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inequality
Supercharged by Trump-GOP Tax Cuts, US Billionaire Wealth Surges Past $9 Trillion for First Time
"This broken political and economic system takes from the vast majority of Americans and consolidates wealth in the hands of a privileged few. It cannot stand."
Jun 16, 2026
The collective wealth of US billionaires reached a record $9.24 trillion this month—an increase of around $2.2 trillion compared to the same time last year—while millions of Americans struggled to afford groceries, healthcare, and other basic necessities as inflation driven by President Donald Trump's illegal Iran war eroded their wages.
Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) published an analysis Tuesday detailing the explosion of billionaire wealth and noting that "over the last 12 months, US GDP (unadjusted for inflation) rose just 6%, meaning this wealth expansion is not trickling down to broad-based prosperity." AFT's billionaire wealth total includes the net worth of Elon Musk, who reached trillionaire status last week with the public debut of his rocket company, SpaceX.
According to AFT's analysis of Forbes data, Musk's wealth has grown by nearly 205%—roughly $863 billion—over the past year. Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, is the second-wealthiest billionaire in the US, with a net worth of roughly $301 billion—up 118% compared to last year.
In addition to the growing chasm between the richest Americans and everyone else, AFT observed that wealth is increasingly concentrated at the very top even among the wealthiest, whose fortunes are largely tied up in stock appreciation that is not taxed unless shares are sold.
"America’s 15 centi-billionaires and now one trillionaire alone make up 43% of all billionaire wealth—an astounding $4 trillion—and their wealth is growing over twice as fast as fellow billionaires in the past year," the group noted. "Just these top 16 billionaires hold more wealth today than every US billionaire combined in September of 2020, less than six years ago."
AFT attributed skyrocketing billionaire wealth in part to tax cuts that Trump and congressional Republicans showered on the ultra-wealthy in 2017 and again in 2025.
"Nearly halfway into Trump’s second administration’s second year in office, with GOP majorities in the House and Senate, the ultra-wealthy and billionaires have been rewarded with massive tax giveaways and policies funded with cuts to affordability programs that has resulted in millions losing access to healthcare and food," David Kass, ATF's executive director, said in a statement.
"This broken political and economic system takes from the vast majority of Americans and consolidates wealth in the hands of a privileged few," Kass added. "It cannot stand.”
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In 'Grotesque Billionaire Bonanza,' 41 Energy Tycoons Saw Fortunes Grow by $23.5 Billion Since Trump Launched Iran War
“Conflict devastates countries and costs countless lives, yet for some it is extraordinarily profitable,” said the executive director of Oxfam International.
Jun 15, 2026
While much of the world is holding out hope that the US-Israeli war against Iran may finally be reaching an end amid news of a ceasefire agreement, the billionaire owners of some of the world's largest energy companies may not be so thrilled.
A handful of just 41 energy industry barons in Group of Seven (G7) countries collectively increased their wealth by $23.5 billion since the war was launched in late February, according to a report released by Oxfam International on Monday, as the leaders of the world's largest industrialized economies meet in France this week.
The oil shocks resulting from the war have caused fuel prices to spike dramatically, rippling inflation throughout the global economy and straining the pocketbooks of ordinary people around the world. One April report by the United Nations Development Program projected that, as a result of the conflict, an additional 32 million people would be pushed into poverty by the end of the year.
But between March 1 and May 18, owners of the largest oil and energy companies in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the US, and the UK were adding $300 million on average per day to their collective wealth, Oxfam found through an analysis of Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaire List.
PRESS RELEASE: G7 energy billionaires pocket $300 million a day since start of unlawful US and Israel war against Iran.
This is equivalent to about $1,000 in the time it takes to blink.
👀https://t.co/UVGHF4a3Tk pic.twitter.com/szSGASCAX8
— Oxfam International Media Team (@newsfromoxfam) June 15, 2026
“Conflict devastates countries and costs countless lives, yet for some it is extraordinarily profitable,” said Oxfam International's executive director Amitabh Behar. “This is a brutal system that redistributes wealth upwards—from workers to shareholders, from the poorest to the richest, from those with the least power to those who already have far too much of it. While families are skipping meals and governments slash life-saving aid, we are witnessing a grotesque billionaire bonanza.”
While their accumulation of wealth cannot solely be attributed to the war, Oxfam noted that the Big Six oil companies—Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Exxon, and TotalEnergies—are projected to grow their profits this year by 80% above the pre-war forecast, while the average large G7 company in the sample is projected to see just 8% growth.
Global billionaires saw their wealth increase on average by about 0.42% between March and mid-May. During the same period, G7 billionaires in the energy industry grew their riches by 9%, while those in oil and gas specifically became nearly 11% richer.
Oxfam notes that the Iran War has only widened the chasm between the rich and poor that was already gaping, in no small part thanks to nations in the G7.
While billionaire wealth has surged by nearly $10 trillion since 2020, G7 nations, mostly the US under President Donald Trump, have reduced aid to the poorest nations by $48 billion—equivalent to what billionaires in G7 countries accumulated for themselves in just nine days.
Meanwhile, since 2019, the last time France chaired a G7 summit, Oxfam estimated that 44 people per minute have come to be in need of humanitarian aid, based on 2025 data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
.@Oxfam campaigners posing as #G7 leaders stand around a trash can overflowing with discarded files. The labels read: “gender inequality,” “climate,” and “tax the rich” —critical global issues scrubbed from the agenda to secure President Trump’s attendance at the G7 summit.@AP pic.twitter.com/aE7HkMvKFl
— Oxfam International Media Team (@newsfromoxfam) June 15, 2026
Behar said that in order to secure the participation of the US in this week’s summit, French President Emmanuel Macron has chosen to table any discussions that might offend Trump—including the devastating cost of his war in Iran, Israel’s US-backed wars in Gaza and Lebanon, and anything to do with the climate crisis, which Trump has referred to as "a scam."
"Rather than defending collective governance, Macron and his peers are accommodating its destruction. This will have consequences measured in lives," he said.
Oxfam called for the "G6"—all the Group of Seven member countries, excluding the US—to create a comprehensive plan to protect people from the economic turmoil caused by the war and other spiraling global crises.
“The G6 can’t plead powerlessness,” Behar added. “They can cancel debt. They can tax windfall profits and extreme wealth... They can provide poorer countries with aid. Refusing to act simply because Washington will not join them is not diplomacy—it is cowardice. And it will only accelerate the G6’s slide into global irrelevance.”
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Trump, Musk, and the Age of the Super Asshole
The wealth and power accumulated by these two deeply flawed men—and how horrible and cruel they are as people—is evidence of how far we’ve fallen.
Jun 15, 2026
Elon Musk has just become the world’s first trillionaire. Donald Trump is America’s first dictator. But they have more in common than their economic and political dominance.
To describe both as selfish narcissists would be a wild understatement. Both are maniacally obsessed with increasing their own personal wealth, power, and control.
Both have been willing to break laws, norms, and other social constraints in pursuit of these goals. Both have manipulated, bribed, conned, robbed, and bullied their ways to dominance.
Trump tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, was impeached twice, found criminally liable for cooking his corporate books, and civilly liable for sexual abuse.
Musk paid a quarter of a billion dollars to get Trump elected president, then ran Trump’s illegal and hugely destructive DOGE. Musk’s SpaceX has all the hallmarks of a gigantic Ponzi scheme in which insiders pocket the winnings and leave latecomers holding the bag.
Both pride themselves on paying little or no taxes. Trump famously said that paying not paying federal income taxes "makes me smart." Musk paid zero taxes in 2018.
Both are notoriously lacking in empathy; they view all relationships as transactions. Trump refuses to be a "consoler-in-chief" in national tragedies and openly withholds sympathy for families of political opponents who die. (When Rob Reiner and his wife were murdered, Trump asserted they were killed “due to the anger [Reiner] caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”)
Musk has stated that "the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy” — arguing that a society can only afford to practice broad empathy if it operates from a position of systemic strength.
Both regard themselves as omnipotent and invincible. Both lash out verbally or physically at anyone who crosses them, often getting into raging disputes and fights.
To the extent they have any belief beyond their own omnipotence, it’s white male nationalism. “Whites are a rapidly dying minority,” Musk wrote his 240 million followers in a January post on X. In a February post, he declared that “there has been unrelenting hate and poisonous propaganda in the West against anyone White, straight or male over the past decade or more,” adding, “No more guilt trips. ENOUGH.”
Musk has suggested that race plays a detrimental role in hiring. He’s touted the role of white people in eliminating slavery. He’s accused public figures of racism against white and Asian people.
In recent months, Musk has increased his online posts about perceived threats to whiteness, or what he views as calls for a “genocide” against white people. Over the past seven months, he has posted 850 times about race, nearly daily and triple the rate for the previous two years.
Trump also has a well-documented history of white supremacist actions and rhetoric, including the 1973 lawsuit brought against Trump management for allegedly discriminating against Black renters; his full-page ads in 1989 calling for the death penalty for the five Black and Latino teenagers eventually exonerated in the Central Park jogger case; his leading role in the debunked, racially-charged conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States; his 2016 accusation that Mexican immigrants were criminals and “rapists;” his 2017 “Muslim ban;” his “fine people on both sides” of the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville; his view of Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations as “shithole” countries; his determination to erase Black history from America’s classrooms; and his campaign against diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Both Musk and Trump have pushed the conspiracy theory that Democrats are seeking to import undocumented immigrants so they can take over the U.S. government forever.
Both have fomented white nationalism abroad. Trump was an enthusiastic ally of Viktor Orbán, who saw Western civilization threatened by Muslim immigration into Europe. Many people in Trump’s circle continue to support and encourage leaders of the European far-right.
Musk, too, encourages white nationalism abroad. During the recent anti-immigrant protests and riots in the United Kingdom—particularly in Belfast and London—Musk posted that “civil war is inevitable” and urged British protesters to “fight back or die” (prompting British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to condemn Musk’s comments as “dangerous.”) In response to the recent killing in Belfast, Musk blamed “murderous migrants beheading innocent people in their home town.” He shared an image of the stabbing suspect, who is Black, alongside the caption declaring “millions must go.” And he reposted messages claiming that Starmer “hates white people.”
Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate report that “Musk’s amplification” of anti-migrant narratives to his hundreds of millions of followers was “instrumental” in provoking the violence in Belfast: “No individual played a bigger role in spreading [hateful] content on X than Musk himself.”
Both Trump and Musk also have long histories of misogyny.
Throughout his business and political careers, Trump has frequently disparaged women, describing female opponents and journalists as “disgusting,” “slobs,” and “piggy.” He has a well-documented history of sexual aggression. A federal jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation against writer E. Jean Carroll, awarding her millions in damages. And he has appointed conservative judges instrumental in rulings that overturned long-standing reproductive rights.
Musk, too, has faced frequent claims of misogyny and sexism. Eight former SpaceX engineers filed a lawsuit detailing a pervasive “’Animal House’” culture — accusing Musk of creating a hostile environment, treating female employees as sexual objects, and retaliating when employees challenged his sexism. Separate reports have also emerged alleging that Musk engaged in inappropriate relationships and persistent advances toward employees, including asking them to bear his children.
Musk has 14 kids with different mothers, and talks about them as a “legion,” as in a Roman military unit. “To reach legion-level before the apocalypse,” he told one of his partners, “we will need to use surrogates.” He has frequently drawn ire for promoting a “bro culture” and mocking femininity. He sparked a major online debate by stating that “Instagram is for girls” and has repeatedly shared or amplified sexist theories and extremist content regarding traditional gender roles.
*. *. *
The question, then, is why have two such loathsome men come to dominate America and much of the rest of the world at this point in history? Is there something about American capitalism or culture in the 21st century that has given both such extraordinary power?
Part of the answer, it seems to me, is a loss of our sense of common good — a decline of the role of public honor and public shame, and a disintegration of public morality — which has allowed, even encouraged, these two dangerous men to acquire such untrammeled wealth and power.
The idea of “the common good” was once widely understood and accepted in America. After all, the U.S. Constitution was designed for “We the people” seeking to “promote the general welfare”— not for “me the selfish jerk seeking as much wealth and power as possible.”
To be sure, the Gilded Age, which ran from the late 1880s to the 1910s, was dominated by a few extraordinarily wealthy men who violated social norms and monopolized the economy. “The public be damned,” said William Henry Vanderbilt, head of the New York Central Railroad.
But the reign of these “robber barons” ended when the American public — outraged by their abuses of wealth and power — rose up to demand reform and a return to the common good.
Subsequently, during the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II, Americans faced common perils that required that we work together for the common good. Many of us — both white and black Americans — were motivated to fight for civil rights and voting rights in the 1960s. And a sense of common good moved many of us to act against the injustice of the Vietnam War, and others of us to serve bravely in that besotted conflict.
Yet the common good is no longer a fashionable idea. The phrase is rarely uttered today. It feels slightly corny and antiquated if not irrelevant. There is no longer any restraint on aggressive men (almost all of them men) using whatever means possible to accumulate vast wealth and power on a scale that exceeds even the Gilded Age.
This moral breakdown is not one of personal, private, religious morality. It’s a breakdown in public morality — in a broad understanding of what we owe one another as members of the same society. Trump and Musk exemplify that breakdown. The wealth and power accumulated by these two deeply flawed men is evidence of how far we’ve fallen, and the scale of the challenge we face to rectify it.
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