🌅 Billionaire Wealth Beats the GDP of Nearly Every Country on Earth

SOURCE

Forbes

WHAT TO KNOW

• The 400 wealthiest Americans are now worth a record $6.6 trillion after adding $1.2 trillion to their combined wealth over the past 12 months. Much of the wealth is concentrated at the very top, with the top 20 richest Americans holding a combined $3 trillion, up from $2.3 trillion a year ago. It now takes a record $3.8 billion to make the top 400, $500 million more than the minimum in 2024.

WHY IT MATTERS

• The U.S. is now home to 902 billionaires, a new record and by far the most of any country (China and Hong Kong are second at 516, followed by India at 205). Across the world, a record 3,028 billionaires now hold a combined $16.1 trillion in wealth, surpassing the GDP of every single country on Earth aside from the U.S. and China.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• A 2020 analysis from the nonpartisan RAND Corporation found that if U.S. incomes rose at the same pace as national GDP over the past five decades, the median American income would have climbed from $42,000 in 1975 to $92,000 in 2018. Instead, the median U.S. income reached only $50,000 in 2018, while income for the top 1% of earners rose from $257,000 in 1975 to $761,000 in 2018. Put differently, over the 43-year period that GDP grew by roughly 120%, median income rose just 17% while top income grew 166%.