“Billionaires are raking in staggering profits off the backs of ordinary workers,” said Chuck Collins of the Institute for Policy Studies.
The collective wealth of US billionaires surged to $8.1 trillion in 2025 as working-class Americans faced a cost-of-living crisis made worse by President Donald Trump’s tariff regime and unprecedented assault on the social safety net.
An analysis released Friday by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) found that the top 15 US billionaires saw the largest wealth gains last year, with their collective fortune growing from $2.4 trillion to $3.2 trillion. That 33% gain was more than double the S&P 500’s 16% increase in 2025.
What IPS describes as the “elite group” of US billionaires includes Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the richest man in the world; Google co-founder Larry Page; Amazon founder Jeff Bezos; and Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison.
The rest of us are the same?
The same as when? It’d be nice if for the rest of us it would be the same as a few decades ago, where the working class was still able to live comfortably.
It’s not the same, the rich didn’t become richer of their own merit. They squeezed and squeezed and squeezed the working class to make thei billions, while the poor get poorer and poorer and poorer.
Well, that’s kind of what I meant by the last part but you can get the credit.