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THE RICHEST HAVE NEVER BEEN RICHER AS TRUMP ARRIVES TO MAKE THEM
RICHER STILL  
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Sam Pizzigati
January 7, 2025
Inequality.org
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_ Overall, the world’s 500 richest ended 2024 worth a combined $9.8
trillion. Some 34 percent of the $1.5 trillion they gained over the
course of the year came in the five weeks after Donald Trump’s
election. _

The enormous global surge in the wealth of the wealthy — a surge
that Americans of means have now been driving for nearly a
half-century — has wealth industry professionals rethinking just who
really rates as truly super rich., iStock via Getty Images

 

The new year has begun with old news: The world is continuing to
become colossally more unequal — with the United States leading the
way.

In 2024, wealth trackers at _Bloomberg _have just reported
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in a year-end review, “the world’s 500 richest people got vastly
richer.”

Of the world’s 15 richest individuals, the _Bloomberg_ data show
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home. The richest of these rich: Elon Musk
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personal fortune worth a mere $229 billion. He ended it with a net
worth of $442 billion, the largest personal fortune the world has ever
seen.

Overall, the world’s 500 richest ended 2024 worth a combined $9.8
trillion. Some 34 percent of the $1.5 trillion they gained over the
course of the year came in the five weeks after Donald Trump’s
election.

Trump himself enjoyed quite a rewarding 2024. His personal net worth
last year nearly doubled, to a bit over $7 billion. The
president-elect now holds
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a fortune over 137,000 times greater than the average household wealth
of a family in America’s poorest 50 percent.

A little humbling context for Trump: His new $7-billion fortune
amounts to less than 2 percent of the personal wealth his new good pal
Elon is now holding.

Musk does, to be sure, have ample American company in the exclusive
12-digit personal wealth club. Fifteen American deep pockets now boast
fortunes worth over $100 billion.

More context: Back in 1982, the year _Forbes_ magazine began
publishing its annual list of America’s richest, only 13 of the
nation’s 400 wealthiest held as much as a single billion in net
worth. To rate inclusion in the latest annual _Forbes_ 400 list, the
Institute for Policy Studies analyst Chuck Collins points out
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American of means needed a fortune of at least $3.2 billion.

The enormous global surge in the wealth of the wealthy — a surge
that Americans of means have now been driving for nearly a
half-century — has wealth industry professionals rethinking just who
really rates as truly super rich. These investment pros, for many
years now, have been defining an “ultra-high-net worth individual”
as anyone worth at least $30 million.

That $30 million, the Gulf Analytica consultancy president David
Gibson-Moore recently related
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used to be comfortably enough to allow for “significant investments
across multiple asset classes” — everything from stocks and bonds
to real estate and private equity — and still have plenty left over
for luxuries like private-jet travel.

These days, says Gibson-Moore, many analysts have upped the
“ultra” ante. They’re now considering $100 million as “the new
yardstick for anyone who wants to keep their head held high at private
equity parties.”

That makes some luxury sense. Simply maintaining a 100-foot-long
private yacht today, for instance, can now run
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much as $2 million a year.

But relief for the rich feeling this yacht-maintenance squeeze appears
to be on the way. Leaders in the new Republican-majority Congress,
_Politico_reports
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are already busily debating just how they can most expeditiously lower
the already low taxes the richest among us need to pay. Their goal: to
at least extend the expiring Trump tax cut originally enacted in 2017.

In 2025, households in America’s top 1 percent will save
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an average $61,090 thanks to that 2017 tax cut. Households in the top
0.1 percent will pocket even more, with an average savings of
$252,300. And households in the bottom 60 percent? They’ll on
average save less than $500 each.

“Extending the Trump tax cuts that expire at the end of 2025 —
namely, the law’s individual income and estate tax provisions —
would provide further windfall benefits to high-income households,”
conclude
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Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysts Chuck Marr, Samantha
Jacoby, and George Fenton.

To make matters worse, Marr and his colleagues add, those windfall
benefits “would come on top of the large benefits they would
continue to receive from the 2017 tax law’s permanent provisions.”

“Tax cuts for people making over $400,000,” the Center analysts
conclude, “should end on schedule.”

Keeping to that schedule — given the new Republican control over the
House, the Senate, and the White House — will be exceedingly
difficult. Welcome to Trump II.

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* Donald Trump; Elon Musk; Billionaires; Taxation;
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