On the day Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire, Gilberto Rubio, a security officer in the San Francisco area, was thinking about how to cut back on meals to save money. Jessica Ordeñana, a bartender in midtown Manhattan, was worrying about air conditioning ahead of a heatwave because she cannot afford her soaring electricity bills.
Ordeñana and Rubio are just two of the millions of workers in the US struggling to make ends meet in an economy where inflation has wiped out recent gains in wage growth and consumer confidence is at an all-time low, even as wealth has surged for the ultrarich.
California's Billionaire Tax Makes the Ballot
On Thursday, California's controversial billionaire tax measure officially made it to the ballot after an expensive and hard-fought campaign that saw some of the world's richest people pour millions into efforts to derail the effort. That fight will now continue until November's general election, with Silicon Valley expected to spend even more money to prevent the measure from passing.
The wealthiest 0.00001%, about 20 individuals, hold wealth equal to 12% of the US's gross domestic output, according to data compiled by French economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez, about four times greater than levels seen during the Gilded Age.
Musk's Trillionaire Status and the Wealth Gap
Musk lost his trillionaire status on Wednesday as investors soured on AI, but he has still added $327bn to his fortune in the last 12 months alone. A stock market rally could soon push him back over the top. The rise in Musk's wealth—from about $28bn in 2020 to nearly $1tn—was cemented by SpaceX's stock market listing. More millionaires and billionaires will be minted in the coming months as SpaceX's share sale is followed by offerings from AI rivals Anthropic and OpenAI.
The US is home to 989 billionaires, who owned more than $9.2tn in wealth in 2026, up 31.8% since 2025, according to a report by Americans for Tax Fairness.
Workers Falling Behind
As billionaires' wealth has soared, US workers are falling behind. In 2025, workers took their smallest share of gross domestic product on record since 1947, falling to 53.8% of GDP in the third quarter. The US inflation rate hit 4.2% in May 2026, wiping out 3.4% in wage growth for the past year. About 45% of all workers in the US—66 million—make less than $25 an hour, while a living wage required to support oneself, according to MIT's living wage calculator, for a single adult with no dependents, exceeds $25 an hour in most large metro areas.
As wages have lagged behind inflation and productivity, workers have turned to debt. US credit card debt hit a record high in the fourth quarter of 2025 at $1.277tn, a 63% increase since the first quarter of 2021.
Workers' Stories: Rubio and Ordeñana
Rubio, a security officer in the San Francisco area for four years, has consistently worked up to three jobs simultaneously and lived out of his car due to high housing costs. “I haven’t been able to get ahead working one job,” Rubio said. “Your life is working and we don’t have anything to show for it. There’s no savings, there’s no retirement plan. I can’t even afford to buy a house.”
Though he makes $25 an hour, he hasn’t received a raise in years, and his salary is far below the living wage for a single adult in the San Francisco area of more than $30 an hour. “I’ve actually had to live in my car just to be able to get by and pay bills,” he added.
Ordeñana, a Manhattan bartender, makes a little more than $11 an hour plus tips, but notes tips fluctuate greatly. “I can’t afford air conditioning, so this will be my second summer without AC,” she said. “The fact that the rich keep getting richer for no good reason is really, really, really disgusting to me.”
Backlash and Calls for Change
The ascent of the super-wealthy is facing backlash. Alongside the California vote, worker advocates see opportunities for change as public sentiment sours on AI and plutocrats. Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage, said the surge in wealth inequality has resulted in a surge in work around increasing minimum wages. “I’ve never experienced this kind of explosive campaign growth over the last year as I have in 20 years, 25 years of organizing,” said Jayaraman.
Gabriel Zucman, an economist at UC Berkeley, said it is unclear when a tipping point is reached at which democracy becomes oligarchy. “Is it when the wealth of the ultrarich exceeds 50% of GDP, as in the US today? 100%? 200%? Nobody knows the exact concentration of wealth at which the kinds of plutocratic collapse we have seen in history becomes inevitable.”
Cienna Pangan, a Starbucks barista in Chicago, pointed to the stark contrast between worker struggles and CEO pay. The median pay for a Starbucks worker in 2024 was $14,674, compared with CEO Brian Niccol’s compensation of $97.8m. CEO pay grew 20 times faster than the average worker’s pay in 2025, according to Oxfam and the International Trade Union Confederation. “We aren’t making enough to pay for groceries, we’re not making enough to pay rent,” said Pangan.
Daniel Mandell, emeritus professor of history at Truman State University, said the debate over tech plutocrats’ wealth could signal change. “Will the current awareness of the dangers of this yawning economic chasm, spotlighted by the outrageous behavior of ‘tech bros’ like Elon Musk with his $1tn, lead to policy changes? I hope so.”
