Top 10 US billionaires’ collective wealth grew by $698bn in past year – report | US income inequality

The collective wealth of the top 10 U.S. billionaires increased by $698 billion last year, according to a new report. report A report from Oxfam America released on Monday on the widening wealth gap.

The report warns that the Trump administration’s policies risk pushing inequality in the United States to new heights, but notes that both Republican and Democratic administrations have worsened the United States’ widening wealth gap.

Using Federal Reserve data from 1989 to 2022, the researchers also calculated that the top 1% of households gained 101 times more wealth than the average household during that time, and 987 times more wealth than a household in the bottom 20 percent of income earners. This translated into earnings of $8.35 million per household for the top 1 percent, compared to $83,000 for the average household over the 33-year period.

Meanwhile, more than 40 percent of the U.S. population, almost 50 percent of children, are considered low-income and family earnings are less than 200 percent of the national poverty line.

Compared to 38 other high-income countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United States has the highest relative poverty rate, the second-highest child poverty and infant mortality rate, and the second-lowest life expectancy rate.

“Inequality is a policy choice,” said Rebecca Riddell, Oxfam America’s senior policy lead for economic justice. “These comparisons show us that we can make very different choices when it comes to poverty and inequality in our society.”

The report outlines how systems in the United States, including the tax code, social safety nets, and worker rights and protections, are slowly being dismantled, allowing concentrated wealth to become concentrated power.

Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” passed by Congress in May, which included tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, was one of the “largest upward transfers of wealth in decades,” according to the report.

But over the past few decades, Republicans have not acted alone.

“Policymakers are choosing inequality, and those choices are bipartisan,” Riddell said. “Policy reforms over the last 40 years, from deductions to taxes to the social safety net to labor issues and beyond, have really had bipartisan support.”

The policy recommendations outlined in the report fall into four categories: rebalancing power through campaign finance reform and antitrust policy; using the tax system to reduce inequality through taxes on the rich and corporations; strengthening the social safety net; and we protect unions.

These solutions may be difficult to implement politically, especially due to long-term stigma due to social safety nets and taxation. While the report references the “welfare queen” concept popularized during Ronald Reagan’s presidency in the 1980s, taxation has always been seen as oppressive to everyone rather than a tool to address inequality.

“What’s really needed is a different kind of policy,” Riddell said. “It’s reform that focuses on serving ordinary people by reducing inequality really quickly. There are sensible, proven reforms that could go a long way to reversing the really troubling trends that we’re seeing.”

The report includes interviews with community leaders who are actively working to reduce inequality, even as progress appears to have stalled at the national level. In an interview included in the report, union representatives for United Workers Maryland said the moment seems full of opportunity because many Americans are beginning to see that the current order only works for the people at the top, not for them.

“I think it’s great that they see this as an opportunity,” Riddell said. “I like to think of this moment as an opportunity to look around us and realize our broader power.”