The numbers arrive without ceremony, as numbers do. They are not delivered with outrage or editorial flourish. They simply sit on the page, waiting to be reckoned with.
The 12 richest people on Earth now own more wealth than 4 billion people, half the world’s population.
This is not a metaphor. It is an arithmetic fact, calculated by Oxfam America and published in January 2026. In 2025, global billionaire wealth surged 16.2%, three times faster than the average growth rate of the previous five years, reaching $18.3 trillion, the highest level in history. The number of billionaires exceeded 3,000 for the first time.
Elon Musk recently became the first person in history to become a trillionaire.
The $2.5 trillion added to billionaire fortunes in 2025 alone would be enough to eradicate extreme poverty 26 times over. Instead, 1 in 4 people do not regularly have enough to eat. Poverty reduction has stagnated, with global poverty levels remaining roughly where they were in 2019.
These are not separate phenomena. They are the same phenomenon.
“Most people feel like the system is rigged against them. And they’re right,” said New Jersey progressive advocate Lisa McCormick. “People work hard, play by the rules, and still struggle to get ahead. Meanwhile, powerful corporations and political insiders keep writing the rules to protect themselves, not the people who make this country work.”
“A fair shot doesn’t come from trickle-down promises or corporate tax breaks,” said McCormick. “It comes from rights that are protected by law—rights that no politician, no corporation, and no special interest should ever be able to take away.”
The impact of this billionaires’ grift and resulting cost of living crisis is especially acute in Black and immigrant neighborhoods, which explains why New Jersey is one of the most segregated states in the country when it comes to housing and schooling.
New Jersey is home to six resident billionaires—including hedge fund co-founder John Overdeck, the state’s wealthiest at an estimated $8 billion—and has strong ties to other ultrawealthy figures such as David Tepper and Donald Newhouse.
New Jersey’s billionaire population also includes Short Hills resident Peter Kellogg ($5.4 billion), Cedar Grove resident Brian Venturo ($3.2 billion), Alpine resident Larry Robbins ($2.2 billion), Princeton resident Duncan MacMillan ($1.8 billion), and Colts Neck’s iconic rock star Bruce Springsteen ($1.2 billion).
Wealth and power have never been strangers. But the current concentration of both is without precedent. Billionaires are now 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary citizens.
In 2023, 74 of the world’s 2,027 billionaires held executive or legislative government positions, a 3.6% chance of holding office, compared with 0.0009% for the average global citizen.
Nearly half of those surveyed in the World Values Survey across 66 countries said the rich often buy elections in their country.
The United States is home to 932 billionaires, more than any other country, holding $7.935 trillion in wealth, more than one-third of all billionaire wealth worldwide. The 10 richest U.S. billionaires grew $698 billion wealthier in the past year alone. Between 1989 and 2022, the poorest household in the top 1% gained 987 times more wealth than the richest household in the bottom 20%.
The top 0.1% now controls 12.6% of U.S. assets, its highest share on record. The richest 1% owns half the entire stock market. The bottom half of Americans own just 1.1%.
This is not a market outcome. It is a policy choice.
About one-third of all global billionaires inherited their fortunes, while “Takers Not Makers” —a broad report by Oxfam International —notes that up to 60% of all billionaire wealth is unearned, originating from inheritance, monopolies, or crony connections.
On July 4, 2025, President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law. The legislation permanently extended the individual income tax rate structure established by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, including the top 37% rate, beyond its scheduled expiration. Households earning $1 million or more received an estimated 3% increase in after-tax income from the law’s provisions.
The same legislation allowed enhanced subsidies for health insurance plans to expire. Millions of Americans lost coverage. The law also enacted sweeping cuts to federal safety-net programs.
That same year, the Trump administration assembled the wealthiest Cabinet and executive team in modern American history, with multiple billionaires and multimillionaires leading federal agencies. The administration also moved to strip union protections from a substantial share of the federal workforce, weaken consumer protection measures and roll back corporate regulations.
About 60% of billionaire wealth comes from one of three sources: inheritance, cronyism and corruption, or monopoly power. This is not simply the product of innovation or enterprise. It is the product of a system that allows wealth to compound with limited taxation, power to accumulate with limited accountability and rules to be written by those who benefit most from them.
The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, pays an effective tax rate that is far lower than the rates many wage earners pay on their income. Someone earning $600,000 a year in salary can face combined federal, state and payroll tax rates approaching half that income. Musk’s wealth, which surpassed $700 billion by late 2025, is taxed under different rules that generally defer taxation until assets are sold.
A civil engineer earning $176,100 a year reaches the Social Security payroll tax wage base just as Elon Musk does. Earnings above the wage base are generally exempt from the Social Security payroll tax. If all of Musk’s annual income from wealth were subject to the Social Security payroll tax, he would satisfy his annual obligation within minutes.
“The widening gap between the rich and the rest is at the same time creating a political deficit that is highly dangerous and unsustainable,” said Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar. “Governments are making wrong choices to pander to the elite and defend wealth while repressing people’s rights and anger at how so many of their lives are becoming unaffordable and unbearable.”
Oxfam America is advocating policies intended to ensure the super-rich pay a larger share of taxes and to build an economy that works for everyone, not only the wealthiest. Those proposals include more progressive taxation, wealth taxes, inheritance taxes, stronger antitrust enforcement and greater public investment in education, health care and infrastructure. Supporters argue such measures would restore greater voice, choice and power to ordinary people.
A survey by Oxfam and Greenpeace found that 9 in 10 people worldwide support taxing the super-rich to help pay for climate action and public services. The movement to tax the ultra-rich has continued to gain support.
The numbers are not new. They have accumulated for decades, buried in Federal Reserve data and tucked into reports circulating among policymakers and advocates. Between 1980 and 2022, the share of national income going to the top 1% doubled, while the share going to the bottom 50% fell by one-third.
The story did not begin in 2025. But 2025 marked a striking convergence of long-term trends: the year the world’s 12 richest people held more wealth than half of humanity, the year the first person surpassed $500 billion in net worth, and the year a billionaire-led administration made tax cuts for the wealthy permanent while millions of Americans faced the loss of health insurance coverage.
What happens next depends on whether the people who are not billionaires decide they have had enough.
Discover more from NJTODAY.NET
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.