#wealth inequality

#wealth inequality

For many Americans, 2025 wasn't a great year financially. The affordability crisis and general economic concerns became defining themes of the year as people dealt with rising costs and a worsening job market. But for billionaires, 2025 was a boon to their already exuberant wealth. The 15 richest billionaires in the United States saw their wealth grow by more than $1 trillion over 2025, according to a new analysis from the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington, D.C., think tank

Credit scores are lower than they've ever been, particularly with Gen Z," Goodarzi told Editorial Director Andrew Nusca at Fortune Brainstorm AI last week. Credit balances across the board are also the highest they've been, Goodarzi added, but Gen Z are disproportionately hurting in this category, too. "[Gen Z] credit card balances are up 36-37%," Goodarzi added. But there's one silver lining: "They still have jobs," Goodarzi said. "And that's what's really keeping things together."

As a New York court weighed whether evidence was gathered illegally during Mangione's arrest on charges of fatally shooting a top healthcare executive on the streets of New York, America got a taste of the trial's potent mix of politics, social comment, conspiracy theory and Hollywood-style murder drama. Last week's lengthy proceedings yielded little new information in the way of rewriting Americans' collective understanding of Mangione's alleged role in killing United HealthCare executive Brian Thompson with a purported ghost gun.

In late October, Hurricane Melissa (that should have been called "Godzilla") battered western Jamaica with 185-mile-an-hour winds. It tossed the roofs of buildings about like splintering javelins, demolished municipal buildings and hospitals, snapped telephone poles like matchsticks, flattened crops, and dumped torrential floodwaters everywhere, leaving $8 billion in damage. That Category 5 storm's unprecedented ferocity was driven by an overheated Caribbean Sea, produced by 275 years of industrial civilization that has spewed obscene amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually.

"Why are we not giving incentives to companies to require them to give shares in their companies to all employees, at the same percentage of cash earnings as the CEO?" Cuban said. It is the right question to be asking. Because while the debate over wealth inequality continues, the solution has been hiding in plain sight for decades. The top 10% of U.S. households now control 67% of all wealth, while the bottom half holds just 2.5%.

Social class permeates all aspects of life, and love is no exception. In Spain, for instance, couples don't form randomly; rather, they're typically determined by socioeconomic factors. This means that people tend to partner with those most similar to themselves in terms of income and wealth. And, at the top of the social ladder, this tendency intensifies. Those who earn and have the most assets find each other with a frequency three times greater than would occur in a society where relationships were completely random.

Jenner's birthday bash Saturday was billed as one of the A-list social events of the year, attended by the likes of Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, Oprah Winfrey, Gayle King, Tyler Perry and Adele, outlets such as People and even the Daily Mail, which tends to be hyper-critical of the self-exiled royal couple, glossed over the fact that the party's hosts were Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez.

From gold-rimmed plates on gold-patterned tablecloths decorated with gold candlestick holders, they gorged on heirloom tomato panzanella salad, beef wellington and a dessert of roasted Anjou pears, cinnamon crumble and butterscotch ice-cream. On 15 October, Donald Trump welcomed nearly 130 deep-pocketed donors, allies and representatives of major companies for a dinner at the White House to reward them for their pledged contributions to a vast new ballroom now expected to cost $300m.

Chicago's mayor, Brandon Johnson, told the crowd the Trump administration had "decided that they want a rematch of the civil war", which the white supremacist Confederacy lost to the Union in the 19th century. "We are here to stand firm and stand committed that we will not bend, we will not bow, we will not cower, we will not submit," Johnson said. "We do not want troops in our city."

Pope Leo XIV has voiced sharp criticism of corporate pay structures, singling out Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other business leaders as examples of the widening gap between executives and ordinary workers. The pontiff warned that excessive wealth concentration could erode societal values and fuel global polarization. Pope Leo XIV's comments seem to be guided by a misunderstanding of what Elon Musk's pay package entails, and the net positive it would result to TSLA shareholders and the world as a whole.

Dalio described a future where humanoid robots, smarter than humans, and advanced AI systems, powered by trillions of dollars in investment, could render many current professions obsolete. He questioned the need for lawyers, accountants, and medical professionals if highly intelligent robots with PhD-level knowledge become commonplace, stating, "we will not need a lot of those jobs." This technological leap, while promising "great advances," also carries the potential for "great conflicts."

Bribery is generally unethical and often illegal, but also quite effective. When my four-year-old is acting up and ignoring my increasingly desperate pleas for her to get dressed, leave the playground or do something else very important, I have, on occasion, resorted to desperate promises of ice-cream. Obviously, I know it's counterproductive to respond to suboptimal behaviour with sugar-based bribes. But sometimes you are exhausted and just need a short-term win. The ice-cream always delivers.

Daniel Currell's guest essay in The New York Times shows how Walt Disney World Resort has evolved from an accessible "all-American vacation" to a luxury experience targeting high-net-worth households. Wealthy visitors can pay for premium passes that let them bypass lines; one tech executive quoted in the article experienced 16 attractions in seven hours. Meanwhile, Scarlett Cressel, a bus driver who could not afford to pay for special ride reservations and other perks, managed nine attractions over 14 hours.

Penned by longtime economic researcher and campaigner Chuck Collins, a leading thinker and writer on inequality in America, "Oligarch Watch" will profile the plutocrats wielding their wealth and power to further enrich themselves at the expense of workers, our communities, and our environment. Crisscrossing industries and centers of power in the US, Collins will tackle oligarchy in action to spotlight the crushing monopoly power billionaires yield,