The new year has begun with old news: The world is continuing to become colossally more unequal — with the United States leading the way.

In 2024, wealth trackers at Bloomberg have just reported in a year-end review, “the world’s 500 richest people got vastly richer.”

Of the world’s 15 richest individuals, the Bloomberg data show, 14 call the United States home. The richest of these rich: Elon Musk. He started 2024 with a personal fortune worth a mere $229 billion. He ended it with a net worth of $442 billion, the largest personal fortune the world has ever seen.

Overall, the world’s 500 richest ended 2024 worth a combined $9.8 trillion. Some 34 percent of the $1.5 trillion they gained over the course of the year came in the five weeks after Donald Trump’s election.

Trump himself enjoyed quite a rewarding 2024. His personal net worth last year nearly doubled, to a bit over $7 billion. The president-elect now holds a fortune over 137,000 times greater than the average household wealth of a family in America’s poorest 50 percent.

A little humbling context for Trump: His new $7-billion fortune amounts to less than 2 percent of the personal wealth his new good pal Elon is now holding.

Musk does, to be sure, have ample American company in the exclusive 12-digit personal wealth club. Fifteen American deep pockets now boast fortunes worth over $100 billion.

More context: Back in 1982, the year Forbes magazine began publishing its annual list of America’s richest, only 13 of the nation’s 400 wealthiest held as much as a single billion in net worth. To rate inclusion in the latest annual Forbes 400 list, the Institute for Policy Studies analyst Chuck Collins points out, an American of means needed a fortune of at least $3.2 billion.

The enormous global surge in the wealth of the wealthy — a surge that Americans of means have now been driving for nearly a half-century — has wealth industry professionals rethinking just who really rates as truly super rich. These investment pros, for many years now, have been defining an “ultra-high-net worth individual” as anyone worth at least $30 million.

That $30 million, the Gulf Analytica........

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