THE NEW YORK TIMES:
As Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, workers are facing higher prices and fears of A.I.-driven job losses.
Two events from the past week help crystallize this strange, contradictory moment for the U.S. economy.
On Wednesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the surge in energy prices had
wiped out a year and a half of wage gains for the average American worker. On Friday, the public-markets debut of SpaceX made Elon Musk the
world’s first trillionaire.
That stark juxtaposition helps explain why many Americans, in survey after survey, say they no longer believe the U.S. economy is working for them. A few people are getting fabulously, unimaginably wealthy at the same time that entire generations of families worry they will never be able to afford to buy a house, raise children or enjoy a comfortable retirement.
“I don’t think the stock market is necessarily causing” Americans’ pessimism about the economy, said Stefanie Stantcheva, a Harvard professor who studies public sentiment. “But I don’t think people are looking at it and are thinking, ‘Great, this means I’m going to do very well, too.’ It’s potentially reinforcing this feeling of ‘I’m falling behind.’”
Inequality is hardly a new feature in America. But the
explosion of wealth at the very top is without precedent in U.S. history. At the height of the Gilded Age at the end of the 19th century, the richest handful of Americans had a net worth equivalent to about 3 percent of the country’s annual economic output, according to
data compiled by the French economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez. Today, the fortunes of the same 0.00001 percent — about 20 individuals — make up roughly four times as large a share, equivalent to 12 percent of annual output.
Other economists, using different methodologies, come up with somewhat different numbers. But hardly anyone disputes the basic fact that the wealthiest few have made extraordinary gains in recent years.
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Ben Casselman | Ben Casselman is The Times’s chief economics correspondent. | Saturday, 13 June 2026
This is clear and glaring proof that Donald Trump is neither fit nor capable to lead the world’s leading and largest economy: the world’s hegemon.
The first lesson for any politician, especially one in a very powerful, leading position is that the economy must work for everyone — for the working classes, the middle classes, and the upper classes. An economy of whichever hue or stripe is always going to be fairer to some than to others. That is an inevitability, regardless of whether the economy is capitalist or socialist. But even so, it behoves politicians to understand that all people must get their fair share, their fair crack of the whip. When the nation’s wealth increases, especially when that increase in wealth is exceedingly substantial, then all should benefit, not just the favoured and blessed few at the top. Allowing such a scenario will be the harbinger of trouble and strife ahead. The people will tolerate this inequality for a while. In the short term, they have to. But their patience will run out at some point as sure as night turns into day.
Donald Trump would be wise to understand this. An ever rising stock market a sound and fair economy does not make! — © Mark Alexander