Gabriel Zucman@gabriel_zucman · Sep 30, 2026

This photo says everything about the explosion of extreme wealth and its influence on society. Such a concentration of…

14 tweets2 min read♥ 3Koriginal

Summary

Global billionaire wealth has exploded from 3% to 17% of world GDP since 1987, giving an unprecedented concentration of power to a tiny elite who control major media platforms and influence policy. This extreme inequality is accelerating due to AI growth, corporate profit surges, and dismantling of progressive taxation, making wealth taxation urgent to preserve democracy.

Summarized by ThreadOut AI from the full thread. May miss nuance — read the thread below.

#1
This photo says everything about the explosion of extreme wealth and its influence on society. Such a concentration of wealth and power in a few hands is unprecedented and dangerous. 🧵
#2
The pace at which extreme wealth is rising is simply staggering: the wealth of global billionaires now reaches the equivalent of 17% of world GDP. What this means is that if billionaires (about 3,000 households) spent all their wealth, they could buy 17% of everything that is produced in a given year globally. In 1987 – the first year of the Forbes billionaire list – this number was 3%.
#3
To make this power concrete, it is useful to look at what extreme wealth can buy – and to put all of this in a historical perspective. In the US, at the peak of the Gilded Age, the 4 largest fortunes belonged to Rockefeller, Carnegie, Astor (+ Baker/Frick/Field depending on the year). If they had spent their wealth, they could have bought 4% of all the goods and services produced in a given year in the US at that time.
#4
Today, that same fraction of the population, the top 0.00001% – which now includes 19 households – could buy not 4%, but 14% of everything produced in a given year in America.
#5
With the growth in the wealth of global billionaires has come an upsurge in their power. Extreme wealth is always an extreme power: The power to shape public discourse. The power to influence policymaking. The power to buy elections. The power to develop potentially deadly technologies. The power to stifle competition.
#6
A handful of centi-billionaires now own the Washington Post, CBS, Facebook, Instagram, X, WhatsApp, Twitch, and soon CNN, TikTok, HBO … In France, less than 10 billionaires own 80% of the private media.
#7
Billionaires are not the whole story. There is a broader class of very wealthy people who are experiencing an upsurge in their wealth. It seems we are now entering a new phase of the rise of inequality in the US. Here's who benefited from economic growth in 2025, according to the latest estimates available on realtimeinequality.org
#8
Average income per adult grew 1.9% (net of inflation) in 2025. But for the bottom 50% there was no growth. And for the next 40% very little. Almost all the growth was concentrated in the top 10%.
#9
The very fast growth at the top is linked to the explosion of corporate profits, now at an all-time high relative to GDP.
#10
High profits (and expectation of future profits) are pushing top wealth shares past their Covid peak, to levels not seen since the early 20th century/ Here's the top 0.1% wealth share/
#11
The problem of extreme wealth is global. And with the oligarchic capture of a growing number of governments, the AI revolution, and the dismantling of progressive taxation, the trend is bound to accelerate.
#12
For some time after World War II, it looked like extreme wealth belonged to the past and that we could forget this problem. But it's now coming back in full force.
#13
As the AI boom is minting billionaires by the day and the first trillionaires are now coming into view, one thing is becoming clearer and clearer: the battle between democracy and oligarchy will be the defining battle of the 21st century.
#14
It is for citizens throughout the world to ask their elected representatives to act now: It is time to tax billionaires. There is no time to lose – and any country can act, lead by example, and create the new rules needed for democracy to flourish in the 21st century.