Elon Musk looks on as US President Donald Trump speaks at the US-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington, DC on November 19, 2025. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
“Billionaires are raking in staggering profits off the backs of ordinary workers,” said Chuck Collins of the Institute for Policy Studies.
The collective wealth of US billionaires surged to $8.1 trillion in 2025 as working-class Americans faced a cost-of-living crisis made worse by President Donald Trump’s tariff regime and unprecedented assault on the social safety net.
An analysis released Friday by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) found that the top 15 US billionaires saw the largest wealth gains last year, with their collective fortune growing from $2.4 trillion to $3.2 trillion. That 33% gain was more than double the S&P 500’s 16% increase in 2025.
What IPS describes as the “elite group” of US billionaires includes Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the richest man in the world; Google co-founder Larry Page; Amazon founder Jeff Bezos; and Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison.
IPS emphasized that “these staggering combined billionaire wealth totals come as the Trump-GOP budget bill passed in 2025 defunded health insurance, food stamps, and other vital anti-poverty safety net programs, in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and budget increases for militarism and mass deportations.”
“The affordability crisis is hitting ordinary Americans particularly hard as we head into the new year, but not everyone is feeling the pain: Billionaires are raking in staggering profits off the backs of ordinary workers,” Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at IPS, said in a statement.
“These extreme concentrations of wealth and power,” Collins added, “undermine our daily lives and further rig our economy in favor of the ultra-rich and corporations, while ordinary Americans get a raw deal once again.”
IPS released its analysis days after Bloomberg reported, based on its Billionaires Index, that the world’s 500 richest people gained a record $2.2 trillion in wealth last year.
Omar Ocampo, an IPS researcher, said that in the US, billionaires are “paying far less in taxes compared to the huge amount of wealth they amass,” allowing them to continue accumulating vast fortunes, supercharging inequality, and using their wealth and influence to subvert reform efforts.
“Not only are a small number of Americans holding more wealth than the rest of America, but they’re also not paying their fair share in taxes,” said Ocampo.
The new report comes as families across the US struggle to make ends meet amid high and still-rising prices for groceries, housing, and other necessities. A Century Foundation survey released last month found that “roughly three in 10 voters delayed or skipped medical care in the past year due to cost, while nearly two-thirds switched to cheaper groceries or bought less food altogether.”
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
Demonstrators gather outside a Tesla showroom as part of “TeslaTakedown” protest against CEO Elon Musk in New York City on May 3, 2025. (Photo by Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“If the monstrous political-economic system that is tearing our planet, the climate, and its people apart isn’t brought to its knees—then humanity will be,” warned one climate scientist.
Led by Big Tech billionaires including Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, and Elon Musk, the world’s 500 richest people added a record $2.2 trillion to their collective wealth in 2025, Bloombergreported as the year ended on Wednesday.
“Obscene greed! While billions of people live in poverty,” human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell responded on X—a social media platform now controlled by Musk, the richest person on Earth. “It’s why we need a global wealth tax.”
Musk—who could become the world’s first trillionaire thanks to his new controversial pay package as CEO of Tesla—is one of just eight ultrawealthy individuals who got around a quarter of all the gains recorded by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The others are Amazon founder Bezos and Oracle chairman Ellison, as well as Michael Dell, Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, and Meta‘s Mark Zuckerberg. The previous year, Bloombergnoted, “the same eight billionaires made up 43% of the total gains.”
According to Bloomberg, the gains that brought the combined net worth of all 500 people to $11.9 trillion “were turbocharged” by the 2024 election victory of President Donald Trump. The Republican and his relatives were among the “biggest winners” of 2025, gaining at least $282 million, for a net worth of $6.8 billion.
The “winners” also include Musk, who gained $190.3 billion for a net worth of $622.7 billion; Ellison, who gained $57.7 billion for a net worth of $249.8 billion; and Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart, who gained $12.6 billion for a net worth of $37.7 billion.
After Trump’s electoral win, several Big Tech billionaires buddied up to him, with Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai all attending his inauguration. Musk then spent several months spearheading the administration’s attack on federal workforce as the de facto leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The world’s 500 richest people have total wealth of $11.9tn.Their wealth up by $2.2tn in 2025. 8 billionaires accounting for a 25% of the gains.No one becomes this rich by working.They fund right-wing parties, oppose worker/human rights, cause more pollution than normal people.
Sharing the Guardian‘s coverage of the findings on the social media network Bluesky, British climate scientist Bill McGuire warned that “if the monstrous political-economic system that is tearing our planet, the climate, and its people apart isn’t brought to its knees—then humanity will be.”
The Guardian pointed to Oxfam International’s November statement that $2.2 trillion “would have been more than enough to lift 3.8 billion people out of poverty,” which the humanitarian group highlighted ahead of the Group of 20 Summit hosted by South Africa, whose government used its G20 presidency to push for solutions to global inequality.
“Inequality is a deliberate policy choice. Despite record wealth at the top, public wealth is stagnating, even declining, and debt distress is growing,” Oxfam executive director Amitabh Behar said at the time. “Inequality rips away life opportunities and rights from the majority of citizens, sparking poverty, hunger, resentment, distrust, and instability.”
A June 2024 report from French economist and EU Tax Observatory director Gabriel Zucman—prepared for the G20’s Brazilian presidency—estimated that a global 2% minimum tax on the wealth of 3,000 billionaires could generate about $250 billion.
As seven Nobel laureates, including Joseph Stiglitz, noted in a July op-ed published by the French newspaper Le Monde, “By extending this minimum rate to individuals with wealth over $100 million, these sums would increase significantly.”
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
The FEMA Colorado Task Force 1 navigates the Guadalupe River on a boat as search for victims continues on July 18, 2025 in Center Point, Texas. (Photo by Brenda Bazán / The Washington Post via Getty Images)
A former FEMA official said that the agency “can’t do disaster response and recovery without” the employees being terminated by the Trump administration.
The Trump administration this week made abrupt cuts to the top federal disaster response agency, even as US communities face increased threats from natural disasters caused by the global climate crisis.
Independent journalist Marisa Kabas reported on Wednesday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) “has begun issuing termination notices” to staff at the agency’s Cadre of On-Call Response and Recovery (CORE) that are effective as of January 2.
A FEMA staffer who spoke with Kabas described the terminations as “The New Year’s Eve Massacre,” and explained that “the driving force behind all CORE employees is supporting and enacting the mission of preparing for, responding to, and recovering from disasters.”
A Thursday report from CNN added some additional details to Kabas’ reporting, including that the decision to issue the layoffs was made by Acting Administrator Karen Evans, who was appointed to the role after former Acting Administrator David Richardson resigned in November.
One former FEMA official bluntly told CNN that the agency “can’t do disaster response and recovery without CORE employees” that are being laid off by the administration.
The former FEMA official added that regional agency offices throughout the US “are almost entirely CORE staff, so the first FEMA people who are usually onsite won’t be there,” which will mean that “states are on their own” when it comes to disaster response.
CNN also reported that there is anxiety among remaining FEMA staffers that these cuts could just be the start “of a larger effort” by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “to shrink FEMA, potentially axing thousands of workers in the coming months who deploy during hurricanes, wildfires and other national emergencies.”
President Donald Trump has been targeting FEMA for potential termination for nearly a year now, and he said shortly after being inaugurated last January that a goal in his second term would be “fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA or maybe getting rid of FEMA,” while emphasizing that individual states should bear the cost of responding to natural disasters.
“I think, frankly, FEMA’s not good,” the president said. “I think when you have a problem like this, I think you want to go, and whether it’s a Democrat or Republican governor, you want to use your state to fix it and not waste time calling FEMA.”
The Trump administration’s deep cuts to FEMA come as the intensity of natural disasters is only projected to increase thanks to climate change.
According to a report published on Tuesday by the Yale School of the Environment, 2025 was the second hottest on record and was only surpassed by the previous year.
“The last three years have been, by a wide margin, the hottest ever recorded,” stressed the report. “Each of the last three years has measured more than 1.5°C warmer than preindustrial times, putting the world at least temporarily in breach of an international goal to limit warming below that level.”
President Donald Trump listens as he was speaking with reporters while in flight on Air Force One, Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026, as returning to Joint Base Andrews, Md
THIS doesn’t end here. Unless the United States faces consequences for what it is doing in Venezuela it will do it, or try to, again and again.
It says so itself — one reason Keir Starmer, Friedrich Merz, Emmanuel Macron and other Trump appeasers appear so ridiculous.
When Trump in his first term blurted out that US forces were in Syria “only for the oil,” his allies’ embarrassment could be glossed over by a media unwilling to expose years of its own propaganda about humanitarian interventions and counter-terror operations.
Not now. Trump kidnaps a head of state and then announces Washington will “run” his country.
What does that mean? Well, what remains of the Venezuelan government must grant Washington “total access. We need access to the oil and to other things in their country.” What if Venezuela’s Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez won’t do as she’s told? She’ll face “a situation worse than Maduro.” Maybe killed in the kidnapping operation, like the 32 brave Cuban soldiers who died defending her boss.
The Trump White House narrative is in our faces every day. Who can take seriously Merz’s call for an explanation on how US actions are justified in international law, when Secretary for War Pete Hegseth vows to pursue “maximum lethality not tepid legality?” The politicians of the old Washington Consensus merely look pathetic through their “hear no evil, see no evil” approach to the new one.
Hence the backlash against Starmer’s feeble fence-sitting, involving MPs well beyond the socialist left (such as Emily Thornberry), the TUC and the rapidly growing Greens.
There are half-hearted efforts to depict Venezuela as a special case. But again the Trump White House’s loudmouth assertions undermine the pretence.
Attacking Colombia and removing its elected president “sounds good to me,” says Trump. Cuba’s government is “going down.” The US “has to do something with Mexico,” “needs Greenland, absolutely.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Demonstrators gathered outside the US consulate in Amsterdam, Netherlands to protest the US attack on Venezuela on January 4, 2026. (Photo by Mouneb Taim/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“International law is not ‘dead’ just because the most powerful no longer respect it,” one expert stressed. “To preserve the rules-based international order, all states need to call out breaches of the law when they occur.”
Protests have erupted in the US and around the world following President Donald Trump’s attack on Venezuela and abduction of President Nicolás Maduro, and international law experts on Monday joined in rebuking the deadly military operation, with several outlining exactly how Trump’s actions were unlawful.
At Just Security, University of Reading professor of international law Michael Schmitt, New York University law professor Ryan Goodman, and NYU Reiss Center on Law and Security senior fellow Tess Bridgeman explained that the US military’s bombing of Venezuela and kidnapping of Maduro differs legally from the dozens of boat strikes the US has carried out in the past four months.
The attacks in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific have killed more than 100 people and have also been violations of international law, according to numerous legal experts—but they “have occurred in international waters against stateless vessels,” wrote Schmitt, Goodman, and Bridgeman.
In contrast, the operation in the early morning hours on Saturday took place within Venezuelan borders and “is clearly a violation of the prohibition on the use of force in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter,” they wrote. “That prohibition is the bedrock rule of the international system that separates the rule of law from anarchy, safeguards small states from their more powerful neighbors, and protects civilians from the devastation of war.”
Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, to which both the US and Venezuela are parties, states:
All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
The scholars vehemently rejected the narrative the Trump administration has put forward for months about its escalation in the Caribbean and Venezuela: that the White House simply aims to protect Americans from drug trafficking, a claim that officials have repeated despite the fact that US and international law enforcement agencies have not identified the South American country as a significant player in the drug trade.
For Trump’s assertions that drug cartels in Venezuela pose an imminent threat to Americans “to make any sense,” wrote the authors, “the drug activity must be characterized as an ‘armed attack’ against the United States… Drug trafficking simply does not qualify as, and has never been considered, an ‘armed attack.’ In brief, the relationship between drug trafficking and the deaths that eventually result from drugs being purchased and used in the United States is far too attenuated to qualify as an armed attack.”
“It is indisputable that drug trafficking is condemnable criminal activity, but it is not the type of activity that triggers the right of self-defense in international law,” they continued, adding that any possible involvement by Maduro’s government in the drug trade also does not rise “to the level of an armed attack against the United States.”
Schmitt, Goodman, and Bridgeman wrote that “Operation Absolute Resolve,” as the administration has termed the Saturday attack that killed more than 80 people, “amounts to an unlawful intervention into Venezuela’s internal affairs,” and that while officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubio have claimed the kidnapping of Maduro was simply a law enforcement operation and not an act of war, the US does not have jurisdiction to carry out such an action in Venezuela without the government’s consent.
“The United States has engaged in governmental activity in Venezuela—law enforcement—that is exclusively the domain of the Venezuelan government,” wrote the authors. “Even though the United States does not recognize the Maduro government as legitimate, international law provides that the relevant officials to grant consent are those of the government that exercises ‘effective control’ over the territory; in this case, officials in the Maduro administration.”
As a head of state, Maduro is also subject to protections from enforcement jurisdiction by another state, they wrote, under “customary international law.”
“The United States has engaged in governmental activity in Venezuela—law enforcement—that is exclusively the domain of the Venezuelan government.”
The authors wrote that, as Maduro said in a statement Monday, the president may be considered a prisoner of war and be “entitled to the extensive protections of the Third Geneva Convention,” given his status as commander-in-chief of Venezuela’s armed forces. His wife is also “entitled to a robust set of protections afforded to captured civilians” under the Fourth Geneva Convention, they wrote.
The explanation by Schmitt, Goodman, and Bridgeman bolstered remarks by other international law experts including Ben Saul, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism.
Saul on Saturday condemned Trump’s “illegal aggression against Venezuela and the illegal abduction of its leader and his wife,” and said the president “should be impeached and investigated for the alleged killings,” of dozens of Venezuelans in the attack.
“Every Venezuelan life lost is a violation of the right to life,” he said.
At the Conversation, Australian National University international law professor Sarah Heathcote emphasized that the UN Security Council, which held an emergency meeting Monday in response to the US strike, had not authorized the attack. Such an authorization, along with consent by Venezuela’s government or a credible claim that the US was acting in self-defense, would have made the Trump administration’s actions lawful.
Instead, she wrote, “the US intervention in Venezuela was as brazen and unlawful as its military strike on Iran in June last year.”
“But international law is not ‘dead’ just because the most powerful no longer respect it,” she said. “To preserve the rules-based international order, all states need to call out breaches of the law when they occur, including in the current instance.”
At the Security Council meeting, UN Secretary-General António Guterres emphasized “the imperative of full respect, by all, for international law, including the Charter of the United Nations, which provides the foundation for the maintenance of international peace and security.”
“Venezuela has experienced decades of internal instability and social and economic turmoil. Democracy has been undermined. Millions of its people have fled the country,” he said. “In situations as confused and complex as the one we now face, it is important to stick to principles. Respect for the UN Charter and all other applicable legal frameworks to safeguard peace and security.”
“International law contains tools to address issues such as illicit traffic in narcotics, disputes about resources, and human rights concerns,” he added. “This is the route we need to take.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
President Donald Trump listens as he was speaking with reporters while in flight on Air Force One, Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026, as returning to Joint Base Andrews, Md
