July 20, 2026  ·  Reboot 2028 PAC

One Chart: Billionaire Wealth vs. Wages, GDP, and the Stock Market

We keep hearing that a rising tide lifts all boats. Here's what the tide actually did to each boat since 2020, all indexed to the same starting line so they're directly comparable.

Index, 2020 = 100. Billionaire wealth: Americans for Tax Fairness (Forbes-based totals, various dates 2020–2026). GDP: nominal, Bureau of Economic Analysis. Wages: average hourly earnings, all private employees, Bureau of Labor Statistics. S&P 500: year-end close (2026 figure as of mid-July).

By the numbers: since 2020, American billionaire wealth has more than tripled — up to an index of 313, from $2.95 trillion in March 2020 to $9.24 trillion by June 2026. The S&P 500 more than doubled over the same stretch, up to 231. GDP grew to 147. Average wages, the number that actually determines what most people can afford, crept up to just 132.

The gap between the blue line and the other three isn't just "billionaires benefit from a strong stock market" — the S&P 500 itself only explains part of the story. Billionaire wealth grew nearly 40% faster than the index it's supposedly riding. The rest comes from concentration: a shrinking number of people own a growing share of that market, new fortunes keep getting minted at the very top, and a handful of individuals — Elon Musk chief among them — see gains so large they move the aggregate on their own. Musk's net worth alone grew 205% in the twelve months before June 2026, making him the first trillionaire in American history.

Meanwhile the line that actually reflects most people's paychecks barely moved. Wages grew 32% over six years — before accounting for the cost of housing, health care, and everything else that also went up. GDP, the broadest measure of the whole economy, grew 47%. Both are outpaced by a stock market that's itself being outpaced by the wealth of a few thousand households.

This is the same argument we made in our last post, just in one picture: it's not that billionaires got rich, it's that the gap between their fortunes and everyone else's is widening faster than the economy that's supposed to justify it. Read more on our agenda for what we think should change.