In the last speech of his presidency, Joe Biden described the United States the way he usually only describes the nation’s adversaries: as an oligarchy. His fears about “the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people” came after weeks of discussion of the influence of the mega-rich on the incoming Trump administration. At least 13 billionaires are set to have government posts under the new president, with his expected cabinet worth at least $7bn, double that of his own first term and an astonishing 60 times more than the net worth of the current one. Tallying in Trump’s close adviser, Elon Musk, bloats the figure to over a half trillion. Wealth and power have long had a happy marriage in America. What’s different now? It can be captured in three terms: scale, sector and strategy.
One thing about billionaires in the US is they keep making more of them. In 1990, there were about 60. Ten years later, there were 298. Today there are almost 750, enough to fill a pair of jumbo jets (assuming some could be persuaded to travel in economy). Billionaire status is no longer enough to make you a household name. Those with the Scrooge McDuck or John D Rockefeller status of people “so rich they are famous for being rich” are more properly identified as centibillionaires: people worth more than $100bn.
