of influencing public opinion in their favor."
Musk specifically has established himself as a major power broker within the GOP. The billionaire spent hundreds of millions helping to re-elect Donald Trump and is now poised to play a major role in the president-elect's administration, helping oversee a new advisory committee tasked with slashing government spending.
As of early December, Trump had tapped an "unprecedented" total of seven reported billionaires for key positions in his administration, according to a separate piece of analysis by Inequality.org.
"We see the effects of this growing concentration of wealth and economic inequality everywhere—plutocratic influence on our politics, wealth transfers from the bottom to the top, and the acceleration of climate breakdown," Ocampo wrote on Tuesday.
- "I Don't Think Billionaires Should Exist": Sanders Proposes Wealth Tax to Slash Fortunes of Ultra-Rich ›
- 'Disgusting': Global 1% Captured $42 Trillion in New Wealth Over Past Decade ›
- Wealth of the Top 1% in US Hits All-Time High of $45 Trillion ›
- World's 500 Richest People Gained $1.2 Trillion in Wealth in 2019: Analysis ›
- Global Wealth Tax Could Raise $2.1 Trillion Annually for Climate Action and More ›
- Watchdog Says Trump-Backed AI Data Center Push 'Raises Massive Antitrust Concerns' | Common Dreams ›
Just 12 U.S. billionaires now have a collective net worth of over $2 trillion—a figure that amounts to a little less than a third of total federal spending in 2023—according to an analysis out Tuesday from Inequality.org, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).
The $2 trillion number is also twice the amount of wealth that the top 12 US billionaires held in 2020, according to researchers at IPS, a progressive organization.
The full list of 12 billionaires includes Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Steve Ballmer, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jim Walton, Rob Walton, and Jensen Huang.
"This is an unsettling new milestone for wealth concentration in the United States. The oligarchic dozen is richer than ever, and they are endowed with extreme material power that can be used to pursue narrow political interests at the expense of democratic majorities," wrote the author of the analysis, Omar Ocampo, a researcher at IPS.
New to the "oligarchic dozen" is Jensen Huang, the co-founder and CEO of the tech company Nvidia. Nvidia, which became the most valuable publicly traded company this year, has seen its profits jump thanks to the world's ravenous appetite for the artificial intelligence chips that the firm produces. According to the analysis, Huang's personal wealth "has skyrocketed from $4.7 billion in 2020 to $122.4 billion—a mind-boggling 2,504 percent increase—over the last four years."
Each of the billionaires on the list "owns or is a controlling shareholder of a business that is investing billions of dollars in artificial intelligence," according to Ocampo, which raises concerns about their respective carbon footprints.
Fueling AI is energy intensive, and AI data centers in the U.S. are largely powered by fossil fuels, meaning their proliferation poses a threat to the environment and a transition to a green economy.
Ocampo also discusses the political reach of the billionaires on the list. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, who respectively own X and The Washington Post, "have both purchased large media platforms, which has granted them the ability to set the terms of public debate with the hopes of influencing public opinion in their favor."
Musk specifically has established himself as a major power broker within the GOP. The billionaire spent hundreds of millions helping to re-elect Donald Trump and is now poised to play a major role in the president-elect's administration, helping oversee a new advisory committee tasked with slashing government spending.
As of early December, Trump had tapped an "unprecedented" total of seven reported billionaires for key positions in his administration, according to a separate piece of analysis by Inequality.org.
"We see the effects of this growing concentration of wealth and economic inequality everywhere—plutocratic influence on our politics, wealth transfers from the bottom to the top, and the acceleration of climate breakdown," Ocampo wrote on Tuesday.
- "I Don't Think Billionaires Should Exist": Sanders Proposes Wealth Tax to Slash Fortunes of Ultra-Rich ›
- 'Disgusting': Global 1% Captured $42 Trillion in New Wealth Over Past Decade ›
- Wealth of the Top 1% in US Hits All-Time High of $45 Trillion ›
- World's 500 Richest People Gained $1.2 Trillion in Wealth in 2019: Analysis ›
- Global Wealth Tax Could Raise $2.1 Trillion Annually for Climate Action and More ›
- Watchdog Says Trump-Backed AI Data Center Push 'Raises Massive Antitrust Concerns' | Common Dreams ›