Let’s talk about the wealth gap in America.

Not the abstract, theoretical kind economists bat around on cable news, but the staggering, real-life canyon between the ultra-wealthy and, well… the rest of us. It’s not just growing; it’s ballooning into something so lopsided it feels more like a satire than a statistic.

As of late 2024, the combined net worth of America’s top 12 billionaires has surpassed $2 trillion. Yes, trillion with a “T,” like “Too much to even mentally grasp.” According to an analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies using Forbes Real-Time Billionaire data, that figure reflects a $1.3 trillion increase (a 193% jump) between March 2020 and December 2024.

In other words, while the rest of us were scouring Amazon for toilet paper, canceling vacation plans, and cutting back on groceries to cover childcare, billionaires were watching their wealth multiply like gremlins in a swimming pool.

Let’s rewind to the height of the pandemic: when hospitals were overflowing, unemployment was soaring, and the world felt like it was falling apart. During that same stretch (March 2020 to October 2021), U.S. billionaires grew their collective wealth by over $2 trillion, a 70% surge. The top five (Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg, Page, and Musk) saw their personal fortunes more than double. So yes, while many were losing jobs, homes, and loved ones, others were gaining yachts, private islands, and new Twitter accounts to crash.

This raises the question: Why are people so rich? Like, that rich?

Are they that brilliant? Are they creating that much value for society? Elon Musk may be the poster child of techno-ambition, but it’s no secret he came from generational wealth, courtesy of his less-than-admirable father. And sure, innovation and risk-taking should be rewarded, but should the reward be so outsized that a handful of individuals can shape markets, media, and even political narratives with a few taps of their thumbs?

And speaking of Bezos and Gates: is it just me, or do billionaire ex-wives seem to have a knack for outshining their former husbands in generosity and grace? Coincidence… or correlation?

Of course, it’s easy to point fingers at Silicon Valley and Wall Street, but the problem runs deeper. We see the same disproportionate dynamics at play on smaller, more personal stages.

Take, for example, my daughter's small private Montessori school. I’ve served on the school board for three years and sit on the HR Committee. Recently, after a conflict emerged between faculty and administration, I got more involved in internal matters. What I discovered was nothing short of heartbreaking: our teachers, brilliant, compassionate individuals shaping young minds, were earning less than $30,000 a year. That’s poverty-level income for people with college degrees and classroom responsibilities. Meanwhile, the head of school’s salary had climbed to more than four times that amount, with annual raises outpacing the teachers’ raises by a comfortable margin.

Sound familiar? That same pattern plays out in healthcare, hospitality, higher education, and nearly every industry. Leadership compensation continues to soar while the front-line workers, the ones who teach, clean, heal, build, and serve, are left to stretch every dollar, often while being applauded for their “dedication.”

And here’s where it gets even more frustrating: the tax code rewards the already wealthy for staying wealthy. The wealthiest Americans benefit from loopholes, lower capital gains taxes, and the kind of estate planning that would make a Monopoly banker blush. Meanwhile, middle-class families are nickel-and-dimed at every turn, paying higher effective tax rates, juggling childcare costs, and watching public services erode.

It doesn’t take a Nobel Prize-winning economist to realize that maybe, just maybe, we should stop handing out massive tax breaks to billionaires and start offering real relief to the middle class. Raise the standard deduction. Offer child tax credits that actually cover childcare. Give working families the breathing room they deserve instead of assuming that "trickle down" will eventually rain on their roof.

So, what do we do about it?

Should we mandate CEO pay cuts? Cap salaries? Rewrite the tax code from the ground up? There are no easy answers, but there are plenty of reasons to be concerned. Because if we don’t address this imbalance, history has shown us where it can lead.

Just look at countries where wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few, where authoritarianism, social unrest, and deep despair take root among those who are perpetually left behind. If we don’t change course, we risk becoming a nation where access to opportunity is as rigged as a slot machine, and upward mobility is just another myth we tell ourselves to sleep at night.

At this point, 99% of Americans aren’t just watching from the sidelines; we’re living the consequences. And no amount of Instagram philanthropy or billionaire space selfies is going to fix it.

So yes, we need systemic change. We need to reimagine what “enough” looks like at the top, and what “dignity” looks like at every level. We need a tax system that doesn’t let the rich grow richer just by breathing, while the rest of us hustle to afford groceries. And maybe, just maybe, we need to start measuring a person’s worth not by their net assets, but by the impact they leave in their wake.

Until then, I’ll keep asking the question: Why are the rich so rich? And why are the rest of us still clapping for them?