Over the last quarter-century, billionaire wealth has exploded.
Global billionaire wealth has grown faster than GDP, faster than wages, and faster than median household net worth. The top 0.01% now control a historically unprecedented share of global wealth. And in the United States — the centre of the corporate universe — this concentration is not an accident of markets. It is a function of policy design.
A new dataset from our ERC Democracy Challenged project helps explain why. We collected financial data on 240,000 U.S. corporations from 2001–2024, focusing on the 10,000 most profitable corporate groups each year. The results should force a rethink of how we understand wealth, inequality, and political power.
Because billionaire wealth doesn’t begin with household savings.
It begins with corporate profits.
One percent of multinationals take most of the profits
Across two decades of data, the pattern is clear and accelerating:
• The top 10% of U.S. corporate groups capture more than 90% of all profits
• The top 1% take around 60% — surging after 2018
• The top 0.1% — roughly ten multinationals— capture close to 30%
These corporate groups aren’t just big; they are structurally dominant.
Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Nvidia, Tesla, Microsoft. Their profits do not merely reflect the economy — they are the economy. And those profits flow directly into private wealth at the top.
Corporate concentration is wealth inequality.
The tax system didn’t fail — it worked as designed
The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act slashed the federal corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and moved the United States toward a territorial system that amplified global profit shifting.
After 2017:
• Effective corporate tax rates fell from ~37% to ~20%
• High-profit corporations paid less tax even as profits surged
• A one-off R&D accounting change in 2022 caused one of the only recent dips in billionaire wealth
When profits are taxed, billionaire wealth falls.
When they aren’t, it compounds and concentrates.
Corporate tax is wealth regulation.
Tax policy is industrial policy — and democracy policy
The billionaire class is not just rich. It is politically embedded.
Campaign finance is increasingly funded by a handful of mega-donors whose fortunes derive from concentrated corporate profits. Those who own the corporations that dominate the economy now shape the political institutions meant to regulate them.
Which brings us back to the question Robert Dahl insisted was central to political science:
In a world of extreme concentration, who actually governs?
Our data points toward a troubling answer:
Power is shifting from democratic institutions to an oligarchic elite — and to the tax lawyers, accountants, and legal engineers who structure the world on their behalf.
The takeaway
The story of wealth inequality is not just about households.
It is about profits — who earns them, who keeps them, and who turns them into wealth.
Profit concentration is not natural or inevitable.
It is legislated. Constructed. Engineered in code — tax code, balance sheets, IP law, depreciation rules, transfer pricing agreements, capital allowances, cross-border accounting.
If we tax fortunes only after they exist, we accept the system that creates them.
The real site of power is the flow, not the stock.
Tax profits like monopoly rents.
Treat corporate tax as antitrust.
Because taxing profits is not just revenue policy — it is how democracies defend themselves from oligarchy.
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