About 19 households in the United States today control 12% of national income. That single figure, tracked by economist Gabriel Zucman, puts the current wealth concentration above anything recorded in American history, including the original Gilded Age peak of 4% back in 1910.
Zucman has been stressing the absurdity of the scale. Those same 19 families, if they liquidated everything, could buy roughly 10% of all goods and services the US economy produces in a single year. In 1913, the comparable group was just four households. The numbers have grown, but the share of wealth they command has grown far faster.
Fifty years of pulling apart
The economist points to the last half-century as the critical window. Income disparity began accelerating sharply around the mid-1970s, steadily redirecting gains toward the top 1%, and then, more dramatically, toward fractions of a percent far smaller than that. The 0.00001% figure Zucman cites is not a rounding error, it is literally under two dozen people.
The United States now counts 979 billionaires with combined assets of $5.7 trillion, more than any other country. Forbes data backs that up: 15 of the world's 20 wealthiest individuals live in the US. Moneywise, which first reported Zucman's findings, frames this as a structural shift rather than a cyclical blip.
Zucman does not see the ultra-rich as passive holders of capital. "It's just an illustration of the overwhelming economic power that the rich have," he said, "the power that they have to buy elections, to buy media, to buy influence, to buy competitors." He adds that their spending patterns do little to circulate wealth downward through lower-income households.
The richest 0.00001% now own three times what the most concentrated fortunes held at the Gilded Age peak, a benchmark economists had long used as a historical ceiling for inequality.
